Gamaliel’s determination of the calendar, he was required to followed the
latter’s calendar, and to eat and show up for work on the day he believed
was the Day of Atonement.
At the same time, early rabbinic tradition was not entirely uniform.
Built into this legal corpus was the right of rabbis to disagree with one
another. Moreover, unity and uniformity did not lead to a complete
centralization of authority in the Sanhedrin or the patriarchate. Local tri-
bunals and academies existed alongside those of the patriarch. Any three
Jews could form a tribunal. At the same time, although all Jews presum-
ably had equal access to Scripture once it was canonized, the rabbis
arrogated the right to interpret and apply law and prophetic instruction to
contemporary life.
The codification of the Mishneh prompted almost immediately a new
oral tradition of discussion, interpretation, and dispute that would last for
nearly three centuries. During the fifth century, this tradition would itself
be redacted into two large collections, one in Babylonia and the other in the
Land of Israel, that would eventually be known as the Babylonian and
Jerusalem Talmuds. The codification of this post-Mishnaic oral tradition
coincided with the decline of Jewish life in the Land of Israel under
Byzantine rule, and the rise of Babylonia as a center of Jewish life and schol-
arship by the fifth century. In retrospect, the shift to Babylonia is evident
by around the year 350, when the Byzantine emperor curtailed the
Sanhedrin’s right to fix the calendar. In response, a Babylonian rabbi named
Hillel, a descendant of the original Hillel, fashioned a new method for
determining the calendar by designing a preset calendar that functioned
independently of the Sanhedrin and the Patriarch. When the Sanhedrin was
closed down for good by the Byzantine emperor Theodosius II in 425 C.E.,
the Jews of Babylonia had already laid the groundwork to step forward as
leaders of the Jewish world.
Although it dated back to the sixth century B.C.E., relatively little is
known about the Jewish community of Babylonia prior to the third century
C.E. Until 226 C.E., Jews fared well under the Parthians, who granted them
autonomy and left them alone if they paid an annual poll tax. The situation of
Jews, or at least the Jewish elite, was enhanced by the emergence of the Resh
Galuta (exilarch) as a state-recognized leader of the Jews. By contrast, rab-
binic tradition described the rank-and-file Jews of Babylonia as the most
impoverished in the world (“God bequeathed nine out of ten measures of
poverty on the Jews of Babylonia”).
The exilarch was believed to be a descendant of David, and heir-in-exile to
the Davidic throne. While some scholars have suggested that this office dates
back to the exiled Judean king Jehojachim, historically the existence of the
exilarch can be attested to only from 140 C.E. The exilarch was regarded as
royalty and was part of the reigning monarch’s personal court.
The rise of Rabbinic Judaism 55