It was Rab, however, who was the real popularizer of Jewish learning. He
arranged courses of lectures for the people as well as for scholars.
Rab's successor as head of the Sura school, Huna (212-297), completed
Rab's work in making Babylonia the chief centre of Jewish learning. Huna
tilled his own fields for a living, and might often be met going home
with his spade over his shoulder. It was men like this who built up the
Jewish tradition. Huna's predecessor, however, had wider experience of
life, for Rab had been a student in Palestine, and was in touch with the
Jews of many parts. From Rab's time onwards, learning became the
property of the whole people, and the Talmud, besides being the
literature of the Jewish universities, may be called the book of the
masses. It contains, not only the legal and ethical results of the
investigations of the learned, but also the wisdom and superstition of
the masses. The Talmud is not exactly a national literature, but it was
a unique bond between the scattered Jews, an unparallelled spiritual and
literary instrument for maintaining the identity of Judaism amid the
many tribulations to which the Jews were subjected.

The Talmud owed much to many minds. Externally it was influenced by the
nations with which the Jews came into contact. From the inside, the
influences at work were equally various. Jochanan, Rab, and Samuel in
the third century prepared the material out of which the Talmud was
finally built. The actual building was done by scholars in the fourth
century. Rabba, the son of Nachmani (270-330), Abayi (280-338), and Rava
(299-352) gave the finishing touches to the method of the Talmud. Rabba
was a man of the people; he was a clear thinker, and loved to attract
all comers by an apt anecdote. Rava had a superior sense of his own
dignity, and rather neglected the needs of the ordinary man of his day.
Abayi was more of the type of the average Rabbi, acute, genial,
self-denying. Under the impulse of men of the most various gifts of mind