Talmudic Academies in The Land of Israel - Centers of Learning

Centers of Learning

After Judah's death Sepphoris did not long remain the seat of the patriarch and the Academy. Gamaliel III, the unpretentious son of a distinguished father, became patriarch; but Hanina ben Hama succeeded him as head of the school, and introduced the new order of things that commenced with the completion of the Mishnah. In Hanina's lifetime the last migration of the Sanhedrin occurred. His pupil, Johanan b. Nappaha, settled in Tiberias, and the patriarch Judah II (grandson of Judah I) soon found himself compelled to remove to that city. The imposing personality and unexampled learning of Johanan rendered Tiberias for a long period the undisputed center of Levantine Judaism, the magnet which attracted Babylonian students.

When Johanan died in 279—this is the only settled date in the whole chronology of the Palestinian amoraim—the renown of the Tiberias Academy was so firmly established that it suffered no deterioration under his successors, although none of them equaled him in learning. For a time, indeed, Caesarea came into prominence, owing solely to the influence of Hoshaya, who lived there in the first half of the third century, and exercised the duties of a teacher contemporaneously with the Church father, Origen, with whom he had personal intercourse. After Johanan's death the school at Cæsarea attained a new standing under his pupil Abbahu; and throughout the whole of the fourth century the opinions of the "sages of Caesarea" were taken into respectful account, even in Tiberias. Sepphoris also resumed its former importance as a seat of learning; and eminent men worked there in the fourth century, long after the disaster to the city wrought by the forces of the emperor Gallus. From the beginning of the third century there had been an academy at Lydda in Judea, or "the South," as Judea was then called. This academy now gained a new reputation as a school of traditional learning. From it came the teacher to whom Jerome owed his knowledge of Hebrew and his insight into the Hebræa Veritas. But neither Caesarea, Sepphoris, nor Lydda could detract from the renown of Tiberias.

Tiberias accordingly remained the abode of the official head of Judaism in the Land of Israel and, in a certain sense, of the Judaism of the whole Roman Empire, as well as the seat of the Academy, which considered itself the successor of the ancient Sanhedrin. The right of ordination which, since Shimon ben Gamaliel II, the patriarch alone had exercised (either with or without the consent of the Council of Sages), was later on so regulated that the degree could only be conferred by the patriarch and council conjointly. The patriarchal dignity had meanwhile become worldly, as it were; for exceptional learning was by no means held to be an essential attribute of its possessor. The Academy of Tiberias, whose unordained members were called ḥaberim (associates), never lacked men, of more or less ability, who labored and taught in the manner of Johanan. Among these may be mentioned Eleazar ben Pedat, Ami and Assi, Hiyya bar Abba, Zeira, Samuel ben Isaac, Jonah, Jose, Jeremiah, Mani, the son of Jonah, and Jose ben Abin, who constitute a series of brilliant names in the field of the Halakah. In the department of the Aggadah — always highly prized and popular in Eretz Yisrael - the renown of Tiberias was also greatly augmented by many prominent and productive workers, from the contemporaries and pupils of Johanan down to Tanhuma ben Abba, who was illustrious as a collector and an editor of aggadic literature.