The Jews of Babylonia were for the most part engaged in agriculture, commerce and handicrafts, and even in work on the canals. Fortunate indeed were they to have again secured a home beyond Rome's cruel control, where, undisturbed, they might live their own life. In the study of the Law they found inexhaustible material for intellectual and religious activity. But how was religion taught and the continuity of Judaism maintained in Babylonia? At first they were entirely dependent on the Palestinian Academies established in Jamnia and Lydda and other places after the fall of Jerusalem, and were altogether subject to the Judean Sanhedrin. Many students traveled to Palestine to study at its schools. But after a time the community grew strong enough intellectually to establish academies of its own. The heads of the Academies corresponded to the Judean Patriarchs, only that all civil power was vested in the Resh Galutha, above mentioned. Step by step the Babylonian students increased in learning; and, acquiring confidence, came to feel less the need of the guidance of the parent authority. Soon this settlement further east claimed independent jurisdiction. This was bitterly resented in Palestine. The removal of the Sanhedrin to Jamnia had been the first wrench. The second was the removal of the central authority from the Holy Land altogether, to distant Babylonia. But Palestine could not stem the tide. As the fortunes of the Jews declined there, its schools declined with them. Steadily waned, too, the authority of the Patriarch. Rab and Samuel. Babylonian schools also produced great scholars, some as renowned as those of Palestine. For reasons given on p. 227 they are all _Amoräim_, not _Tannäim_. Let us mention first _Abba Areka_, popularly called by his many disciples Rab (Rabbi), "_the_ teacher," who flourished in Babylonia a few years after the Mishna had been compiled in Palestine. Apart from his duties as expounder of the Law, the Resh Galutha appointed him to the position of supervisor of weights and measures. Occasioned by this occupation to travel in outlying districts, he discovered the ignorance of the remoter congregations. This led to his establishment of the Academy of Sora about the year 220. It continued a seat of Jewish study for eight hundred years. Hundreds of pupils flocked to Rab's Academy. Some he maintained from his own purse. At the same time the study hours were arranged to give pupils the opportunity of earning their living. Some lectures were delivered to the public at large. An Academy almost as famous was established at Pumbeditha; another at Nehardea.