The work of codifying and writing down the Oral Law was commenced by Rabbana Ashi about the year 400. Placed at the head of the declining Academy of Sora, he breathed new life into it. His knowledge won him both esteem and authority such as had been granted to Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi, compiler of the Mishna in Palestine about two hundred years earlier. But Rabbana Ashi's was a vaster task--the compiling of all supplementary laws that had grown out of the Mishna proper and from all the Mishna collections in the course of two hundred years. It included, too, the discussion and incidental material that developed from every legal or moral problem, together with all the logical steps that led to the final deduction. This vast after-growth or commentary was called _Gemara_, which means completion. Together with the Mishna, which formed the text, it was called the Talmud. This commentary, Gemara, is far bulkier than the Mishna. Sometimes a few lines of Mishna would call for pages and pages of Gemara. For about half a century Rabbana Ashi and his disciples, particularly Rabina, labored on this gigantic task. The completed work was called the _Talmud Babli_ (Babylonian), as it was not only written in Babylonia, but contained largely the decisions attained in the Babylonian schools. Though do not forget that its Mishna text was written in Palestine. The final touches were made about the year 500. It contains twelve folio volumes or 2,947 leaves. A similar work had been done in Palestine about the year 400. This Mishna commentary was called the Palestinian Talmud. Whether it originally contained commentary on all the Mishna we cannot say; but in the copies now extant there is only commentary to the first four of the six sections of the Mishna and to a few additional chapters. For this reason it is a less important work than the Babylonian Talmud and but a quarter of its size. Indeed, when we speak of the Talmud, we usually mean the Talmud Babli. The Contents.