The older Mishnas (Mishna Rishona) were often separated from the later (Mishna Acharona, or Mishna of Rabbi Akiba), and the latter were taken as the norm. The name of the new founder of the Oral Law became, through his peculiar mode of teaching, one of the most celebrated in the Jewish communities far and wide. His mysterious descent and his lowly origin only heightened the interest felt in him. The number of his hearers is exaggerated by tradition, which fixes it at twelve thousand, and even double that number, but a more modest record represents them as amounting to three hundred. Accompanied by this numerous band of disciples, Akiba again visited his wife Rachel, who for some years had lived apart from him in the greatest poverty. The scene of their meeting is touchingly described, and her hard-hearted father, Kalba-Sabua, proud of such a son-in-law, is said to have bequeathed to him his whole property. From this time Akiba lived in great riches with his wife, who had previously been so poor that she slept on a bed of straw. His gratitude to his sorely tried wife was in proportion to the sacrifices which she had made for him. Akiba had his fixed domicile in Bene-Berak, where his school was situated. The position of this spot, which, through him, became so celebrated, is supposed to be southeast of Joppa. Others place it yet more to the south, near Ashdod; but Akiba was a member of the Synhedrion in Jabne, and it was but seldom that any measure was determined without him. In the development of Jewish law, in which Akiba had wrought such changes, Ishmael ben Elisha took an important part. He demanded the explanation of the written law from the common-sense view, and was thus one of the chief opponents of Akiba's system. According to Ishmael, the divine precepts of the Torah are expressed in human language, in which various figures of speech, linguistic repetitions and oratorical modes of expression occur, on which, however, no weight should be laid, as they are a mere matter of form. He thus put aside the various deductions of Akiba, which were based on an apparently superfluous (pleonastic) word, or even letter of the alphabet. Akiba deduced, for example, the punishment of death by fire against the adulterous married daughter of a priest from one letter of the alphabet, on which Ishmael remarked--"On account of one letter of the alphabet thou wouldst inflict death by burning!" Ishmael had his own school, which was known under the name of Be-Rabbi Ishmael. He there developed the rules which were to be employed in explaining and applying the Written Law. He amplified Hillel's seven rules of interpretation into thirteen, by subdividing one into several, while he rejected another, and on his own authority added one which was quite new.