Akiba is ever remembered as one of the greatest of this wonderful group of Talmud founders, as well as a very noble martyr. Rabbi Akiba’s work was not limited to exposition and explanation and elaborate discussions in the academies of the traditional Halachah or oral comments on the Law of Moses. He was virtually the first[160] who attempted to codify and arrange the vast accumulation of these Halachah and Haggadah, and to reduce them into something like order and arrangement. Some years after Akiba’s death, about the middle of the second century, his most famous disciple, the Rabbi Meir, who is known in the Talmud as the “Light of the Law,” took up his master Akiba’s work, and went on with arranging and codifying the Halachah, introducing, however, many more Halachah into his codification, and supplementing and illustrating his expositions with many interesting traditions (Haggadah)[161]; thus preparing the way for the more elaborate collection or recension of Rabbi Judah Ha-Nasi--the Holy--who is known in the Talmud as “Rabbi”--_the_ Rabbi _par excellence_. “Rabbi’s” great work of codification may be dated about the years A.D. 200-19, or thereabouts. The work of “Rabbi,” somewhat enlarged and recast, is with us still. It represents fairly the Mishnah which was used as the text of the great Gemara[162] commentaries compiled in the schools of Palestine and Babylonia[163] between the end of the second century and the last years of the sixth century. The Mishnah of “Rabbi,” which was largely based upon the collections of Rabbi Akiba and his disciple Rabbi Meir, and the Gemaras of Palestine and Babylonia,[163] compiled in centuries three, four, five, and six, make up the Talmud. There was a strict traditional interdiction which dated back at least to the centuries which followed the Return from the Exile, if not earlier, against ever committing the Halachah and the discussions of the Scribes upon the Halachah to _writing_. The latest Jewish scholars have decided that to a certain extent the interdiction was removed by “Rabbi” in the very early years of the third century, or at the close of the second century. We may assume, then, with tolerable certainty that “Rabbi” in his old age reduced the great collection of Halachah to writing, transgressing, in a way, the ancient tradition which forbade this. He seems to have considered that the prohibition, if maintained in its ancient strictness, might endanger the preservation of the precious teaching. “Rabbi” did not entirely abrogate the interdiction, for the oral method of instruction continued during the period of the Gemara discussions in Palestine and in Babylonia: the teacher alone using the _written_ Halachah, which made up the redaction of the Mishnah by “Rabbi” as a guide; the pupils, however, always repeating the lesson _orally_.