In the Talmudic period, the judges, members of the Synhedrion, and professors of the law schools, received a long professional training. The course of study lasted seven years, at the end of which, having passed their examination successfully, the graduates were eligible to assignment as judges in the lower courts, from which they were promoted to act as associate judges in the great Synhedrion and eventually might hope to attain the dignity of full synhedrial membership. These judicial dignitaries were obliged to be well versed in the languages, law and customs of the contemporary peoples, especially in the laws of the Greeks and Romans. Great academies of the law flourished in Palestine and still greater ones in Babylonia, the latter eventually supplanting the former. These academies called for the enthusiastic encomium of one Talmudist who said, "God created these academies in order that the promise might be fulfilled that the word of God should not depart from Israel's mouth." The law students met twice a year in assembly for examination. Their studies were pursued at home, except in the months of Elul and Adar when they went up to the Assembly. Here they were arranged in classes and under the direction of their masters heard lectures and discussed the subject matter presented to them topically. At these Assemblies actual questions of law were submitted from Jewish communities all over the Jewish world, and the solutions to these problems were prepared and forwarded by the great masters. In addition to these professional schools there were everywhere general schools or, as we might say, high schools connected with the synagogues. It is a tribute to the importance that was ascribed to the high schools in later generations that their origin was projected back to the days of the Flood when Shem and Eber established a law school in which subsequently Isaac, Jacob, and Rebecca heard lectures. It will be noted that according to this bit of folklore Rebecca was the first woman law student. The same fancy which invented this most ancient of the schools, also invented the law school which Judah built for Jacob in Egypt, and the school established by Moses in which he and Aaron were the professors and Joshua was the janitor. _The Study of the Law "the Chief End of Man"_ The fancy of the people associated nearly all of its great men with the study of the law. The entire tribe of Issachar was said to have devoted itself to the study of the law, the merchant tribe of Zebulon furnishing the means of support. God himself, according to another mystic, was a professor in the celestial law school in which He taught the law to the souls of all the righteous, in that heaven which they conceived of as a place where the law might be perpetually studied; and even while the Temple was still standing and sacrifices were being offered, the Jewish teachers used to say that God does not require burnt offerings but the study of His law.