3. _The Persian Period--537-330 B. C.:_ "Ezra and Nehemiah left a settled form of government in Palestine, the center of which was Jerusalem. Here was established a council of elders and priests, who formed an ecclesiastical court, interpreting the law, and enforcing its observance. These were called the "Great Synagogue." They were to the new settlement after the captivity what the 'elders that overlived Joshua' (Josh. xxiv: 31) were to the Israelites who came out of Egypt. It was the Jewish theory that the law was given in a two-fold form, viz., the written and the oral; the former consisting of brief official enactments, the latter of more copious details. With the former code, immutably formalized by God, they said the latter was orally taught to Moses on Mount Sinai by the same Divine Author, as the authoritative interpretation thereof, with the command to commit the one to writing, but to transmit the other only by word of mouth. This oral law was repeated by Moses to Joshua, who handed it on to the elders who succeeded him, and they to the prophets, who, in their turn, passed it from one to another till it reached Jeremiah, who, through the medium of Baruch, conveyed it to Ezra, and he to the Great Synagogue, whom Nehemiah also supplied with a library of all the sacred books he could collect (II Mac. ii: 13). This body of elders lasted about 150 years, when it expired in its last survivor, the High Priest Simon the Just (B. C. 291). * * * * Ezra and Nehemiah also set up synagogues in country towns, as places of worship on the Sabbath, and schools of instruction and for theological discussion during the week. Attached to each was a body of 'rulers,' who were both civil magistrates and ecclesiastical presbyters. During all this time [two hundred years] Palestine was subject to Persia, and formed only part of a province under the Satrap of Syria, these elders administering the government with the high priest as their responsible head."