The battle between the factions burst forth during Anan's life, but the Talmudists soon ceased to take Anan's work seriously.
They did not assign importance to it, and began to despise it.
They assumed that his work, in a similar way to the works of Severus ¹ (Serene) or Judah Judghan ², would gradually disappear from the surface of the earth.
Our missionaries utilized this lack of interest, the overlooking and the contempt of their rivals, and won hearts of a large number of people, and turning them to their side.
The success of the mission was also impacted by the very low level of education of the majority of the nation, which had only a very limited knowledge of the Holy Scriptures and the Talmud.

Our missionaries, who made the rounds of the towns, had a deep knowledge of both the Holy Scriptures and also the Talmud.
They were warmly welcomed by the people who gladly, and willingly, listened to their sermons, being fascinated by them.
All of this, which has been described above, and being not even half a century after Anan's death, had a very negative impact on the popularity of the Talmud.
This popularity was almost eradicated from the heart of Talmudism.
It was only then and at that time, that the representatives of the ruling class of Talmudists took a fright and woke up from their inactivity.
However they had missed the right moment for an effective defence, and this delayed defence was already beyond their grasp.
Even the Talmud did not turn out to be an effective weapon on it's own.

In general, the Talmudists, at that time, neglected Hebrew grammar, including the construction of words and their interpretations.
Objections were based on sentences or words taken out of context and they did not take into account the preceding or following chapters, sentences or words.
With such ineffective weapons, it was not possible to wage a successful defence with experts in language and grammar. ³

The enemies of Anan's teachings, seeing their defeat, flared with anger and declared against the followers of Anan ben David ha-nasi, the anathema, but this only increased their missionary activity.
The success of the missionaries was so great that the continued existence of the Talmud was feared for.
We can only imagine what would have happened if the sun had failed to rise in the sky of the Talmudic world.

This sun was Sa’adia al Fayyumi.

¹ Severus, or Serene, was a Syrian pseudo-messiah. He declared himself the Messiah in Syria in about 720, and attracted numerous followers. He was put to death by the Muslim authorities - the note of translator.
² Judah Judghan, who was also know as Judah of Hamadan, was the founder of a sect, influenced by Sufism and known under name Al-Yudghaniyyah - the note of translator.
³ As an example, we can present the interpretation of the word הדר used by Moses in the regulation concerning Shavuot. Ananites understood this word as an abstract noun, like הדר honour, glory, while the Talmudists understood this word as a participle and the first letter ה they did not consider it as a part of the root of the word, but as a prefix, meaning as הדּר long-living - the punctuation of that word, ie vowels, confirms the verity of the Ananites' claims, because if the Talmudists were right, the vowel patach ַ had to be under the first letter, not a vowel kamatz ָ.

Talmudists also based many other interpretations on similar changes of grammatical rules.