Shimʿon Ben Gamliʾel II

Questions on this topic? Just ask!

SHIMʿON BEN GAMLIʾEL II (second century CE) was a Palestinian tanna. He held the hereditary office of nasiʾ, or president, of the Sanhedrin. It is said that he studied Greek and that he supported a policy of peace with Rome.

According to a Talmudic source, two of his rabbinic colleagues—Meʾir, the ḥakham of the Sanhedrin, and Natan, its av beit din—sought to oust Shimʿon from his position as nasiʾ during a power struggle within the ranks of rabbinic leadership. In the Talmudic account, the two masters became angry when Shimʿon decreed that the students in the academy at Usha should not stand in their honor when they entered. Meʾir and Natan then conspired to test Shimʿon on an obscure tractate of the law in order to bring him to disgrace. Shimʿon was coached by one of his supporters, passed the test, and banished Meʾir and Natan from the academy. Nonetheless, they continued to send the scholars advice about problems in the interpretation of the law and they were eventually readmitted (B.T., Hor. 13b).

On the basis of a reference in this story to a ceremonial sash worn by Natan, Jacob Neusner (1969) suggests that Natan was the head of the Jewish community in Babylonia, son of an official in the Parthian government, and that he had come to Palestine to advance the influence of the Parthians in preparation for their struggle against Roman authority. Shimʿon's sympathy to Roman interests, Neusner says, may have made him the primary target of a conspiracy by Natan. It is equally plausible, however, that the events were part of a struggle within the Palestinian community as Shimʿon tried to restore authority to the office of nasiʾ after some of its powers were usurped by the scholars.

Many legal rulings in Shimʿon's name appear throughout the major rabbinic compilations, and his views are almost always decisive: The Talmud declares that the law follows Shimʿon ben Gamliʾel in all but three instances (B. T., Ket. 77a). His statement that not all who wish to recite God's name in the prayers may do so (Ber. 4.8) is an example of his restrictive views regarding the use of divine names for liturgical purposes. Shimʿon sometimes cites precedents for religious prescriptions and rulings; for example, he refers to several customs for fellowship meals in Jerusalem (Tosefta, Ber. 4.9). He also serves as a transmitter of teachings by his contemporaries Yehudah, Meʾir, and Yose.

Tannaim.

No full critical analysis of the corpus of Shimʿon's tradition has been undertaken. In Volume 3 of Tannaitic Symposia (in Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1969), pp. 159–228, Israel Konovitz collects all the references to Shimʿon in rabbinic literature. Jacob Neusner's A History of the Jews in Babylonia, vol. 1 (Leiden, 1969), pp. 79–85, proposes a historical approach to the analysis of one major tradition.

Schwartz, Seth. "Gamaliel in Aphrodite's Bath: Palestinian Judaism and Urban Culture in the Third and Fourth Centuries." In The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture, vol. 1, edited by Peter Schäfer, pp. 203–217. Tübingen, 1998.