1. Gamaliel, or Rabban Gamliel the elder, as he is invariably called in the Talmud to distinguish him from his grandson, Rabban Gamaliel or Gamliel of Jabneh (Jamnia), was the son of Rabbi Simeon, and the grandson of Rabbi Hillel. Of his biography little is known beyond the facts that, early in the 1st century, he lived and taught in Jerusalem, where Saul of Tarsus was for some time his pupil; and that he w as a member of the Sanhedrim, which body he successfully counselled to moderation in their treatment of the followers of Jesus. He appears to have died before the destruction of the city. The Talmudists speak of him as having enjoyed the confidence of Cypros, the wife of Agrippa, and as having been president of the Sanhedrim during the reigns of Tiberius, Caligula, and Claudius; but the latter representation at least is certainly unhistorical, as may be learned from the New Testament and from Josephus, where it is invariably the high priest who presides over the council. Gamaliel the elder is also represented by Jewish tradition as having in some respects modified the provisions of the law with respect to divorce and marriages of widows, and as having made some new arrangements with regard to the calendar; but there is reason to believe that in this last statement he has been mistaken for Gamaliel of Jabneh. The fact that he is spoken of in the records of Judaism as having been the first of the seven “rabbans” (rabban being a honorific form of the title rabbi) is of itself almost conclusive against the late and otherwise improbable Christian tradition to the effect that he ultimately became a Christian and received baptism at the hands of Peter and John (Clem. Recog., i. 65; Photius, cod. 171, p. 199). Compare Ewald, Cesch. d. V. Isr. τ vi. 256 sq.; Derenbourg, Hist, de Palestine, p. 239 sqq.', Schürer, NTliche Zeitgesch., p. 458.

2. Gamaliel of Jabneh ranks with his grandfather, Gamaliel the elder, as one of the seven great rabbans of the Talmudists. His father also was named Simeon. On the death of Rabbi Johanan ben Zacai, Gamliel was chosen to succeed him as head of the famous school which had transferred itself to Jamnia or Jabneh shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem. For a considerable period after that event Jabneh became in some sense the metropolis of Judaism, and Gamliel, as head of the supreme judicial and legislative body which sat there, may be said to have been the first nasi or “prince” of the rabbinical period. An interesting account of his position ‘as legislator will be found in chapter xx. of Derenbourg’s Histoire de Palestine. As representing the Jewish nation and the Jewish faith, he visited Rome in the autumn of 95 A.D., and the Talmud abounds with references to the incidents of that journey. Gamliel was the friend of Rabbi Akiba, and the master of Aquila (the “Onkelos” of the Babylonian Talmud). He died about 115 a.d. (see Ewald, Gesch. cZ. V. Isr., vii. 388).

3. A third Gamaliel, son of Jehudah-ha-Nasi, is mentioned in Aboth, ii. 2, as having specially insisted on the neβe^sity of combining with the study of the law some active employment in order to the maintenance of a healthy moral tone.

It may here also be remarked, that the sanhedrim could not themselves believe that tale which they had diligently circulated among the people, that the disciples had stolen away the body of Jesus, and then pretended that he had arisen from the dead. If the Jewish council had thought this, it would have been very absurd in Gamaliel to exhort them to wait to see whether “the counsel and work” was of God, that is, whether the Apostles related a fact when they preached the resurrection, and grounded the divine authority of their religion upon that fact. Gamaliel’s advice was wholly based upon the admission, that an extraordinary, and to them an inexplicable, event had happened.