Abibas
The Holy and Righteous Abibas, son of Gamaliel
Righteous · d. 1st century, at Kaphar Gamala near Jerusalem
Commemorated 2 August — Finding of his relics at Kaphar Gamala with those of the Protomartyr Stephen (415)
Abibas was the younger son of the teacher of the Law Gamaliel, baptised with his father by the Apostles Peter and John, and dead at about twenty years of age, still — the tradition insists — in the white robe of the newly-illumined. His father buried him in the family tomb at Kaphar Gamala outside Jerusalem, where the body of the Protomartyr Stephen already lay and where Nicodemus and Gamaliel himself would afterwards be laid. In 415 the four were discovered together through the vision granted to the priest Lucian, and the Church has kept their memory on August 2 ever since. Almost nothing else is transmitted of him: he is the youngest and the quietest of the four, and his whole recorded life is a baptism, an early death and a grave in good company.
Son of Gamaliel
Everything known of Abibas comes from the fifth-century account of the finding of the relics and from the synaxarion tradition built upon it. He was the son — in most redactions the younger son — of Rabban Gamaliel the Elder, the Pharisee of the Sanhedrin who defended the apostles and who taught the Apostle Paul. When his father came secretly to faith in Christ, Abibas was baptised with him by the Apostles Peter and John, and, according to the tradition, embraced the new life with the fervour of the young: he is described as remaining unmarried and continuing in purity, in fasting and in the study of the Scriptures, and as being formed in the faith by the Apostles themselves.
He died young — the accounts give his age as about twenty, and one strand of the tradition adds that he reposed while still wearing the white garment of his baptism, so that his death was read by his family as a translation rather than a loss. Gamaliel buried him in the rock-cut tomb on his estate at Kaphar Gamala, in which he had already laid the body of the Protomartyr Stephen, rescued by night from the place of stoning; and there the elder Gamaliel and the righteous Nicodemus were buried in their turn.
The finding of 415
In 415 the priest Lucian of Kaphar Gamala was thrice visited in vision by an old man in white who named himself Gamaliel and described the four who lay in the tomb, Abibas among them. The excavation was made under John, bishop of Jerusalem, with the bishops Eutonius of Sebaste and Eleutherius of Jericho; four coffins were found, the account says with the names inscribed, and a great fragrance and many healings attended the opening. The relics of Stephen were carried to Jerusalem and laid in the church of Holy Sion; those of Abibas, with his father's and Nicodemus's, were honoured on the spot, and a church was raised at Kaphar Gamala over them. Portions travelled with the relics of the Protomartyr, and the four names travelled together into the calendars of both East and West.
Feast and commemoration
August 2 (church date; Old Calendar civil August 15), within the Dormition fast (August 1–14) — the finding of his relics at Kaphar Gamala, kept together with those of his father Gamaliel, of Nicodemus, and the translation of the relics of the Protomartyr Stephen to Constantinople. The four are inseparable in the calendars, having been found in one tomb. The uncovering is also commemorated on September 15.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4
Baptised in thy youth by the hands of the Apostles, O righteous Abibas, thou didst keep unstained the robe of thine illumination, and wast laid in the tomb of the Protomartyr as a young shoot beside a great tree. Wherefore, entreat Christ God that our souls may be saved.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Abibas is shown as a beardless youth, in tunic and mantle, sometimes in the white baptismal garment the tradition assigns him, standing beside his father Gamaliel; in the August 2 composition the four of the tomb appear together — the Protomartyr in his deacon's sticharion and orarion, with Nicodemus and Gamaliel as bearded elders and Abibas as the young man at the edge. He has no independent iconographic type. No pre-1900 icon of Abibas has been identified for this collection.
Disputed questions
- The name. The Greek synaxaria give Ἀβιβᾶς; Latin sources have Abibas, Abibon and Habib, the last reflecting the underlying Semitic name. All refer to the same person.
- How much is history. Abibas is unknown outside the inventio narrative. His life is transmitted entirely by the fifth-century account of the finding, and the details of his baptism, celibacy and death at twenty carry the authority of that account and no more. This entry is deliberately short: no more is known.
- Not to be confused with the several martyrs named Habib/Abibus of the Syriac calendar — above all Habib the Deacon of Edessa (November 15, with Gurias and Samonas), a different person of a different century and country.