Gamaliel the Elder
The Holy and Righteous Gamaliel, teacher of the Apostle Paul
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)
Gamaliel — Rabban Gamaliel the Elder, grandson of Hillel and the most honoured teacher of the Law in Jerusalem in his generation — is the Pharisee who stood up in the Sanhedrin and argued that the apostles should be let alone, "for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought; but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it" (Acts 5:38–39); and he is the master at whose feet Saul of Tarsus was brought up (Acts 22:3). Christian tradition holds that he came secretly to faith in Christ, was baptised with his son Abibas by the Apostles Peter and John, sheltered Nicodemus when the Sanhedrin cast him out, and gave burial in his own estate at Kaphar Gamala to the body of the Protomartyr Stephen. In the year 415 he appeared in a vision to the priest Lucian and revealed the tomb where all four of them lay; the Church keeps the finding of the relics on August 2.
Rabban Gamaliel in the Sanhedrin
Gamaliel stands at the head of the rabbinic tradition as one of its greatest names: the first to be styled Rabban, "our master," reckoned the grandson (or by some, son) of the great Hillel, and remembered in the Mishnah with the words, "when Rabban Gamaliel the Elder died, the glory of the Law ceased, and purity and abstinence died." He was a Pharisee of the moderate, Hillelite temper, learned, humane, and — the Acts is explicit — "had in reputation among all the people" (Acts 5:34).
The Acts of the Apostles gives him one great scene. The apostles, arrested a second time, are brought before the council, which is "cut to the heart and took counsel to slay them." Gamaliel has the prisoners put outside and addresses the Sanhedrin. He recalls Theudas and Judas of Galilee, insurgents whose followings dissolved when they died, and draws the conclusion: leave these men alone. If the work is human it will collapse of itself; if it is of God you cannot overthrow it, "lest haply ye be found even to fight against God." The council was persuaded; the apostles were beaten and released (Acts 5:33–40). Whatever Gamaliel intended — sober juridical caution, or something more — the Church has never forgotten that the first legal reprieve Christianity received in Jerusalem it received from him.
He appears once more, obliquely, when Paul on the steps of the Antonia tells the mob in Hebrew that he is "a Jew, born in Tarsus, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers" (Acts 22:3). The rigour of the young persecutor was not the master's; but the training in scripture and dialectic that Paul carried into the service of Christ was.
The secret Christian of Kaphar Gamala
From the Christian side, the tradition — carried by the letter of the priest Lucian and by every later synaxarion — goes further. Gamaliel, it says, came to believe in Christ and was baptised together with his son Abibas by the Apostles Peter and John, keeping the matter secret so as to be of use to the Church within the council. When Stephen was stoned and his body flung out unburied to the beasts, it was Gamaliel who sent his servants by night to take it up and carry it to his own estate at Kaphar Gamala ("the village of Gamaliel"), some miles from Jerusalem, and buried it there with honour and mourning. When Abibas died at twenty, he laid him in the same tomb; when Nicodemus was expelled from the Sanhedrin, beaten and dispossessed for confessing Christ, Gamaliel took him into the same estate, kept him until his death, and buried him there too; and at last he was laid there himself.
The vision of 415 and the finding of the relics
Nearly four centuries later, in December 415, a priest of the village named Lucian was sleeping in the baptistery of his church when a tall old man in white, with a golden-shod staff, stood over him and named himself Gamaliel. Three times, over successive weeks, the vision returned, until Lucian was persuaded and had the message conveyed to John, bishop of Jerusalem. The place was dug, and four coffins were uncovered, with the names — the account says — inscribed: Stephen, Nicodemus, Gamaliel, Abibas. The bishop came with Eutonius of Sebaste and Eleutherius of Jericho; a fragrance filled the place, a great number of the sick were healed, and the relics of the Protomartyr were carried in procession to the church of Holy Sion in Jerusalem on 26 December 415, while the relics of the other three were left, or partly left, at Kaphar Gamala, where a church was built over them. Lucian's account of the finding, translated into Latin by Avitus of Braga and circulated with the Revelatio Sancti Stephani, is one of the most widely copied texts of the fifth century.
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 Nicodemus, Abibas and the translation of the relics of the Protomartyr Stephen to Constantinople. The four are never separated on this day: they are the four occupants of the one tomb. The uncovering itself is also commemorated on September 15.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4
Thou wast a teacher of the Law and becamest a disciple of grace, O righteous Gamaliel; for thou didst restrain the council from the blood of the Apostles, and didst give burial in thine own ground to the first of the martyrs. Wherefore, entreat Christ God that our souls may be saved.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Gamaliel is painted as an aged Jewish teacher: white-bearded and long-haired, bare-headed or in a cap, in tunic and himation, holding a scroll — the attribute of the doctor of the Law — and sometimes shown seated among the elders of the Sanhedrin with his hand raised in the gesture of speech, the moment of his intervention for the apostles. In the composition proper to August 2 he appears as the old man in white of Lucian's vision, standing over the sleeping priest, or beside the opened tomb with Nicodemus and Abibas and the body of the Protomartyr. No pre-1900 icon of Gamaliel has been identified for this collection.
Disputed questions
- Was Gamaliel a Christian? The Christian tradition of his secret baptism is unknown to Acts and to Jewish sources, which continue to treat him wholly as a sage of the Pharisaic schools; his grandson Gamaliel II presided at Yavneh after 70. The Orthodox Church commemorates him as a righteous saint on the strength of the ancient tradition and of his defence of the apostles, without claiming that the rabbinic record supports the baptism.
- The inscribed tablets. Lucian's account describes name-tablets in the tomb; sceptical scholars have long regarded the whole inventio as a pious construction serving the interests of the Jerusalem church. The relics were nonetheless received, distributed and venerated across the Mediterranean within a decade, which is a fact of the fifth century whatever its cause.
- Not to be confused with Gamaliel II of Yavneh, his grandson, who is not a saint of the Christian calendar.