Gamliel II

A descendant of Gamliel the Elder. A tomb at Yavneh is revered as his, but it dates from the Islamic period.

A grandson of Hillel, Gamliel I, the Elder, carries weight in rabbinic literature: he is credited, for instance, with the rule that a widow could marry again on the strength of a single witness to her husband's death, and Gamliel II and Judah ha-Nasi descend from him. He also appears in the New Testament: in Acts 5 he is a Pharisee esteemed as a legal teacher, and in Acts 22 he is Paul's instructor.1 Yavneh, called Jamnia in Greek sources of the Roman era, was a coastal town; today's Tel Aviv lies to its north. Religious Jews revere a tomb there ascribed to Gamliel II, Yohanan's successor; the tomb in fact arose only much later, in the Islamic period, and no excavation has revealed such early rabbinic activity at Yavneh or at any other site.2