Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel the Elder רַבָּן שִׁמְעוֹן בֶּן גַּמְלִיאֵל הַזָּקֵן

Josephus—the only contemporary witness, and he is hostile. Life §38: John of Gischala sent his brother Simon and about a hundred armed men to Jerusalem "to Simon, the son of Gamaliel, in order to persuade him to induce the commonalty of Jerusalem to take from me the government over the Galileans." Then the character sketch, worth quoting whole: "This Simon was of the city of Jerusalem, and of a very noble family of the sect of the Pharisees, which are supposed to excel others in the accurate knowledge of the laws of their country. He was a man of great wisdom and reason, and capable of restoring public affairs by his prudence, when they were in an ill posture. He was also an old friend and companion of John." And immediately the accusation: he persuaded the high priests Ananus and Jesus son of Gamalas to cut Josephus down "now I was growing so great," and instructed John's brother to send them presents; they, "being corrupted by bribes, agreed to expel me out of Galilee" (§39).

Wars IV.3.9 shows him from the other side: Gorion son of Joseph and Symeon son of Gamaliel go about the assemblies of the people urging them to bear it no longer but to punish "these pests and plagues of their freedom"—the Zealots—and to purge the Temple of them.

So the answer to "was he with John of Gischala or against him" is both, and it is not a contradiction. The constant is not loyalty to John but alliance with Ananus and the priestly aristocracy against the extremists. It must not be flattened into "John's ally."

The one precise act recorded of him. Keritot 1:7: "It once happened that pairs of birds stood in Jerusalem at gold dinars. Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel said: by this abode—I shall not sleep tonight until they are at [silver] dinars," and he entered the court and taught that a woman with five certain births or five certain flows brings one offering, eats of sacrifices, and is not liable for the rest. "And that same day pairs of birds stood at a quarter." An oath by the Temple, a deliberate intervention in a market, a ninety-six-fold collapse in one day—all so that a poor woman could bring her offering. The gemara is Keritot 8a. Live birds, a Jerusalem market and an oath by the Temple settle that this is him and not his namesake of Usha.

Avot 1:17 is him. Chapter one of Avot, in the standard numbering, runs to eighteen mishnayot: 1:16 is "Rabban Gamliel says" ("make for yourself a teacher"), 1:17 is "Shimon his son says": "All my days I grew up among the sages, and I found nothing better for the body than silence; and study is not the essence but deed; and whoever multiplies words brings sin." "His son" is the son of that Gamliel, and the standard commentators take that Gamliel to be Gamliel the Elder—so 1:17 is Shimon ben Gamliel I. The Encyclopaedia Judaica reads the words as reflecting the position he found himself in: a man preaching silence and deeds over words, amid the clash of parties and in the shadow of revolt and war. Avot 1:18 ("on three things the world stands: on justice, on truth and on peace") is more often given to Shimon ben Gamliel of Usha, since 2:1 proceeds to Rabbi Yehudah ha-Nasi—but there is also a reading by which 1:17 and 1:18 are one man in different years of his life.

What else is safely his. Sukkah 53a: "they said of Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel that when he rejoiced at the rejoicing of the water-drawing he would take eight flaming torches and throw one and catch one, and they did not touch one another," and he performed the High Priest's full prostration, which no one else could do. Avodah Zarah 20a—the blessing on seeing a beautiful gentile woman, said from the Temple Mount. Horayot 13b—the protocol of rising before the Nasi and before the Av Beit Din. Tosefta Sanhedrin 2:13—"Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel says: on account of the equinox too," among the grounds for intercalating a year, in the very passage with the Sanhedrin's letters to the diaspora: "we write to our brethren, the sons of Galilee…" Sotah 49b—"a thousand children were in my father's house, five hundred learned Torah and five hundred Greek wisdom, and none of them remain but me here and my father's brother's son in Asia"; usually given to him, but disputed. Pesachim 51a, Nedarim 66b and Yerushalmi Demai 1 are assigned to him without argument and are more probably his namesake of Usha: the Talmud almost always writes simply "Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel," and the two must be sorted by content.

Death and the Ten Martyrs—here one must be exact. The tradition has him executed by the Romans together with Rabbi Yishmael ben Elisha the High Priest: Masekhet Semachot 8, Avot de-Rabbi Natan A:38, Mekhilta Nezikin 18. In ARN the narrative opens: when they seized Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel and Rabbi Yishmael to kill them, Rabban Shimon sat deep in thought—"woe unto us, that we are killed like those who desecrate the Sabbath and worship idols and commit illicit sex and murder." They draw lots over who dies first; Rabban Shimon is beheaded, and Rabbi Yishmael eulogises "a holy mouth." The Encyclopaedia Judaica reports another view—that he was killed by extremists who resented his moderation—while judging the Roman account more probable; the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia is blunter: the Semachot account "lacks historical support." The martyrological literature gives the day—the twenty-fifth of Sivan—but no source gives the year.

And the main thing about it. Yes, he stands in the lists of the Ten Martyrs; and yes, the lists are the problem. As Levine's study ("Eleh Ezkerah," Hakirah 13) shows, "the actual martyrs were not executed at the same time, nor were all contemporaries or even known to have been executed—or in one case, to exist." Shimon ben Gamliel dies about 70 CE, while Rabbi Akiva, Rabbi Chanina ben Teradion, Yeshevav the Scribe, Chutzpit the Meturgeman and Yehudah ben Bava die in the Hadrianic persecution about 135: sixty-five years apart, presented as one execution. Levine holds the dislocation to be deliberate on the payyetan's part—a "meta-historical metaphor" gathering martyrs of different generations into a single act—and notes that the scepticism goes back to the twelfth-century Yichusei Tanna'im ve-Amora'im. It is worth knowing for this reason: most readers know Shimon ben Gamliel from Eleh Ezkerah on Yom Kippur and the kinot of the Ninth of Av—that is, from precisely the source that dislocates him in time.

A tomb is shown for him at Kfar Kanna in the Galilee; the tradition is late.

Who he is confused with. Above all his grandson, Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel of Usha, father of Rabbi Yehudah ha-Nasi, who has his own article here; a talmudic "Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel" is always ambiguous. Then: Josephus' praise is read as friendship, when in the same chapter he credits the man's intelligence and accuses him of taking bribes. And finally he is made either an anti-Roman firebrand or a quietist, when he was a moderate who nonetheless backed the revolt and who agitated for armed action against the Zealots.

The accepted dates are c. 3770–3828 AM (10–70 CE). Tradition sets his death on 25 Sivan of the year of the destruction, executed together with Rabbi Yishmael (Semachot 8); not every source counts him among the Ten Martyrs.