Simon II the High Priest שמעון השני הכהן הגדול
high priest whose coming forth from the Sanctuary was described in his lifetime
Simon II was high priest at the beginning of the second century BCE. In his days the Temple was repaired and Jerusalem fortified: Ben Sira names both the high walls of the enclosure and the reservoir dug in his time, "like the sea in circumference".
The fiftieth chapter of the Book of Ben Sira is a rare thing: a description of a high priest made by a man who saw him. He likens Simon's coming forth from the Sanctuary to the morning star among the clouds, to the full moon at the festival, to the sun over the Temple, to the rainbow in splendid clouds. This is not a life written afterwards but the testimony of a contemporary.
Who Simon the Just of the Mishnah is—this Simon or Simon I, a century earlier—is an old dispute, and we do not settle it. On the timeline the two stand apart, and it is said of both.
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Documents of the period
- Ben Sira 50 — a description of the high priest Simon made in his lifetime; one of the sefarim hitzonim, discussed in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 100b)
Scholarship
- Reference literature: years of the high priesthood — the years of office by the agreed count of the reference literature; scholars differ, and the differences are named
Basis: documents and evidence.