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32 Abba Huna ha-Kohen Abba Mai-i of Lunel

THE

J

£ WISH KNCVtLul'EDIA

Aliliii replied that the li. .M. 28A). onlers the restoration 1" its owner of anvtliiiii; found; whereupon the prineessexelaimed. "I'mised lie the (!od of the Jews'" (Ver. 15. iM. ii. Therefore. at his Sc; eoMipare " I'< lu- Jloslieli.") funeral, the Scriptural verse (Cant. viii. 7). "If a man would ^ive all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be conteiiuied." was applied to Abtja Hosliaya's love of God (Lev. K. Jill. Cant. H. to l.f.. where "Iljibbi" is to be corrected into Abba; Tosef., B. K. xi. U; Yer. B. K. x. 7<-).

riirht

(((iiiiiiurc

Jewish

Law

8.

ABBA HUNA HA-KOHEN. Ai'.ha.

II

M.

IIuna,

Sec

K<hii;n.

ABBA or BABA (BABBAH) BAB J£B£third century, MIAH A Babylonian aniora <if the



he son of Jeremiah b. Abba and a pupil of Kab. He lived at Sura and transmitted to his j;eneration the sayin.srsof Kab and Samuel. One of his sayings, several of which are preserved in Palestinian sources, may be here (pioled. Prov. ix. 1-3; "Wisilom hath liuilded her house," etc., refers to the Messianic age. The ' house " is the newly erected Teniph' at Jerusalem the " seven pillars " are the seven years following the defeat of Gog and JIagog, which are indicated in Ezek. xxxix. 9; the "feast" is that described in Ezek. xxxix. 17; and the ver.se. "She hath sent forth her maidens," etc., means: "The Lord sent forth the prophet Ezekiel with the message to the birds and beasts" (Lev. R. xi.). BiBi.ioiiRAPiiv: Bacher, Ag. Pal. Atnor. iii. 529, SSO; Heilprln, Seder ha-Dorut, ed. 1883, ii. 33C. AV. B. I



32

"A

huts that did not collapse. Hence the proverb, city without Abba Kolon is not worthy of the name." The newly built city was therefore called "Babylonian Home" (Can!. H. i. (i). Probably this legend was intended to show the dependence of the Roman empire u|ion the natural resources of the East; but it contains a number of points that still remain unexplained. The abovementione<l Roman, or, more projierly, Greco-Roman, proverl) is .just as obscure as the name " .Vbba Kolon," which, originating in some classic word, was (listorted by the Jews into "a father of a colony," not without the mental reservation that "Kolon" is the Aramaic e(|uivalent of "shame." .Vn attempt has been nuidi' to identify the name with that of r)eucali(m (Kraiiss, " Lehnwiirter," ii. s.r.). to which it bears no philological or historical relation. The most probable ideiititi<ation is that by iJrUll. who refers to a legend in John Malalas' "Chronicles." |). 301, of a magician nanie<l Ablaccon, under the emperor Tilierius. This Ablaccon protected the city of Antioch. by the aid of a rampart of stone, against the ovcrllow of the mountain streams, Brull, lu Kobak's Jiw/mniH. ri. 3; Krauss, (irUchiscly uuil I/ateooVr/ic Lf'hnu'Ctrtfr im IVi/HUd/, ete., li. s.v. Berlin, 1S9S); VogelstciD and Kleger, Gc«c)i. d. Jiuten

BlBLiociRAPHT



in i?o;ii,i. 88.

L. G.

ABBA BEN MABI. See Rabba ABBA MABI BEN ELIGDOB

ben Mari. (called also

1!i;n

Senior Astruc de Noves or de Neg^re, 'IJJ. Iii.s family name) A dislinguished Talmiidist. an eminent philosopher, and an able physicist and astronomer nourished in the fourteenth century in Salonica. In lH'A'y he was already very old (Samuel of

I!i:n

JIarseilles. in " ficrivains^Juifs." p. .562, according to which the note in "Rev. Et. Juives," ix. .")!), must be

ABBA JOSE BEN DOSITAI. See Jose, Abiu, ABBA JOSE BEN HANIN. See JosE, Abba, IIamn ABBA JOSE OF MAHUZA. See Jose, Abba, OK M iir/.A. ABBA JUDAH. See Ai;I!a JrD.v.. ABBA JUDAN (or JTJDAH) A philanthro:
 * )ii-iiai.

who

Antioch in the earl.y part of the second ciutury. As an example of his generosity, it is recorded that once he sold half of his iiroperty. already considerably reduced by the demands of charity, to avoid turning away empty-handed Rabbis Eliezer. Joshua, and Akiba, who were collecting pist

livi'd in

donations for educational purposes.

The record

adds that the blessings conferred upon him by these rabbis bore fruit, for shortly afterward, by a hajipy accident, he discovered a treasure (Yer. Hor. iii. 4sr/. Lev. K. V. 4). Ilis name was not permitted to fall into oblivion, and for centuries later the name "Abba Judan" seems to have been applied in Palestine to every unusually benevolent man (Lev. R. I.e. Dent. R. iv. 8). It is thus the Jewish parallel to the name Ma-cenas which is still applied, two thousand years after the life of its original bearer, to every great patron of art. L. G. ,

ABBA KOLON A

mj-thical

Roman mentioned

Tahuudic legend concerning the foundation of Rome, which, according to the Haggadah, was a re-

in a

impious conduct of the .Jewish kings. According to the legend, the first settlers of Rome found that their huts collapsed as soon as built, whereupon Abba Kolon said to them, "L'nlessyou mix water from the Euphrates with your mortar, nothing that you build will stand." Then he offered to supply such water, and for this purpose jovirneyed through the East as a cooper, and returned with water from the Euphrates in wine-casks. The builders mi.xed this water with the mortar and built new sult of the





corrected).

Of

the

many

writings of Ablia

.Alari,

who, according lo his conlemporary, Isaac de Latlcs, wrote commentaries fin the Pentateuch, Job, jjiirts of the Talmud, and Pirkc de-Rabbi Eliezer, as well as works on physics, logic, and metajihysics, merelj' fragments are extant, and these in manuscript only. His commentary on Job is found in sevnot a commentary in but is full of philosophical disquisitions upon the Bililical theodicy. The existence of Job is doubled by Abba Mari. as by some of the Talmudic rabbis (H. B. ITirt). He says that, at any mte. the book bearing his name was not written by .Tob, as soiue authoriJob's four ties in the Talmud admit, but by Closes, friends represent in their personalities four difTerent views of evil in the world. Eli|)liaz, representative of tradition, denies altogether the nality of evil, in agreement with Dout. xxxii. 4. Bildad. on the other hand, does not deny its reality, but holds, as if he had been the loyal disciple of the old rabbis and Motazilites, that God allows the just to suffer here in order to reward them the more in the f ut ure life. Zophar, too, considers evil a reality with the Ascharites, with whom many rabbis agree, he insists on man's ignorance of the divine will, which finite man ought not to investigate. Elihu is of the same opinion as Eliphaz, but with the difference that what Eliphaz accepts as a matter of faith. Elihu demonstrates philosophically. It can thus be seen that Abba Mari was a loyal student of Maimonides. and that, like him. he considered revelation and true philosophy as identical. Whether a philo.soidiical and allegorical commentary on the Song of Songs, in manuscript in the Cambridge and Oxford libraries and ascribed to him, is really hi.s. or should be eral

European

libraries;

it

is

an exegetical or historical

.sense,