Yet another guest post by Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace.
Gamaliel was a prominent Pharisee of the New Testament. The Acts of the Apostles reports (5:34) how his voice of reason prevented the Sanhedrin from urging the death penalty on Peter and the Apostles in the first days of the church: “Men of Israel, consider carefully what you intend to do “¦ leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop then; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.” The effect was somewhat successful—the Apostles were flogged, but their lives were spared—and Peter and his friends lived to preach another day.
Gamaliel’s earlier influence was on Paul, who boasted (Acts 22:3) “Under Gamaliel I was thoroughly trained in the law of our fathers and was just as zealous for God as any of you are today.” Indeed Gamaliel is still widely revered by the Jews as one of their greatest teachers. In the Talmud he is known as Rabban, the first leader of the school of Hillel, who is famous for a saying close to that of Jesus on law (Matthew 22:36) “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow; that is the whole Law: the rest is commentary.”
Byzantium tradition suggests that Gamaliel was baptized, along with Nicodemus, by Peter and Paul. Not surprisingly, the Jewish tradition says otherwise.
More recently, Gamaliel was the middle name of our 29th President, Warren G. Harding. Although no-one “Ëœmisunderestimated’ him, and he won the 1920 election by a substantial majority, he was not a lucid speaker. He introduced some new words into our lexicon, the most famous being “Ëœnormalcy’, but was often so opaque that journalist H.L. Mencken invented the word “Gamalielese” to describe it: “Ëœ[Harding] writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it”¦”
The Gamaliel of the New Testament certainly deserved better.
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COMMENTS / 7 COMMENTS
von Kaufman-Turkestansky added these pithy words on 18 Oct 06 at 12:48 pmI guess the alternative would have been to coin the term “Warrenish” to describle Harding’s English; that might have been a disaster for Canadian mandarin Warren Kinsella:
http://www.warrenkinsella.com/index.htm
von Kaufman-Turkestansky added these pithy words on 18 Oct 06 at 12:53 pmWow. I just looked at the Warren Kinsella link (sorry, there’s an HTML tag messing it up, mea culpa again). http://www.warrenkinsella.com
sembawang squid added these pithy words on 18 Oct 06 at 2:42 pmAlways good to read a Mencken barb. I can barely imagine his reaction were he to see what’s going on today…
J.Kende added these pithy words on 18 Oct 06 at 3:58 pm“What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow; that is the whole Law: the rest is commentary.”Â?
You left out the most important part: ...”Now go study.”
The entire saying is the response to an absurd request to Hillel asking that he sum up all of Judaism while hopping on one foot.
Lexington Green added these pithy words on 18 Oct 06 at 10:11 pmMencken cannot be taken as an accurate critic of anybody. He had nothing good to say about any politician in his day. He despised Harding, Coolidge, Hoover and FDR. They weren’t all idiots. In fact, none of them were idiots. Here is Harding’s inaugural address. Not our modern style, but not all that bad either.
Mencken was a smug egotist. People who actually had to go about the business of running things should given a more fair assessment than the amusing but vicious barbs from Mencken.
Curzon added these pithy words on 19 Oct 06 at 1:03 amLex: Well said. He was as foul a commenter as there was in those days, his saving grace only being that he added some wit to his barbs, for which he is remembered today.
Lexington Green added these pithy words on 19 Oct 06 at 4:00 amCurzon, the wit is the thing. He IS funny, and that is why, as you say, we still remember him.
But we need to look at the presidencies of the 20s a little more carefully. Mencken’s clever barbs have framed our understanding of those times for too long. Paul Johnson (and here) may overpraise Harding, Coolidge and Hoover, but it is good to see a countervailing assessment of these GOP presidents, if only for balance.
BTW, the discussion of Gamaliel in this post is excellent, and I had never seen all these elements tied together. The passage where Gamaliel talks the elders out of killing Peter, in Acts, is one of the best examples of prudent decisionmaking there is.
