Gamaliel soon became reconciled with those whom he had offended by his mistaken zeal for uniformity of faith and practice, and was reinstated in his office as president of the Sanhedrin. It must not, however, be supposed that he was an intolerant bigot. The fact that he cultivated Greek literature and that he had free intercourse with both heathen philosophers and Jewish Christians would of itself be a sufficient proof that he was libe ral in his sentiments. He even went so far as tc bathe at Ptolemais in a bath which was adoined with a statue of the beautiful goddess Aphrodite ; and when a philosopher (i. e., a Jewish Christian) asked him how he could. reconcile it with his reli gion, Gamaliel replied that the statue was not to be worshipped bat to adorn the building, as is evi dent from the little regard paid to it, that it had been made for the bath and not the bath for it, and that it would be absurd to be prevented thereby from using the enjoyments of nature (Aboda Zara, iii. 4). The last deed of Gamaliel beautifully illus trates his character. It was customary among the Jews to bury their dead in costly apparel, and to such an extravagant extent was this practised that it became a most serious matter when a burial occurred in a family. Gamaliel ordered in his last will and testament that he should be buried in simple white linen. This had its desired effect, and did away with the obnoxious practice, as no family could henceforth feel it a degradation to have their dead buried in a simple manner when the highest functionary of the Jewish people was interred in such inexpensive shrouds (Kethuboth, 8, b ; Tosifta Nidda, towards the end) ; and the Jews to the present day bury all their dead, high and low, rich and poor, in shrouds made of the same inex pensive white linen. Gamaliel died about A. D. 16,
and though he was buried in the simple manner which he desired, yet so great was the regard in which he was held, that Onkelos, his disciple, and Chaldee translator of the Pentateuch, shewecl him royal honours, and burned at his funeral costly gar ments and furniture to the amount of seventy 7yrian minte ("a run invatm, e., about twenty-one pounds sterling, such a funeral-pile as was raised at the burial of a king (Aboda Zara, a ; Sema choth, c. viii. ; Tosifta Sabbath, c. viii.) This inci dent, as well as several others ascribed to Gamaliel I. in Conybeare and Howson's Life and Epistles of St. Paul (vol. i. p. 61, etc., London 1856), refers to Gamaliel II., comp. Landau, in Frankel's Aro natsehry?, vol. i. p. 273 ff., 323 ff. ; Graetz Ge schichte der yieden, vol. iv. p. 31 rf-, 152 ff. ; Jost, Gesehiehte cies judenthums, vol. ii., Leipzig ISA p. 25 ff., 45 ff. ; Frankel, Hodegetica in illuchnant, Lipsim, 1859, p. 69, ff.—C. D. G.