Abtalion ( ʾAḇṭalyōn) or Avtalyon (Modern Hebrew) was a rabbinic sage in the early pre-Mishnaic era. He was a leader of the Pharisees during the 1st century BCE, and by tradition the vice-president of the great Sanhedrin of Jerusalem. He lived at the same time as Sh'maya. They are known as one of the zugot ("couples"): Shmaya and Avtalyon. Abtalion lived approximately from 90 BCE - 20 BCE.
Abtalion ( ʾAḇṭalyōn) or Avtalyon (Modern Hebrew) was a rabbinic sage in the early pre-Mishnaic era. He was a leader of the Pharisees during the 1st century BCE, and by tradition the vice-president of the great Sanhedrin of Jerusalem. He lived at the same time as Sh'maya. They are known as one of the zugot ("couples"): Shmaya and Avtalyon. Abtalion lived approximately from 90 BCE - 20 BCE.
==Biography== Abtalion and Shemaiah were converts to Judaism or the descendants of converts; by tradition they were descended from King Sennacherib of Assyria. Despite this, they were influential and beloved. The Talmud relates that once, when the high priest was being escorted home from the Temple by the people, at the close of a Day of Atonement, the crowd deserted him upon the approach of Abtalion and Shemaiah and followed them. However, Graetz has argued that neither Shemaiah nor Abtalion was of Gentile descent, although both were Alexandrians.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).