ABBAḤU, RABBI. - A learned Palestinian Amorite, of the "college of the doctors of Caesarea," who lived at the end of the 3rd century and the beginning of the 4th.
He established the system still in force for the sounds of the buccina on the day of the new year. A halakhist and haggadist, an orator, a mathematician, and a connoisseur of Greek, he enjoyed esteem among the Roman authorities, before whom he intervened to improve the lot of his coreligionists. As a result of his relations with the Romans, he sustained disputes against the Christians, opposing (Palestinian Talmud, Ta'anith, II, 65, 59) the divinity of Christ, the Trinitarian doctrine, and the Ascension.
Bibliography8 works
BIBL.: Z. Frankel, Mēhbā ha-jerāshalmī, Breslau 1870, pp. 580-604; Isaac Hirsch Weiss, Dor dor we-doreshaw, III, Vienna 1883, pp. 103-105; W. Bacher, Agueda der palestinischen Anordn, II, Strasbourg 1896, pp. 88-142; J. Halévy, Dārāt harīthānim, II, Frankfurt a. M. 1901, pp. 350-351; H. Grueta, Geschichte der Juden, IV, Leipzig 1908, pp. 284 ff., 288, 291; A. Hyman, Tāledāt tannāim wa-anarāim, London 1910, pp. 63-71; H. Strack, Jesus, die Häretiker und die Christen nach den ältesten jüdischen Angaben, Leipzig 1910, p. 37; V. Larrañaga, L'Ascension de Notre Seigneur dans le Nouveau Test, Rome 1938, p. 11 f. (cf. p. 96 ff.).
Eugenio Zolli