ABBAHU, RABBI. - Palestinian scholar of the "college of doctors of Caesarea," who lived at the end of the 3rd and beginning of the 4th century.
He established the system still in use for the sounds of the shofar on the Day of Atonement. A halakhist and aggadist, orator, mathematician, and scholar of Greek, he enjoyed esteem among the Roman authorities with whom he intervened to improve the lot of his coreligionists. Following his relations with the Romans, he engaged in disputes against Christians, opposing (Palestinian Talmud, Ta'anith, II, 65, 59) the divinity of Christ, the doctrine of the Trinity, and the Ascension.
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. Grätz, 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 ff. (cf. pp. 96 ff.). Eugenio Zolli