GAMALIELE I. – ANNATA (v.) of the first generation, patriarch in ca. A.D. 25–50, called the “Elder” to distinguish him from his namesake grandson. He bears the honorific title of rabbàn, the teacher par excellence. In Act. 22, 3 s. Paul says, in his address to the Jews, that he was brought up and instructed at G.’s feet in the exact observance of the law of the fathers, zealous with the same zeal that they all then possessed. According to Act. 5, 30 sgg. the Apostle arouses the anger of the Jews by exalting Jesus. Then one of the council intervenes, a man named G., a Pharisee, a doctor of the Law, honored by all the people, who admonishes his colleagues: “Do not concern yourselves with these men (the Apostles), and let them go; for, if their undertaking is the work of man, it will come to nothing by itself. But if it is from God, you will not be able to destroy it, and you risk fighting against God himself.” The Apostles were beaten and then released. Later hagiography makes G. a saint (Clement, Recogn., I, 65 sgg.).
BIBLI. J. Bornstein, in Eur. Ind., VII, pp. 80-82; H. L. Strack - P. Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament, aus Talmud und Midrasch, II, Monaco 1924, pp. 636-39. Eugenio Zolli
VANCELO DI G. — An apocryphal work in which a pseudo-G. recounts what he claims to have seen and heard while following Jesus.
P. Ladeuze drew attention to it in Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique, 7 (1916), pp. 245–68, with the dissertation Apocryphes évangéliques coptes: pseudo-Gamalei; Evangile de Barthélemy. These are fragments, which E. Revillout published in Cairo in 1904, in Mémoires publiés par les membres de l'Institut français d'archéologie orientale du Caire. There, in fragment 15 (P. Ladeuze, p. 253; E. Revillout, p. 57), one reads: “I, G., the following also amid the crowd.” The text follows the Synoptics principally, but John is also used. Although it has much in common with the Gospel of Bartholomew (v. PO 2, 210), Ladeuze nevertheless concludes: “We therefore believe that we have before us parts of a new Gospel” (p. 267). To this day, however, an edition of this apocryphal work is still lacking. Urbano Holzmeister