person · P0075
Rabbi Yehudah ben Bava רבי יהודה בן בבא
Rabbi Yehudah ben Bava is remembered as a halakhic witness and as a martyr who preserved ordination during Roman persecution. The Bavli credits him with preventing the laws of fines from being forgotten by ordaining a new generation of sages. Mishnah Eduyot preserves a cluster of concrete legal testimonies in his name.
I. Who
- Hebrew
- רבי יהודה בן בבא
- Also known as
- Judah ben Bava
- Era
- tannaim
- Generation
- T3
II. When
- Traditional
- c. 3820–3895 AM, dying in the Hadrianic persecutions
- Academic
- fl. early 2nd century CE; traditionally killed during the Hadrianic persecutions after the Bar Kokhba revolt.
- Lifespan (traditional)
- ≈75 years
- Precision
- approximate
V. How do we know
| Claim | Evidence | Confidence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rabbi Yehudah ben Bava testified to five rulings, including permitting a woman to remarry on one witness and accepting forty-day-old wine for altar libation.
Directly stated in the cited source. |
rabbinic | ★★★★★ | |
| The Bavli says that under a Roman decree banning ordination, Yehudah ben Bava ordained five sages between Usha and Shefaram, including Rabbi Meir, Rabbi Yehudah, Rabbi Shimon, Rabbi Yose, and Rabbi Elazar ben Shammua.
Directly stated in the cited source. |
rabbinic | ★★★★★ | |
| When Roman forces discovered them, he ordered the newly ordained sages to flee; because he was old he remained and was pierced by many iron spears.
The martyrdom details are preserved in the Bavli's narrative. |
rabbinic | ★★★★☆ | |
| The Bavli states that without Yehudah ben Bava the laws of fines would have been forgotten from Israel because valid ordination was required to adjudicate them.
Directly stated in the cited source. |
rabbinic | ★★★★★ | |
| He deliberately selected an uninhabited location between two great mountains, between Usha and Shefaram, for the ordination, so that no particular town would incur the decree's collective punishment.
The decree punished any town in which ordination took place; the site choice is explicit in the sugya.
|
rabbinic tradition | ★★★★★ | |
| Rav Avya adds Rabbi Nechemiah to the five sages named as receiving ordination from him.
The base list names five sages; the passage also acknowledges that additional ordaining sages may have been present.
|
rabbinic tradition | ★★★★☆ | |
| The traditional placement c. 3820–3895 AM, dying in the Hadrianic persecutions, is a schematic Mesorah Atlas reconstruction from his ordinations and martyrdom under the Roman ban on semikhah; the cited sources do not state an absolute AM range.
The cited sources establish relative chronology or regnal duration; they do not state the absolute AM range.
|
tradition reconstruction | ★★☆☆☆ | |
| His own ordination is nowhere narrated; the atlas's attested flag rests on the sugya presenting his ordinations as valid links in the judicial chain — only an ordained judge could ordain, and without his act "the laws of fines would have been forgotten from Israel." The semicha edges of the five (and, per Rav Avya, Rabbi Nechemiah) are drawn to him on their files. | rabbinic reconstruction | ★★★★☆ |