Ben Bag Bag

According to various sources, Ben Bag Bag ( Ben Bag-Bag , with full name allegedly Jochanan ben Bag Bag ) is said to have been a Tannaite in the first century AD.

In the Mishnah Avot (chap. V.) two similar sayings to the Hillelite ( attributed by ARN , chap. XII., Hillel himself) are cited (one from Ben Bag Bag, the second from an alleged "Ben He He").

Possibly. is a person who used two different pseudonyms. Perhaps both (or one of them) were Hillel students; some see him as the famous proselyte whom Hillel convinced of the truth of tradition.

One particular speculation related to the importance of the Hebrew alphabet can be found in bSabb. 31a. Various gematrical considerations (numerical value "He" = "Bag") are also made and the conclusion drawn from this is that Bag Bag and He He are one and the same person.

The best-known saying of the Ben Bag Bag is (Avot V., 26):

Turn it [the Torah ] back and forth, for everything is in it ...

(according to the commentary in the Bamberger-Awot edition, Goldschmidt, Basel 2003, page 122, on the spot: " Turn it back and forth ; keep busy with the written and oral teaching and do not think that with the one after the preceding Mishnah in the eighteenth At the end of the year of the establishment of one's own household and the earthly worries connected with it, the moral learning is allowed to cease. For everything is in it ; it contains everything and is the inexhaustible source of the good, useful and truth in spiritual and physical relation "). - In fact, the opinion prevailed and still prevails in isolated Jewish groups today that if not the Torah, then at least the Talmud contains everything (in religious and even secular terms), so that additional reading of other scriptures is superfluous (according to some even prohibited). The above quotation is also cited to prove the correctness of this view.

Ben He He formally closes the tract Aboth with his saying:

The reward is according to the measure of the effort

(= The wages are determined according to the effort that is made, not according to the actual achievement of the goals).

literature

• Mishnah Shabbat b Fig. 31a
• Aboth , V., 26-27
• Juchassin , Amsterdam 1717, pp. 36, 39
• Wilhelm Bacher : Agada of the Tannaites , 1884–1890, Volume I., 8 ff.
• Aaron Hyman : Toledot ... , 1901 ff., Seder Tannaim I. sv
• Marcus Jastrow , Wilhelm Bacher :  Ben Bag-Bag. In: Isidore Singer (Ed.): Jewish Encyclopedia . Funk and Wagnalls, New York 1901-1906., Volume II., 673
• Herlitz / Kirschner: Jüdisches Lexikon , Berlin 1927, Volume I., Sp. 811–812
• Aboth commentary by S. Bamberger: פרקי אבות, Victor Goldschmidt, Basel 2003, pp. 122–123