PAPPOS B. JUDAH:
Haggadist of the first half of the second century; contemporary and fellow prisoner of Akiba. At the time of the persecutions by Hadrian, when it was forbidden to study the Torah, Akiba imperiled his life in order to hold sessions with his pupils. The peaceable Pappos warned him to desist, since they were surrounded by spies; but Akiba demonstrated to him, by the well-known fable of the fox and the fishes, that the fear of death was no reason for deserting the Torah, which was life itself to the Jewish nation. When they afterward met by chance in prison, Pappos said: "It is well with thee, Akiba, who hast been imprisoned for studying the Torah; but wo to Pappos, who has been sentenced for vain, worldly things" (Ber. 61b). A haggadic exegesis by Pappos has been preserved, which interprets Gen. iii. 23 to mean that man is equal to the angels—an explanation which was refuted by Akiba (Gen. R. xxi.).
In Sifra, Beḥuḳḳotai v. (ed. Weiss, p. 111d) Pappos b. Judah is mentioned together with Luliani, and is called "the pride of Israel," although the reading "B. Judah" (
) in this passage is probably due to the confusion of Pappos b. Judah with the Alexandrian Pappos, brother of Luliani.
- Grätz, Gesch. 3d ed. iv. 162, 413;
- Brüll, Einleitung in die Mischna, i. 70;
- Bacher, Ag. Tan. i. 324-327, 2d ed., pp. 317-320.
