Our present mishnah brings us to the colleague of Shemayah, Avtalyon. Josephus, in his book "Antiquities of the Jews" calls this sage 'Pollio'. This could be an attempt to hellenize the Hebrew name 'Avtalyon' (whose provenance is a mystery), since Josephus, of course, was writing in Greek. However, another possibility is that this was indeed the sage's name. The name Pollio sounds Greek, of course, and 'Avtalyon' may be an attempt to adapt the Greek name to Hebrew. We have already seen that there were sages before Shemayah and Avtalyon who had Hellenistic names - Antigonos of Sokho immediately springs to mind.
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But in the case of Avtalyon there may be an even greater reason to make such an assumption - and it is only an assumption. We learn from other sources in the Talmud that both Shemayah and Avtalyon had non-Jewish antecedents. At some stage in the past - and we have no information as to how far back - an ancestor of Avtalyon was a non-Jew who converted to Judaism: it could have been his mother, it could have been his great-grandmother - we just do not know. However, the fact of his non-Jewish antecedents was remembered by the people. (The Gemara [Gittin 57b] says that they were descended from Sennacherib the King of Assyria, who lived some 650 years before them; this does seem rather far-fetched.)
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Despite the fact that in an age when Jewish pedigree was jealously and zealously cherished it was remembered that both Shemayah and Avtalyon did not have such a 'pure' pedigree, nevertheless they were very popular indeed with the people. One story related in the Gemara [Yoma 71b] illustrates this point very neatly. Every year during the Musaf service on Yom Kippur we read how the High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies. Both he and the people sincerely believed that he was taking his life into his own hands by daring to enter the most sacred place which represented God's presence in this world. For this reason, we learn, when he emerged from the ordeal unscathed everybody rejoiced and the High Priest would celebrate.
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On one occasion one High Priest was being escorted home after Yom Kippur by a jubilant crowd of the common people. At a certain intersection the happy procession met up with Shemayah and Avtalyon, who also, presumably, were on their way home after attending the solemnities in the Bet Mikdash. Upon seeing the two sages the crowds deserted the High Priest in order to congregate around the beloved sages. Understandably, the High Priest, left in the lurch in such manner and his elated mood thus completely deflated, was hurt. As he approached the two sages himself he greeted them: "Welcome, you of non-Jewish descent" - thus hinting that his own pedigree went back directly to Aaron the first High Priest. Shemayah and Avtalyon must have been taken aback at this ill-mannered display, but quickly responded by hinting to the High Priest that his words were not only unkind but also against halakhah, which forbids one to remind pious proselytes of their non-Jewish provenance. "Welcome indeed," they said, "be those of non-Jewish descent who act as disciples of Aaron; but can there be a similar welcome for a descendant of Aaron who does not act as a disciple of Aaron?" (As we shall see in Mishnah 12, Aaron was seen as the paradigm of the gentle soul who always tried to tread the path of peace.)
To be continued.