Shimon ben Gamliel I, a Nasi in the Last Years of the Temple

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel I was a tanna descended from Hillel and son of Gamaliel the Elder, who served as Nasi of the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem in the decades before the Temple's destruction. Josephus, the historian who wrote the one substantial contemporary account of his public life, names him as an established political figure in the city by 66 CE, when the Great Revolt against Rome began, and records him working to have Josephus himself removed from his command in Galilee, a direct clash between the two men that gives Shimon ben Gamliel I an unusually concrete historical footprint compared with most tannaim of his generation, whose lives are known chiefly through later rabbinic tradition rather than an independent eyewitness.

He was killed as the revolt against Rome consumed Jerusalem, one of the last acts of his life as securely dated as anything Josephus records about him, placing his death in or around the fall of the city in 70 CE rather than in the more legendary martyrdom accounts later tradition attaches to some of his contemporaries.