HOSHAIAH RABBAH, ROBA, BERABBI or BERIBBI: Palestinian amora of
the first amoraic generation (about 200 Hoshaiah's yeshibah,
also, was for many years located at Sepphoris, where pupils
crowded to hear his lectures. Johanan, one of his greatest
disciples, declared that Hoshaiah in his generation was like R.
Meïr in his: even his colleagues could not always grasp the
profundity of his arguments ('Er. 53a). And the esteem in which
Hoshaiah was held by his pupils may be gaged by the statement
that, even after Johanan had himself become a great scholar and
a famous teacher and no longer needed Hoshaiah's instruction, he
continued visiting the master, who in the meantime had grown old
and had removed his school to Cæsarea (Yer. Sanh. xi.
30b)."Father of the Mishnah." Hoshaiah was called the "father of
the Mishnah," not so much because of his collection and edition
of the mishnayot, as because of the ability with which he
explained and interpreted them (see Yer. Ḳid. i. 60a; Yer. B. Ḳ.
iv. 4c). Hoshaiah's most impor