Hanina bar Hama

Hanina bar Hama (died c. 250) (Hebrew: חנינא בר חמא) was a Jewish Talmudist, halakhist and aggadist frequently quoted in the Babylonian and the Jerusalem Talmud, and in the Midrashim.

It is certain, however, that he spent most of his life in Judea, where he attended for a time the lectures of Bar Kappara and Hiyya the Great[3] and eventually joined the academy of Judah haNasi.

[4] Under Judah, he acquired great stores of practical and theoretical knowledge,[5] and so developed his dialectical powers that once in the heat of debate with his senior and former teacher Hiyya he ventured the assertion that were some law forgotten, he could himself re-establish it by argumentation.

[7] No doubt Hanina would have been early promoted to an honourable office had he not offended the patriarch by an ill-judged exhibition of his own superior familiarity with scriptural phraseology (see Hamnuna of Babylonia).

[8] Hanina modestly declined advancement at the expense of his senior, Epes the Southerner,[9] and even resolved to permit another worthy colleague, Levi ben Sisi, to take precedence.

Efes was the principal of the academy for several years, but Sisi withdrew from the country, at which time Hanina assumed the long-delayed honours.

[16] Hanina had a son, ShibHat or ShikHat, who died young,[17] and another, Hama, who inherited his father's talents and became prominent in his generation.