בן בג בג

Ben Bag Bag [Avot 5:12] is Rabbi Yochanan ben Bag Bag. When they presented their words before their teacher and agreed upon them, they wrote as his name was then, Ben Bag Bag, son of HaHa, son of Zakai. [And in Ediyot, Rabbi Papias disagrees with Rabbi Yochanan.] And in the first chapter of Kiddushin [(10b) and in the Jerusalem Talmud, chapter "Aph Al Pi," halacha 4, and in the Sifrei, parashat Korach, section "And HaShem spoke to Aharon."] In Tosefta, chapter 5 of Ketubot, Yochanan ben Bag Bag sent to Rabbi Yehuda ben Beteira in Nazivin that a betrothed daughter of Israel to a Cohen is forbidden to eat terumah, and he said to him, "Rabbi Yochanan ben Bag Bag, I know that you are knowledgeable in the depths of Torah." [In Eruvin (27b), Rabbi Yochanan said, "Whoever translates for me in the morning according to the opinion of Ben Bag Bag, I will bring him from my vessel to the house of the feast" (Pesachim 96a).

Ben Bag Bag] I have heard that he himself is the son of HaHa [(see there)], but the Rambam counts him among the two. [And so it appears in Tosafot, Chagigah, first chapter, that Ben Bag Bag and Ben HaHa were the sons of converts (see there) and they did not write that he was the son of converts.] And so in the sixth chapter of Avot, Ben Bag Bag says, "Ben HaHa says," it seems that they are two. [Ben Bag Bag, son of a convert, son of a convert (Sefer HaMe'ari).] The Rambam said that he is from the group of Hillel and Shammai and did not see the destruction, and I do not know. [And it seems that it is impossible that he was in the days of Hillel and Shammai, for he disagrees with Rabbi Papias, who was in the time of Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua and after the destruction (see there).]