Seder Olam Rabbah


Seder Olam Rabbah is a 2nd-century CE Hebrew language chronology detailing the dates of biblical events from the Creation to Alexander the Great's conquest of Persia. It adds no stories beyond what is in the biblical text, and addresses such questions as the age of Isaac at his binding and the number of years that Joshua led the Israelites. Tradition considers it to have been written about 160 CE by Yose ben Halafta, but it was probably also supplemented and edited at a later period.

Name

In the Babylonian Talmud this chronicle is several times referred to simply as "Seder Olam", and it is quoted as such by the more ancient Biblical commentators, including Rashi. But starting in the 12th century, it began to be designated as "Seder Olam Rabbah" to distinguish it from a later, smaller chronicle, Seder Olam Zuṭa; it was first so designated by Abraham ben Nathan Ha-Yarhi.

Structure

In its present form, Seder Olam Rabbah consists of 30 chapters, each 10 chapters forming a section or "gate."
The work is a chronological record, extending from Adam to the revolt of Bar Kokba in the reign of Hadrian, the Persian period being compressed into 52 years. The chronicle is complete only up to the time of Alexander the Great; the period from Alexander to Hadrian occupies a very small portion of the work—the end of the 30th chapter.
It has been concluded, therefore, that originally Seder Olam was more extensive and consisted of two parts, the second of which, dealing with the post-Alexandrian period, has been lost, with the exception of a small fragment that was added by the copyists to the first part.
Many passages quoted in the Talmud are missing in the edition of Seder Olam which has survived.

Methodology

The author probably designed the work for calendrical purposes, to determine the era of the creation; his system, adopted as early as the 3rd century, is still followed. Adhering closely to the Pharisaic interpretations of Bible texts, he endeavored not only to elucidate many passages, but also to determine certain dates which are not indicated in the Bible, but which may be inferred by calculation.
In many cases, however, he gave the dates according to tradition, and inserted, besides, the sayings and halakhot of preceding rabbis and of his contemporaries. In discussing Biblical chronology he followed three principles:
  1. To assume that the intention of the Biblical author was, wherever possible, to give exact dates
  2. To assign to each of a series of events the shortest possible duration of time, where necessary, in order to secure agreement with the Biblical text
  3. To adopt the lesser of two possible numbers.
The application of these principles would obviously have had the effect of compressing the Biblical chronology. The following examples will illustrate the manner in which these principles are applied.

Details of chronology

Genesis to the period of the Judges

According to Genesis, the confusion of languages took place in the days of Peleg. Seder Olam attempts to identify when exactly in Peleg's life this occurred. It concludes that the first year of Peleg's life cannot be meant ; nor could it have occurred during the middle years of his life. The Bible must therefore mean that the confusion of languages took place in the last year of Peleg's life, which occurred 340 years after the Flood, or 1996 years after the creation of the world.
After dealing in the first 10 chapters with the chronology of the period from the creation of the world to the death of Moses, the writer proceeds to determine the dates of the events which occurred after the Israelites, led by Joshua, entered the Holy Land. Here Biblical chronology presents many difficulties, dates not being clearly given, and in many cases Seder Olam was used by later Biblical commentators as a basis of exegesis. It is known that from the entry of the Israelites into the Holy Land to the time of Jephthah a period of 300 years elapsed. By computing the life periods of the Judges and assuming that Jephthah sent his message in the second year of his rule, Seder Olam concludes that the reign of Joshua lasted 28 years. The work places two events in the Book of Judges whose date is unclear in the time of Othniel.
I Kings states that Solomon began to build the Temple in Jerusalem in the fourth year of his reign, 480 years after the Exodus, that is, 440 years after the Israelites entered the Holy Land. Thus 140 years passed from the second year of Jephthah to the building of the Temple. Seder Olam concludes that the forty years during which the Israelites were harassed by the Philistines did not begin after the death of Abdon, as it would seem, but after that of Jephthah, and terminated with the death of Samson. Consequently, there was a period of 83 years from the second year of Jephthah to the death of Eli, who ruled 40 years, the last year of Samson being the first of Eli's judgeship. At that time the Tabernacle was removed from Shiloh, whither it had been transferred from Gilgal, where it had been for 14 years under Joshua; consequently it remained at Shiloh for a period of 369 years, standing all that time on a stone foundation. It is also to be concluded that Samuel judged Israel for 11 years, which with the two years of Saul, the 40 of David's reign, and the four of Solomon's reign, make 57 years, during which the Tabernacle was first at Nob, then at Gibeon.

Period of the monarchy

The chronology of the Kings was more difficult, as there were differences to reconcile between the book of Kings and book of Chronicles. Here especially the author applied the principle of "fragments of years", by which he regarded the remainder of the last year of any king's reign as identical with the first year of his successor's. In chapter 20, which closes the second part, the author deals with the forty-eight prophets that flourished in the land of Israel. Beginning with Joshua, the author reviews the whole prophetic period which terminated with Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, elucidating as he proceeds many obscure points. Thus, the prophet mentioned in Judges 6:8 was, according to Seder Olam, Phinehas, and the man of God that came to Eli was Elkanah.
According to Seder Olam, the prophecy of Obadiah occurred in the time of Amaziah and those of Joel, Nahum, and Habakkuk in the reign of Manasseh. After devoting the 21st chapter to the prophets that lived before the conquest of the land, to the seven prophetesses, and to the seven prophets of the Gentiles, Seder Olam resumes the chronology of the Kings. This continues until the end of chapter 27, where it is calculated that the destruction of the Temple occurred after it had existed 410 years, or 3,338 years after the creation of the world.

Second Temple and post-destruction period

Then follow the 70 years of the Captivity and the 420 years of the Second Temple, which was destroyed, as may be seen, in the year 3828 of the Creation. The 420 years of the Second Temple are divided into the following periods: 34 years of Persian rule while the Temple stood; 180 years of the Greeks; 103 years of the Maccabees; 103 years of the Herods. The allowance of only 34 years for the Persian domination is necessary to make the chronology agree with the Pharisaic Talmudical interpretation, that the second exile was to take place after 70 Sabbaths of years from an "issuing forth of a word" to rebuild Jerusalem. If from this period of 490 years the 70 years of the first Captivity is deducted, and the beginning of Alexander's control of the Land of Israel is placed at 386 years before the destruction of the Second Temple, then there remain only 34 for the Persian rule.
Alternatively, what seems to be a historical inaccuracy in Seder Olam has been explained in a different way. According to Rashi, the 34-year Persian period is the time span between the building of the Second Temple under Darius II in 352 BCE and Alexander the Great's rise to power in 318 BCE. This timeframe, therefore, does not signify the end of the dynasties in Persia, but rather of their rule and hegemony over Israel before Alexander the Great rose to power. Likewise, the period of Herodian rule over Israel, namely, 103 years, refers merely to its hegemony over Israel while the Temple was still standing. The beginning of this period is reckoned during Herod the Great's reign in 35 BCE and ends in 68 CE with the destruction of the Second Temple.
From the destruction of the Second Temple, which occurred at the end of the last week of a Sabbatical year, to the suppression of the Bar Kochba revolt is given as a period of 52 years. But the text here is very confused and has given rise to various emendations and interpretations, as the historical date for the destruction of the Second Temple is 70 CE and that for the conclusion of the Bar Kochba revolt is 135 CE.

Authorship

Assuming that this "Seder Olam" is the same as the "Seder Olam" mentioned in the Talmud, Jewish authorities generally ascribe its authorship to the well-known Talmudist Jose b. Halafta, on the strength of R. Johanan's statement, "The tanna of Seder Olam was R. Jose". Johanan's comment is supported by the fact that Jose was known as one who occupied himself with Jewish chronology; further, many sayings of R. Jose's quoted in the Talmud are paralleled in Seder Olam.
However, Ratner objected that Seder Olam often conflicts with opinions of Jose's expressed in the Talmud, that Jose is referred to in it in the third person, and finally that mention is made in it of Talmudists that lived later than Jose. For these reasons, he concluded that Jose was not its author; he thinks that Jose was only the principal authority of Seder Olam, and that Johanan's statement, mentioned above, is similar to another statement made by him—"Any anonymous opinion in the Mishnah belongs to Rabbi Meir", although the redactor of the Mishnah was Judah I. Ratner further supposes that R. Johanan himself compiled the work, following generally the opinion of R. Jose. He endeavors to prove this view by showing that many utterances of R. Johanan are taken from Seder Olam.
Ratner's objections, however, are answered by other scholars, who think that in Seder Olam Jose preserved the generally accepted opinions, even when they were contrary to his own, as is clearly indicated in Niddah 46b. Besides, this work, like all the works of the ancient Talmudists, underwent many alternations at the hands of the copyists. Very often, too, finding that the utterance of a later rabbi agreed with Seder Olam, the copyists inserted the name of that rabbi. A careful examination shows that certain additions are later than the latest midrashim, and it may be that Abraham ibn Yarḥi, Isaac Lattes, and Menahem Meïri, who seem to place the redaction of Seder Olam at the time when the Massektot Derek Ereẓ Rabbah, the Derek Ereẓ Zuṭa, the Soferim, and other later treatises were composed, may have referred to the work in its present form.

Usage in later rabbinic texts

Besides directly quoting Seder Olam, the Talmud often alludes to it. A passage in Seder Olam describing the 420 years of four hegemonic powers appears almost verbatim in the Babylonian Talmud. Often, the phrases "tanya", "tana", "tanu rabbanan", and "amar mar" introduce sentences also found in Seder Olam. In addition, many of its passages have been taken into the Mishnah without any allusion to their source. Seder Olam is not mentioned in the Jerusalem Talmud, although several passages in the latter are based on it. Finally, many of the sayings of Seder Olam have been taken into the Mekhilta, the Sifra, and the Sifre.

Editions

The current Hebrew calendar year numbering system, which counts years from the creation, has been in use for more than 1000 years. The year numbering system was adopted sometime before 3925 Anno Mundi, and based on the calculation of Rabbi Yose ben Halafta during about 160 CE in the book Seder Olam Rabbah.
The year numbers are based on the computations of dates and periods found in the Hebrew Bible. In Jewish tradition, "Year 1" is considered to have begun on the 25 of Elul, 6 days before the beginning of "Year 2" on the first of Tishrei, when Adam was created. The new moon of its first month is designated molad tohu. By Halafta's calculation Adam was created during the year 3761 BCE. However, Seder Olam Rabbah treats the creation of Adam as the beginning of "Year Zero". This results in a two-year discrepancy between the years given in Seder Olam Rabbah and the Jewish year used now. For example, Seder Olam Rabbah gives the year of the Exodus from Egypt as 2448 AM; but, according to the current system, the year would be 2450 AM.
Despite the computations by Yose ben Halafta, confusion persisted for a long time as to how the calculations should be applied. During 1000, for example, the Muslim chronologist al-Biruni noted that three different epochs were used by various Jewish communities being one, two, or three years later than the modern epoch. The epoch seems to have been settled by 1178, when Maimonides, in his work Mishneh Torah, described all of the modern rules of the Hebrew calendar, including the modern epochal year. His work has been accepted by Jews as definitive, though it does not correspond to the scientific calculations. For example, the Jewish year for the destruction of the First Temple has traditionally been given as 3338 AM or 421/2 BCE. This differs from the modern scientific year, which is usually expressed using the Proleptic Julian calendar as 587 BCE. The scientific date takes into account evidence from the ancient Babylonian calendar and its astronomical observations. So, too, according to Jewish computation, the destruction of the Second Temple occurred in the lunar month of Av in anno 68 CE, rather than in 70 CE. In this and related cases, a difference between the traditional Jewish year and a scientific date in a Gregorian year or in a proleptic Julian calendar date results from a disagreement about when the event happened—and not simply a difference between the Jewish and Gregorian calendars.
In Jewish thought the counting is usually considered to be to the creation of the world, as has been emphasized in many ancient texts dealing with creation chronology that the six days of creation till man are literal days—including the days before the creation of the sun and earth. However, some understand these days metaphorically.
The modern epoch year is set at 3761 BCE, taking into account that there is no year zero in the Julian year count.
However Rav Saadiah Gaon and Rav Hai Gaon note that the years dated to creation cited in the Talmud and in Seder Olam are 1 year off from the modern Hebrew calendar. While the modern Hebrew calendar's Year 1 is from the 25th of Elul in the Year of Chaos, the Talmud and Seder Olam's Year 1 is from the 1 Tishrei - the creation of Adam. Thus Year 1 in the Talmud and Seder Olam is actually Year 2 in today's Hebrew Calendar.
Therefore, when calculating to the year of creation from Seder Olam, Taking into account the 1 year mentioned above; as well as the fact that there is no year "0", as the year before 1 CE is 1 BCE, not 0, we arrive at the number 3760 BCE as the Year 1 of the modern Hebrew calendar.