Bar Kappara בר קפרא
Tanna of the transition, wit of Rebbi's court
Bar Kappara stands at the seam of the ages: a disciple of Rabbi Yehuda haNasi, he gathered his own corpus—the "Mishnah of Bar Kappara", an outer Mishnah the Talmud consults where Rebbi's Mishnah is silent. His academy in the south, at Lod, trained the first Amoraim of the Land of Israel—Rabbi Oshaya among its graduates.
At Rebbi's banquet he undertook, for a measure of lentils, to make the stern patriarch laugh with three hundred fox-fables—and the house collapsed with laughter (Nedarim 50b–51a). For his wit he paid: Rebbi never gave him ordination.
And when Rabbi Yehuda haNasi died, it was he who came out to tell the people, and this is what he said: angels and mortals wrestled for the holy ark, and the angels prevailed (Ketubot 104a). These words are known as his.
The sources give no years of life; the window of activity is set by generation, following Aharon Hyman's Toldot Tannaim ve-Amoraim.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Nedarim 50b–51a — three hundred fox-fables at Rebbi's banquet
- Ketubot 104a — his words on the death of Rabbi Yehuda haNasi
Scholarship
- Hyman, Toldot Tannaim ve-Amoraim — the Mishnah of Bar Kappara and the southern academy
Basis: Talmud and midrash.