Seder Olam Rabbah
The oldest Jewish chronology: thirty chapters from the first day of Creation to Betar. The count of this book underlies the whole reference.
Seder Olam Rabbah is the earliest surviving Jewish book on the reckoning of years, and still the principal one. The Talmud ascribes it to Rabbi Yose ben Halafta, a disciple of Rabbi Akiva (Yevamot 82b).
It is built as a continuous count: year by year from Adam through the Flood, the patriarchs, Egypt, the wilderness, the judges, the kings of Judah and Israel, the destruction of the First Temple, the seventy years of exile, the Second Temple, the Greeks, the Hasmoneans, the destruction of the Second Temple—breaking off at Betar. It has thirty chapters in all.
Its decisions entered Jewish life whole. The year from Creation written in a ketubah and on a gravestone is its year. The dates in this reference are its dates. And the famous divergence from academic history of some hundred and sixty-five years is a divergence from this book: the argument turns on the length of Persian rule, which it counts short.
It is not easy reading: the language is compressed to the bone, the arguments rest on collating verses, and a whole chapter may fit in a few lines. The classical commentaries—of the Vilna Gaon and of Rabbi Yaakov Emden—are much of the key to understanding it.
Not to be confused with Seder Olam Zuta, a late and brief list of the exilarchs.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Yevamot 82b — the authorship of Rabbi Yose
- Seder Olam Rabbah, ch. 30 — the count breaks off at the destruction of Betar
Basis: Talmud and midrash.