Shalshelet HaKabbalah—the chronicle of Gedaliah ibn Yahya שלשלת הקבלה לר' גדליה אבן יחיא
A chronicle from Moses to 5347, printed in Venice in the year of its author's death. Gathered amid wanderings and expulsions—and it is judged by that.
Printed in Venice in 5347; afterwards reprinted in Kraków (5356), Amsterdam (5457), Zolkiev (5562 and 5564), Polonnoye (5574) and Lemberg (5622).
The book covers the history and genealogy of the Jews from Moses to the author's own time, and besides that the order of the heavenly bodies, the creation of the world, the soul, and the history of the peoples among whom the Jews lived.
On its reliability. Later scholars found errors in it and explained them by circumstance: the author lived on the move, without his own library, working from memory and from other men's copies. It can be used, but with checking.
Not to be confused. Shalshelet HaKabbalah exists in this reference work also as a concept—the chain of transmission of the Torah from Sinai. This is not that. This is a book called by the same words.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- Shalshelet HaKabbalah, Venice 5347 — the first edition and the make-up of the book
Scholarship
- Encyclopaedia Judaica, “Ibn Yahya, Gedaliah” — the reprints and the assessment of reliability
Basis: documents and evidence.