Seder Olam Rabbah - Structure

Structure

In its present form the 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 (Stack & Stemberger 1991). 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 the 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 the Seder Olam which has survived.

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Famous quotes containing the word structure:

    “Vashtar: So it’s finished. A structure to house one man and the greatest treasure of all time.
    Senta: And a structure that will last for all time.
    Vashtar: Only history will tell that.
    Senta: Sire, will he not be remembered?
    Vashtar: Yes, he’ll be remembered. The pyramid’ll keep his memory alive. In that he built better than he knew.”
    —William Faulkner (1897–1962)

    “There is no such thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed. There is therefore no such thing to be learned, mastered, or born with. We must give up the idea of a clearly defined shared structure which language-users acquire and then apply to cases.”
    —Donald Davidson (b. 1917)

    “I’m a Sunday School teacher, and I’ve always known that the structure of law is founded on the Christian ethic that you shall love the Lord your God and your neighbor as yourself—a very high and perfect standard. We all know the fallibility of man, and the contentions in society, as described by Reinhold Niebuhr and many others, don’t permit us to achieve perfection.”
    —Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)