text · B0042
Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer פרקי דרבי אליעזר
The great narrative midrash — Bereishit and Shemot retold as one continuous story under the name of R' Eliezer ben Hyrcanus. Written centuries after him, in the first generations under Islam, it became a house source for later tradition: Rashi cites it, and the Zohar breathes its air.
I. Who
- Hebrew
- פרקי דרבי אליעזר
- Also known as
- PDRE
- Era
- geonim
II. When
- Traditional
- transmitted under the name of R' Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, the tanna
- Civil (computed)
- 4460–4600 AM · 700–840 CE
- Academic
- composed c. 8th–9th c. CE, after the rise of Islam
- Duration
- ≈140 years
- Precision
- disputed
IV. What
- Language
- Hebrew
- Redaction
- Anonymous, post-Islamic. The work opens with the story of the young R' Eliezer ben Hyrcanus (Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus) leaving his father's fields for Torah, and speaks throughout in his name — a framing the atlas records per the printed letter as the work's own presentation, not as authorship.
- Structure
- Fifty-four chapters of continuous narrative aggadah — creation, the merkavah, the avot, the exodus, and the wilderness — woven with cosmology, calendar reckoning, and chapters that track ritual practice (shofar, milah, havdalah); the received text breaks off before its announced plan completes.
V. How do we know
| Claim | Evidence | Confidence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| The work presents itself as the teaching of R' Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, opening with the story of his youth and attributing its chapters to him throughout; per the atlas's printed-letter policy this self-presentation is recorded as stated — the provenance speaks for itself — and no author edge is drawn to Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus.
The pseudo-attribution call: tradition transmits the work under R' Eliezer's name, but no tradition claims he wrote a book; authored_by is reserved for named-author works, so the ascription lives here as a claim.
|
tradition | ★★★★☆ | |
| Composition is post-Islamic: the work reads the dominion of Yishmael as the final kingdom, names Yishmael's wives Aisha and Fatima, and reflects institutions of the early Islamic centuries — grounds on which scholarship dates it to the 8th–9th century, making it a pseudepigraphic composition rather than a redacted school-corpus. | reconstruction | ★★★★☆ | |
| Its dating debate is layered like Tanchuma's: the narrative frame and Islamic-era horizon are late, but the work transmits much older aggadic and mystical material (merkavah, calendar lore), so scholars distinguish the book's date from its traditions' dates. | reconstruction | ★★★☆☆ |
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