R. Eleazar
220 CE–279 CE · Amoraim · Tiberias
R. Eleazar ben Pedat was a second-generation Palestinian Amora of the 3rd century, active primarily in Tiberias. He was a student of R. Johanan and became one of the most prolific contributors to the Jerusalem Talmud. Known for his sharp analytical mind and his refinement of halakhic principles, Eleazar engaged deeply with biblical exegesis and developed novel interpretations of Tannaitic teachings. He was renowned for his humility and his ability to synthesize earlier traditions into coherent legal frameworks. His teachings span nearly every tractate of the Talmud, and he is frequently cited as a voice of authority in Palestinian Jewish law during the later third century.
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TiberiasLand of Israel
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Tiberias in this era
During the mid-to-late third century, Tiberias lay within the Roman Empire under the Severan dynasty and their successors—a period of increasing political fragmentation and military crisis in the broader empire, though the Land of Israel remained under Roman administrative control. The Jewish community of Tiberias was in transition: the Second Temple had fallen nearly 150 years prior, and rabbinic Judaism was consolidating itself as the primary form of Jewish practice and authority, with the city becoming a major center of Talmudic learning and legal debate. The Palestinian Patriarchate (Nasi), the recognized Jewish leadership under Roman sufferance, had ties to Tiberias, making it a hub of oral tradition and halakhic development. R. Eleazar, a prominent Amora of the third generation, was part of this creative ferment—a time when the devastation of the Bar Kokhba war lay in the past, allowing Jewish intellectual life to flourish amid the relative stability of the early Severan period, even as the broader empire began its slow decline.
About Tiberias
Tiberias, on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel, was founded around 20 CE by Herod Antipas and named for the emperor Tiberius. After the Sanhedrin settled there around 220 it became a leading centre of Jewish learning: by tradition beginning with Rabbi Yochanan bar Nappacha, the Jerusalem Talmud took shape there (scholars date its completion to about 400), and the Masoretes of Tiberias later devised the Tiberian vocalisation of Hebrew. After the Muslim conquest around 636 it was the capital of the district of Jund al-Urdunn, and the hadith scholar al-Tabarani was born there in 873. Maimonides was buried in Tiberias, and in 1783 the Hasidic leader Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk moved there from Safed with his followers.
In Tiberias at the same time
Sefer Yetzirah (trad. Avraham Avinu), Chiyya HaGadol, Levi bar Sisi, R. Yochanan, Reish Lakish, Yose bar Chanina
In the same place & time
Sages whose lives overlapped with R. Eleazar’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
In the same tradition
Sefer Yetzirah (trad. Avraham Avinu), Chiyya HaGadol, Levi bar Sisi, R. Yochanan, Reish Lakish, Yose bar Chanina, Shimon bar Abba, Rabbi Ami, Shmuel bar Nachmani, Ulla, Chiyya bar Abba, Yitzchak Nappacha, Yehuda Nesia II, Rabbi Zeira, Rabbi Levi, Rabbi Yose, Shimon bar Pazi, Rabbi Yirmeyah
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with R. Eleazar’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Works
No works attributed in the corpus yet.