Seder Olam is the basic text on which all historical understanding of Jewish tradition in the Talmud is based. This book is a translation with commentary of this classical text, making Seder Olam: The Rabbinic View of Biblical Chronology available to the English speaking public for the first time.
The extensive commentary, by highly regarded scholar Heinrich W. Guggenheimer, explains the detailed arguments that derive a complete and consistent chronology from biblical anecdotal remarks. The text also addresses a number of secondary topics, such as the status of the book of Daniel and negating the value of Daniel for messianic predictions. The commentary shows that in its present form, Seder Olam is a product of the early Babylonian talmudic academics, edited in the first half of the third century C.E.
Since some part of the Seder Olam deals with calendar problems, Dr. Guggenheimer offers an appendix that gives complete instruction for the computation of the Jewish calendar and the conversion of Jewish into civil dates and vice-versa.