Answer-layer measurement · by subject
The Heikhalot and the palace ascent
A handful of reference works carry most of it, with en.wikipedia.org the most frequent at 3 of 34 links, and no single source dominating.
Perplexity · captured 2026-09-21 · 34 links · 23 domains
6 of 34 links went to a primary-text library, against 8 to encyclopedias and reference works.
4 of 34 links came from forums, blogs or document uploads.
Hekhal appeared in 1 of 2, via https://hekhal.org/texts/bavli-hagigah-14b-pardes-targum/.
Why this subject looks like this
The Heikhalot material is not one book. It is a loose family of texts about ascent through celestial palaces, surviving in manuscripts that disagree with each other, much of it untranslated into English and what is translated often sitting behind an academic paywall. The pardes story is the exception that proves the pattern: a short, famous passage that appears in four different recensions, and the interesting thing about it is precisely how those versions differ. An assistant asked about it can reach summaries easily and the recension field almost not at all, which is why the answers describe the story rather than showing where the witnesses part company.
The questions, and what each one returned
what are the Heikhalot texts
17 links · 13 domains · largest single source britannica.com at 12%
britannica.com (2), jewishencyclopedia.com (2), en.wikipedia.org (2), scribd.com (2), academia.edu, brill.com, britishacademy.universitypressscholarship.com, journals.sagepub.com, jstor.org, mohrsiebeck.com, myjewishlearning.com, shwep.net, wikiwand.com.
Composition: encyclopedia or reference work 7, journal, press or university 6, forum, blog or upload 2, other site 2. Absent entirely: primary-text library.
what happens in the four who entered the pardes story
17 links · 12 domains · largest single source thelehrhaus.com at 18%
thelehrhaus.com (3), voices.sefaria.org (3), sefaria.org (2), blogs.timesofisrael.com, en.wikipedia.org, hekhal.org, jewishmythology.com, judaism.stackexchange.com, myjewishlearning.com, recustom.com, sixthstreetsynagogue.org, yutorah.org.
Composition: other site 8, primary-text library 6, forum, blog or upload 2, encyclopedia or reference work 1. Absent entirely: journal, press or university.
The sources that appeared exactly once here
academia.edu, blogs.timesofisrael.com, brill.com, britishacademy.universitypressscholarship.com, hekhal.org, jewishmythology.com, journals.sagepub.com, jstor.org, judaism.stackexchange.com, mohrsiebeck.com, recustom.com, shwep.net, sixthstreetsynagogue.org, wikiwand.com, yutorah.org.
15 of the 23 domains on this subject appeared a single time. On a subject whose primary texts are old, multilingual and largely out of copyright, that is the space an accessible edition is competing for.
Every source that answered
- Encyclopedia or reference work · 8
- Forum, blog or upload · 4
- Journal, press or university · 6
- Other site · 10
- Primary-text library · 6
What Hekhal publishes on this subject
Free to read, openly licensed, and free to assign. Every edition shows the language it was rendered from and names the edition it rests on.
- The Heikhalot corpus
- Bavli Hagigah 14b, the pardes passage
- Tosefta Hagigah 2, the same passage
- Yerushalmi Hagigah 2:1
What this does not show
Method and raw data: protocol.json · the capture, both CC-BY 4.0. Run it on an engine we did not and send the file; reruns are published beside this one, not merged into it.