Rabbi Joshua ben Levi was one of the great Sages of the third-century Land of Israel, and the Talmud reports that he had a personal acquaintance with the Angel of Death — a rarity even among the righteous. One day the angel came to escort him out of the world.
Joshua ben Levi had one request before he died: "Show me my place in the Garden of Eden."
The Theft at the Wall
The angel agreed. He led the Sage to the wall of Gan Eden and helped him climb up so he could see. But Joshua ben Levi had planned ahead. He had asked for the angel's sword — ostensibly because he was afraid the angel might kill him with it along the way.
Once he was on top of the wall, with the angel's sword in his hand, he jumped inside.
The Angel of Death pleaded from outside. "Come back! You are breaking the order of things."
Joshua ben Levi refused. He had his place in Eden and he was not leaving. Only when a Heavenly voice itself commanded him to return the sword did he agree. He threw it back over the wall — but he himself stayed.
The Letter to Rabban Gamliel
Before the matter was settled, Joshua ben Levi sent word to his colleague Rabban Gamliel, measuring the dimensions of Eden and describing its features. The Ma'aseh Book preserves fragments of that description: the size of the paths, the arrangement of the trees, the location of the separate chambers for different classes of the righteous.
This exempla, drawn from Ketubot 77b and collected by Gaster in 1924, is one of the rare instances in rabbinic literature where a living Sage outmaneuvers the Angel of Death by sheer cleverness. Joshua ben Levi did not fight his death. He negotiated it — and in negotiating it, left behind a map.