Sefer Yetzirah

Ten Numbers, Twenty-Two Letters

First attested
10th centurythe tenth-century manuscripts and commentaries in which the book first surfaces — the Cairo Genizah scroll of the Saadyan recension, the earliest surviving witness; Saadia Gaon's Judeo-Arabic commentary; and Shabbetai Donnolo's Sefer Hakhmoni, a commentary that dates itself twice and differently, to 946 and to 982
Claimed
around 1800 BCEasserted by the book's own closing section, where the Lord of All reveals himself to the patriarch Abraham after he has viewed, understood, carved, hewn and formed — an attribution carried on the title page of Rittangel's Latin edition of 1642, which calls it the book ascribed to Abraham the Patriarch, and still argued for by Aryeh Kaplan in 1997

The claim runs about 2.7 thousand years ahead of the evidence.

Sefer Yetzirah gives Kabbalah the word sefirot but no Tree: at 1:14 its ten are the breath of the living God, breath from breath, water from breath, fire from water and the six directions of space, and J. H. Chajes dates the familiar ten-circle diagram to the fourteenth century onward.

Short enough for each school to read its own doctrine in: philosophy, golem-making, emanation alike.

The shortest Kabbalistic classic, under 2,500 words at its longest, the least securely dated. It opens on thirty-two wondrous paths of wisdom: ten sefirot belimah and twenty-two letters, three mothers, seven doubles, twelve simples. Most scholars place composition between the second and sixth centuries; the late end is argued, Wasserstrom in 1993 for the ninth in an Islamic milieu, Weiss in 2018 for the seventh, among Jews close to Syriac Christianity. Hayman's 2004 critical edition shows why: no single original survives, only Short, Long and Saadyan recensions in manuscripts no earlier than the tenth century — the century of the first commentaries, Saadia Gaon's in Arabic and Donnolo's Sefer Hakhmoni, which dates itself twice, differently. The ten sefirot: the living God's breath, breath from breath, water from breath, fire from water, the six directions — not yet the Tree.

Light

It gave Kabbalah its vocabulary — sefirot, the thirty-two paths, letters as the instruments of formation — open enough that Saadia Gaon read philosophy in it, the Hasidei Ashkenaz a rite for animating a golem, and the Gerona kabbalists a doctrine of emanation.

Shadow

Brevity invites filling in. W. W. Westcott's 1887 Sepher Yetzirah claims translation from the Hebrew; Waite judged it a paraphrase resting on Rittangel's Latin of 1642, and the Thirty-Two Paths of Wisdom printed with it is a late addition, no part of the book.

Sources and verification12 sources · 5 links

Primary source

  • Johannes Stephanus Rittangelius, Liber Iezirah qui Abrahamo Patriarchae adscribitur, 1642, Amsterdam: Ioannem & Iodocum Ianssonios; Hebrew with facing LatinThe bilingual edition through which Sefer Yetzirah reached Christian and later occult readers. Its title ascribes the book to the patriarch Abraham, and it prints alongside the text a commentary on the thirty-two paths of wisdom - the route by which that separate commentary travelled with the book into English occultism.
  • Sefer Yetzirah, Warsaw 1884 printed text, 1884, 1:1-1:2, 1:11, 1:14, 6:4 (Warsaw 1884 text as carried by Sefaria; recensions are numbered differently)1:1 opens with thirty-two wondrous paths of wisdom; 1:2 enumerates them as ten sefirot belimah and twenty-two foundation letters divided into three mothers, seven doubles and twelve simples; 1:11 takes tohu and bohu from Genesis 1:2; 1:14 lists the ten sefirot as the breath of the living God, breath from breath, water from breath, fire from water, and above, below, east, west, north and south; 6:4 has the Lord of All reveal himself to the patriarch Abraham after he has viewed, understood, carved, hewn and formed.

Scholarship

  • Joseph Dan (ed.), trans. Ronald C. Kiener, The Early Kabbalah, 1986, (New York: Paulist Press)What the sefirot meant to the twelfth- and thirteenth-century kabbalists of Provence and Gerona - Isaac the Blind, Ezra and Azriel of Gerona, Nahmanides - before the Zohar: the divine emanations that Sefer Yetzirah's term was later made to carry.
  • Moshe Idel, Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid, 1990, (Albany: State University of New York Press)The golem traditions run from Sefer Yetzirah's account of creation by letter-permutation, through the rituals of the Hasidei Ashkenaz, to the modern legend; and the Maharal of Prague golem story is a nineteenth-century literary creation with no earlier attestation.
  • Steven M. Wasserstrom, "Sefer Yesira and Early Islam: A Reappraisal", Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 3, no. 1, 1993, pp. 1-30The case for locating the composition of Sefer Yesira in the ninth century, within an early Islamic milieu - the late end of the dating spread, against a consensus that had run from the second to the sixth century.
  • A. Peter Hayman, Sefer Yesira: Edition, Translation and Text-Critical Commentary, 2004, Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 104 (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck); synoptic edition of the Short, Long and Saadyan recensions from nineteen manuscripts - six long, three Saadyan, ten short - with four appendices: the attestation of the paragraphs, their order, the earliest recoverable text, and the Long Recension additionsThere is no single original Sefer Yetzirah. It survives in three main recensions - Short, Long and Saadyan - printed synoptically from their earliest manuscripts, which are no earlier than the tenth century; and the earliest recoverable text Hayman prints is his own hypothetical reconstruction, offered as a theoretical exercise rather than a recovered original. Any claim about the text must therefore be recension-specific.
  • Tzahi Weiss, "Sefer Yesirah" and Its Contexts: Other Jewish Voices, 2018, Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press), p. 2Weiss argues that Sefer Yesirah is a rare surviving Jewish treatise written and edited around the seventh century by Jews who were familiar with Syriac Christianity and stood far from the main circles of rabbinic learning.
  • Tzahi Weiss, "The Book of the Formation of the World": Sefer Yesirah and Hilkhot Yesirah, Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 27, no. 2, 2019, pp. 168-179The Babylonian Talmud's tale of an artificial calf at Sanhedrin 65b concerns two sages who dealt with hilkhot yesirah, laws of formation; the use of that phrase to refer to the treatise Sefer Yesirah is attested from the eleventh century, and the connection bears on when the book was edited and how it was received.
  • J. H. Chajes, The Kabbalistic Tree, 2022, (University Park: Penn State University Press)The familiar ten-circle sefirotic diagram is a late, highly variable and datable artefact appearing from the fourteenth century onward, not an ancient fixed emblem.

The tradition itself

  • Aryeh Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah: The Book of Creation in Theory and Practice, rev. edn, 1997, (York Beach: Samuel Weiser)What late-twentieth-century popular and traditionalist Kabbalah teaches about the book: Kaplan works from the Gra-Ari version, blends recensions, reads later material back into the text, and treats the attribution to the patriarch Abraham as serious.

Where this claim originates

Further reading

  • Don Karr, Notes on Editions of Sefer Yetzirah in English, rev. edn, 2019, pp. 1-5 (Matheson Trust PDF)There are three prime recensions - short, long and Saadian - of which even the longest contains something less than 2,500 words; most scholars place composition between the second and sixth centuries, while Wasserstrom makes a case for the ninth within an Islamic milieu and Weiss for the seventh; Westcott's 1887 Sepher Yetzirah, despite a title page claiming translation from the Hebrew, appears wholly dependent on a Latin version, Waite judging it a paraphrase based on Rittangel's text; and the Thirty-two Paths of Wisdom printed with it is a late addition appended in some Latin versions, not part of the book.

Linked entries

  • CorrectsTree of LifeAttested

    The word sefirot and the count of ten come from Sefer Yetzirah; the diagram does not. J. H. Chajes dates the ten-circle tree to the fourteenth century onward, and the tarot and path correspondences drawn on it to Mathers in 1887.

  • Derives fromCreation of the WorldAttested

    Sefer Yetzirah rewrites the creation it quotes, lifting tohu and bohu from Genesis 1:2 at 1:11 while replacing the spoken days with twenty-two letters engraved, hewn and combined.

  • Set againstThe ZoharAttested

    Both hang on an ancient master — Sefer Yetzirah on Abraham, the Zohar on Shimon bar Yochai — and neither turns out to have a single stable original: A. Peter Hayman (2004) shows Sefer Yetzirah survives in distinct recensions, Daniel Abrams (2013) that no one book stands behind the printed Zohar.

  • Gave rise toThe GolemAttested

    The rite is built from that book's letter-permutations — Eleazar of Worms, about 1200, has each limb formed while the alphabets of the 221 gates are recited over it — but the Talmud's own story of Rava names no book at all, and the connection to Sefer Yetzirah there is Rashi's.

  • IncludesGematria and IsopsephyAttested

    Sefer Yetzirah details how God engraved reality using the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

Follow the thread