Sefer Yetzirah (Hebrew: סֵפֶר יְצִירָה Sēp̄er Yəṣīrā, Book of Formation, or Book of Creation) is a work of Jewish mysticism. Early commentaries, such as the Kuzari, treated it as a treatise on mathematical and linguistic theory, as opposed to one about Kabbalah. The word Yetzirah is more literally translated as "Formation", the word B'riah being used for "Creation". The book is traditionally ascribed to the patriarch Abraham, although others attribute its writing to Rabbi Akiva or Adam. Modern scholars have not reached consensus on the question of its origins. According to Saadia Gaon, the objective of the book's author was to convey in writing how the things of our universe came into existence. Conversely, Judah Halevi asserts that the main objective of the book, with its various examples, is to give humans the means to understand the unity and omnipotence of God, which appear multiform on the one hand, and yet, are uniform. The famous opening words of the book are as follows:
By thirty-two mysterious paths of wisdom Yah has engraved [all things], [who is] the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, the living God, the Almighty God, He that is uplifted and exalted, He that Dwells forever, and whose Name is holy; having created His world by three [derivatives] of [the Hebrew root-word] sefar : namely, sefer (a book), sefor (a count) and sippur (a story), along with ten calibrations of empty space and twenty-two letters [of the Hebrew alphabet], [of which] three are principal [letters] (i.e. א מ ש), seven are double-sounding [consonants] (i.e. בג"ד כפר"ת) and twelve are ordinary [letters] (i.e. ה ו ז ח ט י ל נ ס ע צ ק).
Origin A cryptic story in the Babylonian Talmud states,
On the eve of every Shabbat, Rav Hanina and Rav Hoshaiah would sit and engage in study of Sefer Yetzirah, and create a delicious calf and eat it. According to modern historians, the origin of the text is unknown, and hotly debated. Some scholars believe it might have an early medieval origin, while others cite earlier traditions appearing in the book. Most contemporary scholars date the text's authorship to the Talmudic period. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, the essential elements of the book are characteristic of the 3rd or 4th century; for a work of this nature, composed in the Geonic period, could have been cast only in the form of Jewish gnosis, which remained stationary after the 4th century, if indeed it had not already become extinct. The historical origin of the Sefer Yetzirah was placed by Richard August Reitzenstein in the 2nd century BCE. According to Christopher P. Benton, the Hebrew grammatical form places its origin closer to the period of the Mishnah, around the 2nd century CE. The division of the letters into the three classes of vowels, mutes, and sonants also appears in Hellenic texts. The date and origin of the book cannot be definitely determined as long as there is no critical text of it. The editio princeps (Mantua, 1562) contains two recensions, which were used in the main by the commentators of the book as early as the middle of the 10th century. The shorter version (Mantua I.) was annotated by Dunash ibn Tamim or by Jacob ben Nissim, while Saadia Gaon and Shabbethai Donnolo wrote commentaries on the longer recension (Mantua II.). The shorter version was also used by most of the later commentators, such as Judah ben Barzillai and Nachmanides, and it was, therefore, published in the ordinary editions. The longer recension, on the other hand, was little known, the form given in the editio princeps of the Sefer Yetzirah being probably a copy of the text found in Donnolo's commentary. In addition to these two principal recensions of the text, both versions contain a number of variant readings that have not yet been examined critically. As regards the relation of the two recensions, it may be said that the longer form contains entire paragraphs which are not found in the shorter, while the divergent arrangement of the material often modifies the meaning essentially. Although the longer recension doubtless contains additions and interpolations which did not form part of the original text, it has many valuable readings which seem older and better than the corresponding passages in the shorter version, so that a critical edition of the text must consider both recensions.
Legendary origin Mystics assert that the biblical patriarch Abraham used the same method to create the calf prepared for the three angels who foretold Sarah's pregnancy in the biblical account at Genesis 18:7. All the miraculous creations attributed to other rabbis of the Talmudic era are ascribed by rabbinic commentators to the use of the same book. Sefer Yetzirah's appendix (6:15) declares that Abraham was the recipient of the divine revelation of mystic lore; so that the rabbis of the classical rabbinic era and philosophers such as Shabbethai Donnolo and Judah HaLevi never doubted that Abraham was the author of the book. In Pardes Rimonim, Moses ben Jacob Cordovero (Ramak) mentions a minority opinion that Rabbi Akiva authored it, and takes it to mean that Abraham wrote it and Akiva redacted it to its current form. Jewish Lore attributes the Kabbalah to Adam, and holds that "[f]rom Adam it passed over to Noah, and then to Abraham, the friend of God." In a manuscript in the British Museum, the Sefer Yetzirah is called the Hilkhot Yetzirah and declared to be esoteric lore not accessible to anyone but the truly pious.
Manuscripts
The Sefer Yetzirah exists in many manuscripts, generally falling in categories known as:
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