"Sefer Yesirah" and Its Contexts. Tzahi Weiss
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the world and had the highest magical abilities.36
It is difficult to decide whether this paragraph belongs to the early version of Sefer Yeṣirah. Nevertheless, throughout the centuries, in the eyes of most readers of Sefer Yeṣirah, this paragraph was not just taken to be integral to Sefer Yeṣirah but was considered its most important paragraph. From a very early stage, because of this paragraph, Sefer Yeṣirah was attributed to Abraham.
How to Place Sefer Yeṣirah in Context
Most of Sefer Yeṣirah concerns the role, status, and function of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet in the creation of the world and in the created world. Although Sefer Yeṣirah begins by declaring that the world was created by “thirty-two wondrous paths of wisdom,” Ithamar Gruenwald has shown that its main interest is in the twenty-two letters of the alphabet and therefore does not mention the ten sefirot after the first chapter.37 The common assumption in Sefer Yeṣirah scholarship has nevertheless been that Sefer Yeṣirah’s approach to the alphabet and its role in the creation of the world is similar to the normative Jewish perception of the Hebrew letters—in other words, the approach of the rabbinic and Hekhalot literatures. Most scholars who have tried to find a context for Sefer Yeṣirah have consequently not given much attention to the issue of the letters and have preferred to focus on two other matters: the origins of the notion of the ten sefirot; and the equivalents between more specific notions or terms in Sefer Yeṣirah and those found in other Jewish and non-Jewish texts of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages.
This book takes a step back to examine the context of Sefer Yeṣirah by considering its approach to the letters, which are, after all, its main interest. I argue that the attitude taken by Sefer Yeṣirah to the role of the Hebrew alphabet is substantially different from that of other Jewish sources. Paying close attention to how Sefer Yeṣirah talks about the letters can open new horizons and can assist in suggesting a context for the book.
In Chapter 1, I will present a panoramic picture of relevant approaches from non-Jewish sources to alphabetic letters in texts from late antiquity to the early Middle Ages. Those sources will later help us contextualize Sefer Yeṣirah.
Chapters 2 and 3 focus on the main role of the alphabet in Sefer Yeṣirah: the creation of the world based on letters. These chapters identify two traditions known to late antiquity that give this sort of account of the creation of the world. One describes the creation of the world from the ineffable name or its letters; the other holds that the world was created by all twenty-two letters of the alphabet. Close scrutiny of these two traditions shows that in rabbinic sources, the dominant notion was that the world was created with the letters of the ineffable name, while in non-Jewish and, especially, in Christian sources, we can find the account of the creation of the world from the twenty-two letters of the alphabet. As the final step of the inquiry in these chapters, I will strengthen the case for Sefer Yeṣirah’s connection to the Christian-Syriac world. There are many good reasons to assume that Sefer Yeṣirah’s writers or editors lived sometime around the seventh century and were deeply familiar with Syriac notions. This conclusion, which relies on concrete and contextual resemblances, should be seen in light of the apparent near-absence of engagement between Syriac Christianity and the rabbinic culture in Babylonia: we have very few examples showing a possible influence of Syriac texts on rabbinic ones.38
How Was Sefer Yeṣirah Understood by Its Early Readers?
Sefer Yeṣirah was accepted into the rabbinic canon in the tenth century. Before the second half of the twelfth century, it had spawned at least four commentaries that can be roughly defined as scientific-philosophical in nature. Nevertheless, in the last three decades, a number of studies dealing with different issues in the history of the reception of Sefer Yeṣirah have all taken the view that even before the last part of the twelfth century, Sefer Yeṣirah was understood as a mystical, mythical, or magical treatise.39
In Chapter 4, I will look at an early and enigmatic time in the history of Sefer Yeṣirah, the unknown period beginning when it was conceived up until the tenth century. I will examine two traces of how Sefer Yeṣirah was understood in the Jewish world. The first is a short gloss inserted into some recensions of Sefer Yeṣirah before the tenth century. A careful reading of this gloss reveals that its author was influenced by the Hekhalot literature and other Jewish myths and read Sefer Yeṣirah in that context. The second trace of a Jewish reception of Sefer Yeṣirah is the well-known ninth-century epistle of Agobard of Lyon, which describes the insolence of the Jews. I suggest that the ninth-century French Jews whom Agobard describes were probably acquainted with the cosmogony of Sefer Yeṣirah, though not necessarily with Sefer Yeṣirah itself, and saw that cosmogony as part of a wider mythical and mystical realm.
Chapter 5 examines sources testifying to how Sefer Yeṣirah was understood between the tenth century and the end of the twelfth century. Central to this chapter is a discussion of a medieval midrash about Sefer Yeṣirah and Ben Sira, preserved in an eleventh-century manuscript and composed between the ninth and the eleventh centuries. This midrash has been discussed in the scholarly literature, but inaccurate dating and insufficient analysis of its contents have prevented scholars from fully understanding its importance in the history of the reception of Sefer Yeṣirah. Sefer Yeṣirah is here described in an unambiguously mythical and magical manner that reflects a common understanding of this treatise at the time. In addition to investigating this lengthy midrash, I will reexamine Rashi’s treatment of Sefer Yeṣirah and argue that he was influenced by this midrash about Sefer Yeṣirah and Ben Sira. Last, I will discuss a short, very popular, and boldly mystical statement that was included in most recensions of Sefer Yeṣirah before the eleventh century.
Should Sefer Yeṣirah Be Considered a Book?
In the first comprehensive commentary on Sefer Yeṣirah, R. Saadya Gaon states that there are several versions of the text and consequently that one of the purposes of his commentary is to determine the correct one.40 Saadya was not alone in noting the textual problems of Sefer Yeṣirah, which were, in fact, discussed by most of its early commentators.41 Indeed, the first three commentaries that were written on Sefer Yeṣirah—by Saadya, Dunash Ibn Tamim, and Shabbetai Donnolo—were written on the basis of different versions of Sefer Yeṣirah. The fact that there are three (or possibly more) main recensions of Sefer Yeṣirah42 raises fundamental issues: What is it exactly that we intend to date when discussing Sefer Yeṣirah? Is it viable to assume that there is one urtext written by a single author whose date needs to be determined? How can we establish the date of a treatise when we cannot reconstruct its earliest version and when there is not even scholarly agreement about the very existence of such an original?
Daniel Abrams, in his extensive and comprehensive study about kabbalistic manuscripts and textual theory, suggests an original path to investigate Sefer Yeṣirah. According to Abrams, since it is essentially impossible to reconstruct Sefer Yeṣirah’s urtext and since there are great differences between the manuscripts of this composition, Sefer Yeṣirah scholarship should focus on more valid evidence: the manuscripts themselves. He says, in other words, that there is no Sefer Yeṣirah (Book of Formation) but rather Sifrei Yeṣirah (Books of Formation) and therefore instead of trying in vain to establish the “original” Sefer Yeṣirah, one should trace the history of Sefer Yeṣirah’s acceptance and the ways that this fluid text had been modified over the years by its medieval commentators. Each recension reflects, according to Abrams, a certain moment in Sefer Yeṣirah’s history of acceptance, and that moment should be committed to scrutiny.43
Abrams