"Sefer Yesirah" and Its Contexts. Tzahi Weiss
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the legitimacy of discussions about alphabetical letters as a realm of mystery.
The debate about the validity of alphabetical speculations was not unique to Christian-Gnostic polemics and can be found also in Neoplatonic milieus.33 In his commentary on Plato’s Timaeus,34 Proclus (ca. 410–485) reports that Theodorus Asaeus (fourth century) interprets the word “soul” (ψυχή) using gematria (isopsephy),35 including what will be defined in medieval Jewish sources as “small gematria” (where only the first digit of the numerical value of a certain letter is considered). Theodorus also takes into account the graphic aspect of the letters of ψυχή, based on which he presents various interpretations of the nature of the soul. According to Proclus, Theodorus learned these interpretative methods from the writings of Numenius of Apamea (second century CE) and Amelius (third century). Proclus concludes by noting that Iamblichus (ca. 245–325) strongly objected to these methods and presents three arguments put forth by Iamblichus against letter speculations. First, he asserts that even words possessing opposite meanings may have the same numeric value. Second, he argues that graphic qualities cannot have interpretative value, since the letters have changed their shape over the years. Third, he thinks that the employment of a method such as small gematria is futile because using it along with mathematical functions such as multiplication, addition, division, and subtraction will produce the result that all words are equal to one another:36
Theodorus the philosopher, however, of Asine being full of the doctrines of Numenius, speculates the generation of the soul in a more novel manner, from letters, and characters, and numbers. But the divine Iamblichus blames every theory of this kind, in his treatise in confutation of the followers of Amelius, and also of Numenius, whether he includes Numenius among those who adopted this method…. The divine Iamblichus therefore says in the first place that it is not proper to make the soul every number, or the geometrical number, on account of the multitude of letters. For the words body and non-being itself consist of an equal number of letters. Non-being therefore, will also be every number. You may also find many other things, consisting of an equal number of letters, which are of a vile nature, and most contrary to each other; all which it is not right to confound and mingle together.
In the second place, he observes, that it is not safe to argue from characters. For these subsist by position, and the ancient was different from the present mode of forming them. Thus for instance the letter Z, which he makes the subject of discussion, had not the opposite lines entirely parallel, nor the middle line oblique, but at right angles, as is evident from the ancient letters.
In the third place, he adds, that to analyze into the primary ratios of numbers, and to dwell on these, transfers the theory from some numbers to others. For the heptad is not the same which is in units, and tens, and hundreds. This however, existing in the name of the soul, why is it requisite to introduce the disquisition of primary ratios? For thus he may transfer all things to all numbers, by dividing, or compounding, or multiplying. In short, he accuses the whole of this theory as artificial, and containing nothing sane.37
Iamblichus, according to this source, objects to letter speculations such as comparison between numerical value of words and interpretations of letters according to their shape. These two methods are well known in rabbinic and later Jewish sources, where they were adapted without critique. The fact that two early and well-known figures such as Irenaeus of Lyon in a Christian context and Iamblichus in the Neoplatonic world strongly objected to letter speculations can explain why they were not prevalent in Christian and Neoplatonic sources. Letter discussions, by nature, look arbitrary and irrational: there is no coherent connection between words whose letters have the same numerical value. Similarly, a historical point of view, well known in ancient times, asserts clearly that the alphabet is a human invention and that the number of the letters of the alphabet as well as their shape has changed throughout the years. These facts, as well as the fact that methods for dealing with letters were developed by Gnostics, among others, gave letter speculation a subversive character in certain contexts. Despite the fact that discussions of the letters were rejected by leading figures as insane, they developed in two main channels: first in Jewish and Samaritan38 and later in Islamic sources;39 and then in Christian and Neoplatonic sources, which were unaware of or did not accept the background of hostility to those discussions. Since the Christian sources are more important for our purposes, I will limit my discussion to them.
Letter Speculations in Christian Sources
Reading the early church fathers, it seems that discussions about letters of the alphabet remained marginal and undeveloped as a consequence of the rejection of the Gnostic preoccupation with them, first by Irenaeus of Lyon and then by church fathers such as Hippolytus of Rome (170–235 CE) and Epiphanius of Salamis (ca. 310–403).40 More marginal Christian circles nevertheless continued to engage with alphabetical speculations, three examples of which follow.
Saint Pachomius (ca. 292–348) is a good example of the use of letter discussions in the monastic literature. He writes about secret writing as well as mystical, contemplative, and perhaps magical uses of Greek letters.41 The epistles of Saint Pachomius feature tables of letters similar to magic tables,42 instructions for contemplating certain letters,43 rules about letters that are not to be written in proximity,44 sentences ordered according to opposed pairs of letters exchange method,45 and cryptographs composed of Greek letters. For example, Pachomius instructs his addressees in cryptic letter exchanges: “1. I want you to understand the characters that you wrote to me and that I wrote to you in answer, and how important it is to know all the elements of the spiritual alphabet. Write ν above η and θ; write ζ above χ, μ, λ and ι, when you have finished reading these characters. 2. I wrote to you so that you might understand the mysteries of the characters. Do not write ν above χ, θ and ηι; but rather write ζ above χ, and ν above η and θ.”46
A second example of this trend emerges in the writing of Barsanuphius of Gaza, who lived in the first half of the sixth century. As Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony and Arieh Kofsky have shown, we can learn from Barsanuphius’s correspondence about the use of isolated Greek letters as cryptographs, at times used in a mystical way, and about the interpretation of each letter of the alphabet as a theological instruction.47
A third example of the developed and intensive preoccupation with letters in a Christian environment emerges from a detailed treatise, The Mysteries of the Greek Letters,48 which includes many varied discussions on alphabetic letters.49 It was probably written in the circle of Saint Sabbas in the Judaean desert around the sixth century.50 It is clear, upon reading this treatise, that its letter speculations were influenced by Jewish and Syriac sources. Within this wide-ranging composition, we find a reference to the number of Greek letters being, according to the author, twenty-two—not twenty-four. From the number of letters, we learn about the creation of the world, composed of twenty-two elements, as well as other matters involving this number, such as the number of books in the Old Testament and the number of miracles performed by Jesus.51 The secondary division of letters into numbers such as seven,52 fifteen,53 and fourteen54 is extensively discussed, and various fundamental things are taken to have an identical sum in the physical world and in the Holy Scriptures. The interpretative methods employed in the treatise include comparison between the numerical value of the letters of different words (isopsephy/gematria),55 the shape of the letters,56 and the meanings of their names in Hebrew and Syriac.57 This composition is of utmost importance insofar as Sefer Yeṣirah is concerned because, as we will see in Chapter 3, the traditions that it describes dealing with letters are similar to those in Sefer Yeṣirah, and the author claims that their origins are Hebrew and mainly Syriac.58
Summary
The various discussions about the letters of the alphabet that took place in non-Jewish sources in late antiquity reveal the wide extent of this kind of usage. In this chapter, I have described the discussions most relevant to the claim for a later contextualization of Sefer Yeṣirah. It should be stressed that discussions about the letters of the alphabet can be