Sepher Yetzirah. Historical and Bibliographical Outline

Abstract

The article presents the history of the Sepher Yetzirah (Book Yetzirah, Yetzirah Book) – the earliest written work of Jewish mysticism or esoterism. Sepher Yetzirah arose in the first centuries A.D., so the prevalent opinion that it exemplifies the kabbalistic writing is false (viz. Kabbalah is the branch of Jewish mysticism/esoterism which came into being around XII century). The article deals with the hypotheses about the time the treatise was written, the problem of the authorship of the book, it analyses the title and presents the main ideas of this influential work – Sefer Yetzirah played namely an enormous role in the whole Jewish mystical, esoteric system of thought. Apart from Sefer ha-Zohar and Sefer ha-Bahir, the Book Yetzirah was the fundamental book which was explored and widely commented by a great number of kabbalists. For this reason the article briefly characterizes also the Jewish commentators of the book, as well as takes up the question of the variety of versions and editions of Sepher Yetzirah, and, besides, contains the information about the translations of the book (written in various languages). Furthermore, the present text describes the structure of the work and gives the characteristic of each yetziratic chapter, placing emphasis on the role playing in the Yetzirah Book by the concept of ten sephiroth and twenty two letters of Hebrew alphabet. The article is also noted into bibliographical guidelines on the presented topic.