Sefer Yetzirah - Origin

Origin

A cryptic story in the Babylonian Talmud states that "On the eve of every Shabbat, Judah HaNasi's pupils, Rab Hanina and Rab Hoshaiah, who devoted themselves especially to cosmogony, used to create a delicious calf by means of the Sefer Yetzirah, and ate it on the Sabbath." Mystics assert that 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 (vi. 15) declares that the Biblical patriarch Abraham was the recipient of the divine revelation of mystic lore; so that the rabbis of the classical rabbinic era, and philosophers as Saadia, 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 Abraham wrote it and Akiva redacted it to its current form.

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 emphasize earlier traditions appearing in the book. The division of the letters into the three classes of vowels, mutes, and sonants also appears in Hellenic texts.

The historical origin of the Sefer Yetzirah was placed by Reitzenstein in the 2nd century BCE. According to Christopher P. Benton, the Hebrew grammatical form places its origin closer to the period of the Mishna around the 2nd century CE. Jewish Lore attributes it to Adam, and that "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 Hilkot Yetzirah and declared to be esoteric lore not accessible to anyone but the pious, and only to be used for Kabbalistic purposes.