The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
page 1
The translator’s English as printed (Isidor Kalisch). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
ספר יצירה
SEPHER YEZIRAH.
A BOOK ON CREATION;
OR,
THE JEWISH METAPHYSICS
OF
REMOTE ANTIQUITY.
With English Translation, Preface, Explanatory Notes and Glossary,
BY
Rev. Dr. ISIDOR KALISCH,
Author of the "Guide for Rational Inquiries into the Biblical Scriptures," "Toms des Morgenlandes," Translator of "Nathan the Wise" from the German, etc., etc., etc.
NEW YORK:
L. H. FRANK & CO., PUBLISHERS AND PRINTERS,
No. 32½ Bowery.
[1877]
NOTICE OF ATTRIBUTION Scanned at sacred-texts.com, September 2005. Proofed, formatted and Unicode transliteration by John Bruno Hare. This text is in the public domain in the United States because it was published prior to January 1st, 1923. These files may be used for any non-commercial purpose, provided this notice of attribution is left intact in all copies.
Click to enlarge Title Page
Click to enlarge Verso
PREFACE.
This metaphysical essay, called "Sepher Yezirah," (book on creation, or cosmogony,) which I have endeavored to render into English, with explanatory notes, is considered by all modem literati as the first philosophical book that ever was written in the Hebrew language. But the time of its composition and the name of its author have not yet been ascertained, despite of the most elaborate researches of renowned archaeologists. Some maintain that this essay is mentioned in the Talmud treatise Sanhedrin, p. 66 b. and ibid. 67 b. which passage is according to the commentary of Rashi, to treatise Erubin, p. 63 a., a reliable historical notice. Hence this book was known already in the second or at the beginning of the third century of the Christian Era. The historian, Dr. Graetz, tries to show very ingeniously in his work, entitled "Gnosticism," p. 104 and 110, that it was written in the early centuries of the Christian Church, especially when the ideas and views of the Gnostics were in vogue. This opinion, however, he afterwards revoked. (See Dr. Graetz's "History of the Jews," Vol. V, p. 315 in a note.)
Dr. Zunz, the Nestor of the Jewish Rabbis in Europe, maintains that we have to look for the genesis of the book "Yezirah" in the Geonic period, (700-1000), and that it was consequently composed in a post-talmudical time. But if so, it is very strangethat Saadjah Gaon, who lived in the tenth, and Judah Halevi, who lived in the twelfth century, represented the book "Yezirah" as a very ancient work. Therefore it seems to me, that Dr. Graetz had no sufficient cause to repudiate his assertion concerning the age of this book; because all the difficulties which he himself and others raised against his supposition, fall to the ground, when we consider that the most ancient works, holy as well as profane, had one and the same fate, namely, that from age to age more or less interpolations were made by copyists and commentators. Compare also Prof. Tenneman's "Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie," improved by Prof. Wendt, p. 207.
Tradition, which ascribes the authorship of this book to the patriarch Abraham, is fabulous, as can be proved by many reasons; but the idea that Rabbi Akiba, who lived about the beginning of the second century, composed the book "Yezirah," is very likely possible. Be this as it may, it is worth while to know the extravagant hypotheses which ancient Jewish philosophers and theologians framed as soon as they began to contemplate and to reason, endeavoring to combine oriental and Greek theories. Although there is an exuberance of weeds, we will find, nevertheless, many germs of truisms, which are of the greatest importance. A Christian theologian, Johann Friedrich von Meyer D. D., remarked very truly in his German preface to the book "Yezirah," published in Leipzig, 1830: "This book is for two reasons highly important: in the first place, that the real Cabala, or mystical
Kalisch's preface takes positions that the reader's other Kabbalah book reverses. "Tradition, which ascribes the authorship of this book to the patriarch Abraham, is fabulous", he writes, and he thinks it "very likely possible" that Rabbi Akiba composed it. Mathers, ten years later, introduces the Sepher Yetzirah as ascribed to the patriarch Abraham and lets the ascription stand. A page further on Kalisch calls the Cabala that grew from the book a system of delirium; Mathers offers that system as the key without which the Bible cannot be understood. Both translators are partisans, and a reader moving between them should know that the disagreement is about the Kabbalah itself, not only about dates.