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Chapter 1

Discussions About Alphabetical Letters in Non-Jewish Sources of Late Antiquity

Sefer Yeṣirah’s assertions about the role of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet were not conceived in a vacuum. Some scholars have argued that the engagement with letters in Sefer Yeṣirah and in other Jewish sources is a unique phenomenon referring solely to intra-Jewish issues, such as the myth of the creation of the world by speech, the holiness ascribed to the Hebrew language, the holiness of the name of God, or the holiness of the Bible, including the letters it is composed of.¹ However, as early as the beginning of the twentieth century, Franz Dornseiff and other scholars in his wake have, as the result of detailed investigations, found evidence that discussion of alphabetical letters is not only to be found in rabbinic and other Jewish sources but can also be encountered in Greek, Gnostic, Neoplatonic, Neo-Pythagorean, Christian, and Samaritan texts.² Examining late antique engagement with alphabetical letters from a wider perspective reveals that Jewish texts were neither more developed nor earlier than non-Jewish sources and that it would be untenable to single out a Judaic origin for this phenomenon. It would be more plausible to assume that Jewish discussions about alphabetical letters were adaptations of earlier non-Jewish ones. Any attempt to contextualize Sefer Yeṣirah must therefore not only take into account a wide range of possible sources but also recognize, penetrate, and understand the widespread preoccupation with letters, in order to trace the different channels of its development.

One must consider the disparate attitudes adopted toward letter discussions in late antiquity in order to decipher the genealogy of these discussions. In some contexts in late antiquity, discussions of letters were considered negatively; in other contexts, they were adopted without criticism. For example, some early church fathers and a few Neoplatonic thinkers rejected letter discussions, claiming that they were Gnostic, nonrational, and inappropriate; in the same period, they were considered legitimate in rabbinic sources. Although this can explain why letter discussions are more prevalent in Jewish sources than in Christian or Neoplatonic ones, it does not in any way indicate that the origins of this phenomenon are Jewish.

Even without deciding whether the main sources for the narrative of the creation of the world from letters in Sefer Yeṣirah derive from Jewish or non-Jewish traditions, I call attention at least to the possibility of letter discussions having non-Jewish origins and to study the development of these traditions, which continued to evolve in some non-Jewish milieus throughout the first millennium CE.

A prefatory response to the above question is offered by a reading of Sefer Yeṣirah. It would be difficult to assume much affiliation between it and other Jewish sources, since most discussions about the letters in Sefer Yeṣirah do not employ methods that were known in rabbinic sources and vice versa. For example, Sefer Yeṣirah contains neither midrashim on “defective” spelling and plene spelling nor gematria (calculating and comparing numerical value of letters), nor do we find mention of the graphic shape of the letters or the meanings of the final Hebrew letters k-m-n-p-ṣ. Sefer Yeṣirah is mainly concerned with the number twenty-two and with the secondary divisions of the letters into the numbers three, seven, and twelve, and pays scant attention to other methods of dealing with the letters of the alphabet, and thereby to a great extent differentiates itself from rabbinic sources.

My main goal in this chapter is to demonstrate that while many church fathers and a few Neoplatonic thinkers rejected letter discussions as Gnostic or irrational, such discussions were still developed in more marginal Christian contexts throughout the first millennium CE. Consequently, my argument in the following chapters is that the myth about the creation of the world from twenty-two letters was not discussed in rabbinic texts but was developed in some Christian circles, especially Syriac ones. Sefer Yeṣirah, as I will demonstrate, borrowed this and other motifs from those Christian origins.

Early Roots

There is evidence of extensive preoccupation with alphabetical letters as well as myths about their importance only from the first century CE, although the roots of these phenomena probably go back much further. Ancient wellsprings, such as sources from the ancient Near East,³ biblical literature,⁴ and ancient Greece⁵ are possible springboards. An important example of an ancient Greek notion that influenced discussions and myths about the alphabetical letters in late antiquity is the Greek word stoicheion (στοιχεῖον), which refers to, among other things, both an alphabetical letter and a physical element. It became a point of convergence for discussing the creation of the world from letters. An early source that can exemplify the double meaning of the word is a paragraph from Plato’s Timaeus, which explains the primal significance of the four physical elements. Here the letters are seen as similar to physical elements, and, unlike syllables, they constitute indivisible primary units: “But we speak of fire and the rest of them [water, air, and earth], whatever they mean, as though men knew their natures, and we maintain them to be the first principles and letters [στοιχεῖα] or elements of the whole, when they cannot reasonably be compared by a man of any sense even to syllables or first compounds.”⁶

In Plato, the alphabetical letters have an atomic character, as they cannot be divided into more basic components. It seems that the fact that letters and physical elements share a word and similar qualities, in conjunction with other biblical and Akkadian perceptions of written signs as independent units, will have a significant role in the crystallization of myths about the creation of the world from alphabetical letters. In this respect, it is worth noting that in Sefer Yeṣirah, one finds the interesting phrase otiot yesod (אותיות יסוד),⁷ which means, literally, “element letters.” As Gershom Scholem has noted, there is good reason to assume that otiot yesod in Sefer Yeṣirah is a Hebrew adaptation of the Greek stoicheion.⁸

Another well-known example of an ancient idea that influenced later discussions and speculation about letters is the discussion of the symbolic meaning of the seven Greek vowels. Aristotle’s Metaphysics is one of the earliest sources to refer to the association between the seven vowels and other collections of seven things. Aristotle takes a critical stand and argues that it is unreasonable to correlate different things in this way:

If all things must share in number, it must follow that many things are the same…. [T]hings that differed might fall under the same number. Therefore if the same number had belonged to certain things, these would have been the same as one another, since they would have had the same form of number; e.g., sun and moon would have been the same…. There are seven vowels, the scale has seven strings, the Pleiades are seven … and the champions who fought against Thebes were seven. Is it then because the number is what it is, that the champions were seven or the Pleias consist of seven stars? Surely the champions were seven because there were seven gates of for some other reason, and the Pleias we count as seven, as we count the Bear as twelve, while other people count more stars in both.⁹

Although Aristotle rejects comparisons between different objects associated with the same number, the example he gives suggests that at least some of the specific correspondences between the vowels and other matters composed of seven parts were well known.

A later example, which connects the seven vowels and the planets, can be found in Plutarch’s (ca. 46–125 CE) discussion of the letter E, a capital epsilon, which stood at the entrance to the temple of Delphi.¹⁰ Writing to his friend the poet Sarapion, Plutarch offers seven possible reasons for this letter being placed at the entrance to the temple. One rationale relates to the fact that epsilon is the second in the order of vowels in the Greek alphabet and designates the sun; it is fitting for it to stand at the gates of the temple of Apollo, the god of the sun. Thus the claim: “There are seven vowels in the alphabet and seven stars that have an independent and unconstrained motion; that E is the second in order of the vowels from the beginning, and the Sun the second planet after the moon, and that practically all the Greeks identify Apollo with the Sun.”¹¹

This explanation in Plutarch refers to a specific issue related to the correspondence between the Greek vowels and the planets. It is important to stress that this correspondence was well known and, moreover, that the vowels symbolized planets. Such a correspondence found its way at a later period into Sefer Yeṣirah. Although it seems that Sefer Yeṣirah gives little attention to the Hebrew matres lectionis (vowels), A, H, W, Y,¹² it defines Hebrew equivalents to the seven Greek vowels, the seven double letters B, G, D, K, P, R, T. These seven letters, according to Sefer Yeṣirah, correspond to the seven planets: “Seven double letters: bet, gimel, dalet, kaf pe, resh, taw. He carved and hewed them, he combined them, weighed them and exchanged them, and he formed with them the planets in the universe.… These are the seven planets in the universe: Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars.”¹³

I contend that Sefer Yeṣirah did not adapt these ideas directly from Greek sources. Sefer Yeṣirah represents a case of a Hebrew treatise that took on this Greek tradition after it had been adapted to Semitic languages, as these ideas continued to develop throughout late antiquity and the early Middle Ages along various channels.

Discussion and Rejection of Letter Speculations in Late Antiquity

The use of hermeneutic methods based on letter discussions spawned debates in the writings of the church fathers as well as in Neoplatonic circles. The existence of such debates is of utmost relevance to our discussion, as it reflects on the extent of the concern with letters and the resistance it aroused.

Irenaeus of Lyon’s (second century CE) Against Heresies provides one of the most detailed testimonies to such a debate.¹⁴ Irenaeus attributes to Marcus, a disciple of Valentinus,¹⁵ a polemical description of the employment of letters as well as homilies on letters. The length, detail, and breadth of the Gnostic discussions about letters that Irenaeus quotes prohibit an all-inclusive and detailed description; I will therefore present only the more relevant ones. One such discussion is the description of the body of truth (άλήθεια) in terms of opposed pairs of letters, which look like the Hebrew A-T B-Š letter-exchange method.¹⁶ This source makes a strong connection between the process of creation and alphabetical letters. Truth, the foundation of human discourse, is composed of letters: “[T]he Tetrad explained these things to him as it said: ‘I also wish to show you Truth itself. I have brought her down from the dwellings on high that you might look on her unveiled and learn of her beauty and also hear her speak and admire her wisdom. See, then, alpha and omega are her head on high; beta and psi are her neck; gamma and chi are her shoulders with hands; her breast is delta and phi; epsilon and upsilon are her diaphragm; zeta and tau are her stomach; eta and sigma are her private parts; theta and rho are her thighs; iota and pi are her knees; kappa and omicron are her legs; lambda and xi are her ankles; mu and nu are her feet.’”¹⁷

The role that Marcus gives to the alphabetical letters in their connection to the organs of the body of “Truth” is similar to the role of the letters at the level of the human body (נפש), one of the three levels of the created world in Sefer Yeṣirah. At this level, as we saw in the Introduction, each letter represents or is responsible for a certain organ of the human body. Sefer Yeṣirah describes the three levels of the three immot letters A-M-Š: “He made alef rule over air [ruaḥ], and bound to it a crown, and combined them with each other, and formed with them air [awir] in the universe, and humidity in the year, and the chest in mankind male and female. He made mem rule over water, and bound to it a crown, and combined them with each other, and formed with it earth in the universe, cold in the year, and the belly in mankind male and female. He made shin rule over fire, and bound to it a crown, and combined them with each other, and formed with it heaven in the universe, heat in the year, and the head in mankind male and female.”¹⁸

Of special interest is Irenaeus’s account of the similarity in both structure and content of the emanation of the upper worlds from letters as presented by Marcus and the myth of creation widespread in Mandaean sources. In her book on the Mandaeans, Ethel Stefana Drower describes their particular approach to the alphabet and the role of letters in the creation of the world.¹⁹ A reading of Mandaean sources discloses the importance of letters in the divine realm²⁰—for example, the use of letters to name various elements in the pleroma and the title given to the great mother in one of the Mandaean creation myths, “Mother of the Twenty-Four Letters of the Alphabet,”²¹ which recalls Marcus’s “Truth.” One can infer from Mandaean texts that, similar to the description of the body of the truth in the Valentinian myth, the body of Adam Kasia, the primordial man, is also composed of letters.²² The fact that similar depictions can be found in early Valentinian Gnosticism and in later Mandaean sources demonstrates that those beliefs were prevalent over an expanse of time and geographic location. This illustrates and justifies my claim that Sefer Yeṣirah, in around the seventh century, represents a variant of these diverse expressions.

Another point relevant to my argument follows from Marcus’s contention concerning the hierarchy between different groups of letters. According to him, the consonants are superior to the vowels and semivowels.²³ Marcus believes that since the creator lacks voice or utterance, the vowels, being closer to vocalization, have a lower status: “Know, then, that these your twenty-four letters are symbolical emissions of the three powers which embrace the entire number of characters on high. You are to consider the nine mute letters as belonging to Father and Truth, because these are mute, that is, they are unspeakable and unutterable. The eight semivowels, as belonging to Word and Life, because they are, as it were, intermediate between the mutes and the vowels, they receive the emission from the Aeons above; but an ascent from those below. The vowels too are seven. They belong to Man and Church, because the voice that came forth through Man formed all things; for the sound of the voice clothed them with form. So Word and Life possess eight [of the letters]; Man and Church seven; Father and Truth, nine.”²⁴

This text is unusual among those from late antiquity that I know of, in attesting to the superiority of the consonants over the vowels. The more prevalent attitude in late antiquity to the letters was opposite; the seven Greek vowels symbolized the seven planets or divine beings and were considered to be superior to the other letters. Long sequences of Greek vowels in many Greek and Coptic amulets testify to the uniqueness and high status of the vowels. Certain texts from the Nag-Hammadi library²⁵ contain sequences of vowels in this vein, symbolizing the highest realm of human cognition. In a treatise called “The Discourse of the Eighth and the Ninth,” for example, combinations of vowels are used to praise God: “Grace! After these things, I give thanks by singing a hymn to you. For I have received life from you, when you made me wise I praise you. I call your name that is hidden with me: a ō ee ō ēēē ōōō iii ōōōō ooooo ōōōōō uuuuuu ōōōōōōōōōōōōōōōōōōōōōō.²⁶ You are the one who exists with the spirit. I sing a hymn to you reverently.”²⁷

The vowels, specifically because of their vocalization, are seen here as hidden and exalted and therefore are apt for the praise of God; as Patricia Cox-Miller puts it: “[T]he vowels of the alphabet designate that point at which the human and divine worlds intersect.… [T]o speak this language is not only to invoke the God; it is also to sound the depths of one’s own primal reality. These strings of vowels are hymnic recitations of praise to the God and to human Godlikeness.”²⁸

Another well-known example of the symbolic meaning of the vowels can be gleaned from the Pythagorean Nicomachus of Gerasa’s (60–120 CE) treatise “Introduction to Arithmetic.” Nicomachus writes that the seven vowels are the sounds of the seven celestial spheres. Those sounds are ineffable but can be revealed through other means, such as arithmetic, geometry, and grammar. In terms of hierarchy, the vowels, according to Nicomachus, are like the soul of the material consonants that constitute the body: “For indeed the sounds of each sphere of the seven, each sphere naturally producing one certain kind of sound, are called ‘vowels.’ They are ineffable in and of themselves, but are recalled by the wise with respect to everything made up of them. Wherefore also here (i.e., on earth) this sound has power, which in arithmetic is a monad, in geometry a point, in grammar a letter (of the alphabet). And combined with the material letters, which are the consonants, as the soul to the body.”²⁹

The elevation of the vowels over the consonants, on the one hand, and taking the consonant to be superior to the other letters, on the other—this divergence will contribute to our discussion in the following two chapters. It is an opposition reflected in the differences between the two main traditions concerning the creation of the world from letters. As we will see, the main tradition in Jewish sources, in both rabbinic and Hekhalot literature, sees the world as having been created by the letters of the ineffable name: Y, H, W. This is similar to, and probably caused by, the approach that gives higher status to the vowels, compared with the other letters. Similarly, the second approach to the creation of the world from letters, arguing that the world was created by all the letters of the alphabet, being the approach at the heart of Sefer Yeṣirah, does not hold the vowels to be superior and, as such, is much closer to Marcus’s account.³⁰

Irenaeus, however, rejects Marcus’s opinions, calling them stupid and unfounded. To illustrate their absurdity, he refers to a historical argument concerning the evolution of Greek writing. According to Irenaeus, the Greeks received an alphabet, comprising only sixteen letters, from the Phoenicians via Cadmus, and the remaining letters were gradually formed only later. Irenaeus employs ridicule to ask whether the “Truth,” which, for Marcus, comprises twenty-four letters, did not exist until the Greek alphabet was fully developed:

Who would not hate the deplorable contriver of such falsehoods, when he sees the Truth made into an idol by Marcus and branded with letters of the Alphabet? The Greeks confess that it is only recently—relative to what was from the beginning, which is expressed by “Yesterday and the day before yesterday” that first they received sixteen letters through Cadmus. Then, as time went on, they themselves invented others; at one time the aspirate, at another the double letters; last of all, Palamedes added the long letters to the rest. By inference, before these letters were made by the Greeks, Truth did not exist! For the body of Truth, according to you, Marcus, was begotten later than Cadmus, and so later than those who existed before him. It is also begotten later than those who added the rest of the characters; later than yourself, because you alone reduced to an idol her whom you call Truth.³¹

Irenaeus rejects another assertion about the importance of the alphabetical letters, contained in a legend common in early Christian circles about the young Jesus, who, in the process of learning the letters of the alphabet, reveals to his teacher the secrets concealed in them. Irenaeus contends that the story is false and should be completely disregarded.³² It seems that in contesting the tale, he wants to undermine 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 found in other milieus: they had an important role, for example, in second-century CE Artemidorus’s book about the interpretation of dreams,⁵⁹ they were extensively discussed in the Samaritan Memar Marqah (מרקה תיבת),⁶⁰ and one can find discussions about them in such writings as those of the famous Egyptian alchemist Zosimos of Panopolis (end of third-beginning of fourth centuries).⁶¹

Letter speculations were prevalent in Gnostic sources and were rejected by Christian and Neoplatonic thinkers, but there is nothing Gnostic in these speculations and nothing anti-Christian or anti-Neoplatonic in them. My main argument in this chapter was that although letter speculations were rejected by many Christian writers, they continued to be developed in more marginal Christian circles. In the next two chapters, I will try to demonstrate why it is more reasonable to assume that Sefer Yeṣirah was influenced by such an environment.

Although the discussion about alphabetical letters in Sefer Yeṣirah—bringing together grammatical arguments and the symbolism of the letters referring to the planets or the organs of the human body—does not have equivalents in rabbinic literature, it was already known about in the first centuries CE in non-Jewish circles. It seems that these views, which were not adopted by mainstream Jewish sources, continued to be developed in other channels and eventually found their way to the core of Sefer Yeṣirah.

Debate about the hierarchy of groups of letters, that is, the question of whether the vowels stand highest or lowest among the letters, will be reflected in the difference between the two main traditions of the creation of the world from letters. While the creation of the world from the letters of the ineffable name, as I will show in Chapter 2, is a product of the tradition about the creation of the world from the name of God and the importance of the vowels in Greek and Coptic sources, the creation of the world from twenty-two letters relies on a different hierarchy that does not give symbolic priority to the vowels.