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Chapter 2

The Creation of the World from the Letters of the Ineffable Name

Introduction

An extensive survey of the traditions of late antiquity concerning the creation of the world from alphabetical letters suggests that they can be divided into at least two main currents: the first describes the creation of the world from twenty-two letters and can be found in Sefer Yeṣirah and, as we shall see, in The Mysteries of the Greek Letters; the second concerns the creation of the world from the letters of the ineffable name. This latter tradition, culled from rabbinic sources and the Hekhalot literature, depicts the creation of the world from the letters he, yod, and, in certain sources, waw. Contrary to the definite distinction between the traditions that emerges from the reading of the above-mentioned sources, in Samaritan sources we find the two traditions side by side. To date, most scholars who have discussed the creation of the world from letters have tended to unite the different narratives of the creation of the world from letters without distinguishing between them.¹ The only exception in this matter is Peter Hayman, who does, albeit briefly, address these differences.² In this chapter, I will discuss in detail the tradition of the creation of the world from the letters of the ineffable name; in Chapter 3, I will discuss the second tradition, about the creation of the world from twenty-two letters, while trying to demonstrate its Syriac roots. My main argument in these two chapters is that distinguishing between the traditions about the creation of the world from letters will enable us to see that Sefer Yeṣirah is not a part of rabbinic literature; it will also enable us to trace the origins of the specific tradition at the heart of Sefer Yeṣirah: the creation of the world from twenty-two letters.

As I suggested in Chapter 1, there is a reason behind the differences between the two traditions about the creation of the world from letters. The description of creation from the letters of the ineffable name looks like the result of the confluence of two different, unrelated commitments: the high status of the ineffable name in Jewish sources from the Bible onward;³ and the hierarchy in Greek and Coptic sources structuring the relationship between vowels and consonants. Although these two issues developed separately and their roots are distinct, the connection between them is natural and requested. It seems that not later than the first century CE, Greek-speaking Jews began to describe the ineffable name as a sequence of four Hebrew vowels (matres lectionis). In this vein, Josephus describes the name of God as holy and “consist[ing] of four vowels.”⁴ It would not be far from the truth to assume that the Greek description of the name of God as a name of four letters, the tetragrammaton, stems from the very same reason.

The development of a belief in the creation of the world from the letters of the ineffable name occurred in the same way. In the first stage, during the last centuries BCE, among other beliefs about how the world was created, there was a tradition about the creation of the world from the ineffable name. Later on, in the second stage, probably from the first or the second century onward, that belief changes its form and instead of the creation of the world from the name of God, one can find depictions of the creation of the world from its letters. Scrutiny of the tradition of creation from the letters of the ineffable name has demonstrated that, in the first place, it has very little, if anything, in common with the second tradition, which depicts the creation of the world from twenty-two letters. It is only an anachronistic point of view that induces medieval Jewish writers as well as modern scholars to discuss these two traditions together, simply because both of them associate the creation of the world with alphabetical letters. To put it slightly differently, I would say that from the Middle Ages onward, the rabbinic midrashim were read through the lenses of Sefer Yeṣirah, although there exists a great gap between the two traditions: the first tradition elevates both the name of God and the vowels; the second gives no preference to either.

Mention should be made about the meaning of the creation of the world from the name of God or its letters. In many Jewish sources in late antiquity, from the Apocrypha literature to the rabbinic and Hekhalot literature, as well as in Samaritan sources, there is no real distinction between the narratives of the creation of the world from the name of God or its letters and depictions of the sealing of the abyss with the name of God. There is a reason that sources do not distinguish between the creation of the world and sealing the abyss: the difference between creation and the sealing of the abyss is, for the most part, significant only on the assumption that the creation of the world is ex nihilo.⁵ Assuming that there was a primeval matter, the role of the creator was to form it and to overcome its chaotic nature. Therefore, from a more mythical point of view, it is reasonable to say that creation of the world actually means that the cosmos overcame primeval chaos, and hence that there is no real difference between the creation of the world from the letters of the ineffable name and the sealing of the abyss with them.

The Early Roots: The Creation of the World from the Name of God

As mentioned above, the tradition that the world was created with the letters of God’s name has early roots:⁶ in Jubilees 36, Isaac is leaving his two sons, Jacob and Esau, instructing them to keep to the way of God, by whose name heaven and earth were created:

And in the sixth year of this week, Isaac called his two sons, Esau and Jacob. And they came to him and he said to them: “My sons, I am going in the way of my fathers to the eternal home where my fathers are…. Remember, my sons, the Lord the God of Abraham, your father, and (that) I subsequently worshiped and served him in righteousness and joy so that he might multiply you and increase your seed like the stars of heaven with regard to numbers and (so that) he will plant you on the earth as a righteous planting that will not be uprooted for all the eternal generations. And now I will make you swear by the great oath—because there is not an oath that is greater than it, by the glorious and honored and great and splendid and amazing and mighty name that created heavens and earth and everything together—that you will fear him and worship him.”⁷

Another source in which God’s name is seen as a part of the creation process is the Prayer of Manasseh, which relates that God used “his word” to contain the sea and sealed the abyss with his name: “O Lord, God of our fathers, God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, and of their righteous offspring/He who made the heaven and the earth, with all their embellishment/He who bound the sea and established it by the command of his word, he who closed the bottomless pit, and sealed it by his powerful and glorious name.”⁸

Rather than the name of God creating the world, here it is a guarantee for its existence. It should be noted that creation through speech, familiar from Genesis, is described in the Prayer of Manasseh as an act of restraining the sea—“who bound the sea and established it by the command of His word,” while the name of God is the sealer of the abyss: “who closed the bottomless pit, and sealed it by His powerful and glorious name.” As noted above, it seems that there is no real difference between the creation of the world and sealing the primordial chaos.

Another testimonial to the role of the name of God in creation is to be found in a few verses of the Book of Parables in 1 Enoch. In this account, the creation of the world and the sealing of the abyss are indistinguishable: “he spoke to Michael to disclose him his secret name so that he would memorize this secret name of his so that he would call it up in an oath…. These are the secrets of this oath—and they are sustained by the oath: The heaven was suspended before the creation of the world; and forever! By it the earth is founded upon the water…. By that oath the sea was created.”⁹ In this text, the mysteries of the ineffable name active in creation include the hanging of the heaven and the creation of the sea.

These three sources offer evidence that the tradition concerning the creation of the world from the name of God, which is not mentioned in the biblical literature, was, in fact, well known in the last centuries BCE. Yet it is only in later sources, from the first or the second century CE onward, that a shift in this tradition can be discerned such that the meaning of the creation of the world by the name of God refers not to the name but to the letters of the name, and thereby to the idea of the creation of the world by the letters of the name of God.

From the Name of God to Its Letters

The Rabbinic Literature

Among a variety of myths about the creation of the world, or ma’aseh bereishit,¹⁰ rabbinic literature contains several midrashim about creation from the letters of the name of God¹¹ or sealing the abyss with them.¹² The aggadic sources, especially Palestinian ones, contain a number of cosmogenic midrashim that discuss the role of the letters he or yod in the process of creation. From the two midrashim presented by R. Abbahu, one in his own name and the other in the name of R. Yoḥanan, it emerges that the world was created from the letter he.¹³ So, for example, Genesis Rabbah, as well as other sources, contains a midrash on the word behibram (בהבראם), which means “when they were created”: “When they were created (בהבראם), R. Abbahu said in R. Yoḥanan’s name: ‘He created them with the letter he.’”¹⁴

A comparable midrash, also from Genesis Rabbah, arrives at the same conclusion based on the word hashmaima (השמימה), which means “toward heaven”: “R. Abbahu commented thereon: ‘It is not written look at heaven (הבט נא שמים) but toward heaven (השמימה) (Gen 15:5): with this he, I created the world.’”¹⁵ Other sources in Genesis Rabbah as well as other rabbinic writings assert a connection between the ineffable name and the letters he and waw. The sages differ as to how to think about this connection:

R. Judah ha-Nasi asked R. Shmuel b. Naḥman: As I have heard that you are a master of haggadah, tell me the meaning of “lift up a song to him who rides upon the arabot, b-YH is His name” (שמו ביה בערבות לרוכב סולו) (Ps. 68:5)…. I asked R. Eleazar, and he did not explain it thus. But the verse trust ye in the Lord forever, for with YH YHWH created the worlds¹⁶ (עד עדי ביהוה בטחו עולמים צור יהוה ביה כי) (Isa. 26:4) means: By these two letters did the Lord create His world. Now we do not know whether this world was created with a he or the next world with a yod, but from what R. Abbahu said in R. Yoḥanan’s name, namely, be-hibbaraam (בהבראם) means, with a he created He them, it follows that this world was created by means of a he.¹⁷

This midrash, whose subject is the word b-YH (ביה), claims that this world and the world to come were created from the letters he and yod, which make up the word in question. The doubling of God’s name in the verse—YH YHWH—leads R. Eleazar to say that the supposedly abbreviated name YH together with the letter bet (here an ablative indication) does not refer to God but rather to the letters from which the world was created.

In Midrash Tanḥuma to Leviticus, we find a more explicit claim concerning the connection between the creation of the world, the letters he and yod, and the ineffable name, which prompts the question: Why did God create the worlds from the abbreviation of His name and not from the whole name?

When any of you sin in that you have heard a public adjuration, etc. (וגו' אלה קול ושמעה תחטא כי ונפש) (Lev. 5:1). This text is related: Never be rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be quick to utter a word before God (האלהים לפני דבר להוציא ימהר אל ולבך פיך על תבהל אל) (Eccles. 5:1). These [words refer to] human beings who vilify the name of the Holy One, blessed be He. Come and see: when the celestial beings were created, those below were created with half of the name, as stated: for with YH YHWH created worlds (עולמים צור יהוה ביה כי) (Isa. 26:4). But why were they not created with all of it? So that none of them would repeat the full name of the Holy One, blessed be He. Woe to those creatures who vilify the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, in vain.¹⁸

This midrash teaches the great importance of the ineffable name; both worlds were created from only two of its letters and not from all four. As a moral lesson, the midrash points to the transgression of invoking the full name of God to no use, the very name, only half of which was employed in the creation of the world.

In a paper dedicated to the sealing of the primeval abyss in texts dating from the first century CE forward, David Sperber points to accounts of this sealing by the engraving of the ineffable name. We learn about the existence of this tradition in an early period from the Prayer of Manasseh, quoted above,¹⁹ and similar elements emerge from a Syriac version of the Psalms of Solomon.²⁰ Sperber adds to these some early Christian sources giving variants of the legend.²¹ The importance of sources is compounded by the light they shed on three rabbinic midrashim concerning the digging of the shittin (pits by the side of the altar)²² by David: the midrashim are in b. Sukkah and Makkot and y. Sanhedrin.²³ According to the Babylonian version, it seems that after David dug the shittin, the abyss threatened to wash away the world, to bind it in place, Aḥitophel had to write the ineffable name and throw it inside. Taking into account other Jewish and Christian sources of late antiquity that allude to this matter, we might interpret this midrash as follows: in the process of digging the shittin, David struck the ineffable name, which was a seal on the abyss and therefore had to seal it anew with the name that Aḥitophel wrote.

According to the second version of the midrash, in y. Sanhedrin, in the process of digging, David moved a piece of earthenware that had been thrown into the abyss, an act that almost caused the destruction of the world: “When he removed the clay pot, the great deep surged upward to flood the world.”²⁴ It can be assumed, in this case as well, that the presence of the dislodged rock on which the ineffable name had been engraved was a magical way to avert the eruption of the abyss. If this interpretation is correct, it would seem that there are narratives about the sealing of the abyss with the ineffable name in the rabbinic literature as well—and that the story of the digging of the shittin by David evokes that story.

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan explicitly connects the ineffable name and the foundation stone. Though this is a relatively late text, it is probable that it preserves early sources. Pseudo-Jonathan recounts that the ineffable name, from which the 310 worlds were created, was engraved on the foundation stone: “And thou shalt put upon the breastplate of judgment the Uraia, which illuminate their words, and manifest the hidden things of the house of Israel, and the Tumaia, which fulfill their work to the high priest, who seeketh instruction by them before the Lord; because in them is engraved and expressed the Great and Holy Name by which were created the 310 worlds and which was engraved and expressed in the foundation stone wherewith the Lord of the world sealed up the mouth of the great deep at the beginning. Whosoever remembereth that holy name in the hour of necessity shall be delivered.”²⁵ This midrash makes a link between the four elements: the foundation stone, the sealing of the abyss, the ineffable name, and the creation of the world. As such, it shows how different cosmogonic myths became consolidated and how they were understood by certain sages.

The creation of the world from letters was understood by most rabbinic sources as referring to the letters of the ineffable name. A number of midrashim hint at traditions concerning the creation of the world from other letters or from all twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. It would be, of course, impossible to give an unequivocal clarification to those midrashim, and it could be that along with the main tradition about the creation of the world from the letters of the ineffable name there were, at the margins of the rabbinic literature other attitudes. Nevertheless, a meticulous scrutiny of those midrashim does not support an interpretation of them as referring to letters other than those of the ineffable name, and it suggests that such an interpretation is based on an anachronistic assumption, at odds with the contextual knowledge we actually have.

I will open with a well-known example of such a midrash from b. Berakhot about the magical abilities of Bezalel, the builder of the tabernacle: “R. Judah said in the name of Rav: Bezalel knew to combine letters by which heaven and earth were created.”²⁶ This declaration, which has a few equivalents in the Hekhalot literature, does not evince the specific letters that Bezalel combined,²⁷ so that we have no indication as to which letters the midrash refers to. Reading the midrash reveals that Rav’s main purpose is to stress that Bezalel possessed high magical knowledge and knew how to combine letters by which the world was created. In this respect, Rav compares the created cosmos and the tabernacle as a microcosmos. Rav is not interested in the myth about the creation of the world from letters but rather uses it to underline the role of Bezalel and the symbolic meaning of the tabernacle. The absence in rabbinic literature of any significant assertion that the world was created from all twenty-two letters of the alphabet, as well as the existence of a variety of midrashim regarding the creation of the world from the ineffable name, leads to the reasonable conclusion that, according to this midrash, the world was created by the letters of the ineffable name and not the whole alphabet. Were we not cognizant of the tradition that the world was created from the twenty-two letters of the alphabet described in Sefer Yeṣrah and were solely aware of rabbinic sources referring to creation from letters, we would have no doubt that the expression “letters from which heaven and earth were created” refers to the letters he and yod. Gershom Scholem interpreted Rav in this way: “Bezalel, who built the Tabernacle, ‘knew the combinations of letters with which heaven and earth were made’—so we read in the name of a Babylonian scholar of the early third century, the most prominent representative of the esoteric tradition in his generation [Rav T. W.]. The letters in question were unquestionably those of the name of God.”²⁸

Another midrash connecting the creation of the world from letters other than those of the ineffable name is the famous midrash telling how the world was created from the letter bet. The midrash appears in a few places in rabbinic literature²⁹ as well as in later midrashim that deal extensively with the alphabetic letters: the first appearance, Letters of R. Akiva, version A, is a composition of eclectic traditions, most of which are based on the Hekhalot literature;³⁰ the second, Letters of R. Akiva, version B, is based on rabbinic tradition and was probably edited between the sixth and ninth centuries. The midrash focuses on why the world was created from the letter bet in particular; so we know that such a tradition existed.³¹ However, an examination of this midrash in all its versions reveals that it does not deal with the creation of the world from or by this letter but rather with the word that inaugurates the biblical description of creation: bereishit. In this midrash, as in its Samaritan parallel, bet signifies the boundary between the chaos that existed before creation, a chaos that is not to be interpreted, and the created cosmos.³² In this vein, we should also read the version of the midrash from a section of midrash Tanḥuma found in the Cairo Geniza, published by Ephraim E. Urbach: “Bereishit: Why did He begin the creation of the world with bet and not with alef, as alef is the head of all the letters of the Torah?”³³ There is a parallel to this midrash as it appears in Letters of R. Akiva, version A: “Why did the Holy One, blessed be He, create His world with bet in Bereishit bara (In the beginning [God] created [Gen. 1:1]) and end the Torah with lamed (leyney kol Israel, in the sight of all Israel [Deut. 34:12])? When you join them, it becomes BL, and when you reverse them, they become LB (heart).”³⁴ In this midrash, too, we observe that creation with the letter bet refers to something essentially other than creation from or by letters: the main question is, why did the account of creation begin with this specific letter? The midrash consequently compares the word bereishit, with which the Torah begins, with the word Israel, with which it ends, such that the role of the letter bet in this context is similar to that of the concluding letter lamed.

In rabbinic literature, only one source is known to me of a midrash that discloses a definite acquaintance with the tradition about the creation of the world from twenty-two letters. That singular source appears in the same sections of Tanḥuma published by Urbach, and in it, it is written that the Torah that lit up the darkness of the primordial chaos for God also put at his disposal the twenty-two letters: “While He was creating the world, the Torah was, as it were, shedding light before Him, for the world was without form and void, as it is said: ‘For the commandment is a lamp and the Torah—light’ (כי נר מצוה ותורה אור) (Prov. 6:23). The Holy One, blessed be He, said: I shall ask for laborers. The Torah said to Him: I shall put forth for you twenty-two workers. And these are the twenty-two letters of the Torah.”³⁵

This midrash, which seems to be expressing a notion similar to the process of creation from the twenty-two letters envisioned in Sefer Yeṣirah, belongs to the later strata of rabbinic literature and has, to the best of my knowledge, no parallels. It is reasonable to assume that, at the time of this midrash, a new approach to the creation of the world from letters penetrated the margins of the rabbinic literature. Since this tradition was alien to the rabbinic ones, it was adapted by the midrash according to a more familiar tradition about the creation of the world from the Torah. The claim of the midrash is that the letters from which the world was created were given to God by the Torah, and it is therefore the Torah that is the origin of the alphabetic letters and the world. The midrash mainly focuses on the dialogue between God and the Torah and on the crucial role that the Torah had in the process of creation and does not address the role of the alphabet in creation as an issue of interest. Similarly, yet as a mirror image, as we shall see, Sefer Yeṣirah operates in the same manner with regard to the tradition about the creation of the world from the letters of the ineffable name.³⁶ Throughout Sefer Yeṣirah, from its second chapter forward, the ineffable name of God and its letters have no role in the creation of the world and the letters of the ineffable name: yod, he, and waw are neither defined as a distinct group of letters nor do they have any symbolic meaning that connects them to the name of God. In the only instance that Sefer Yeṣirah does mention the letters of the ineffable name in relation to the creation of the world, those letters are defined as three letters from the group of the twelve simple letters. In this case, Sefer Yeṣirah appropriates the tradition of the creation of the world from the ineffable name and adapts it to its core tradition about the creation of the world from twenty-two letters. It is exactly this manner of adaptation rather than adoption that stresses what can be considered a core percept, as opposed to an appended one in both the rabbinic literature and in Sefer Yeṣirah and thereby accentuates the essential disparity between them.

Hekhalot Literature

The dominant attitude toward the creation of the world from letters in the Hekhalot literature, as in the aforementioned rabbinic sources, favors the letters of the ineffable name. The Hekhalot literature is a heterogenous, multilayered corpus of texts created, written, and edited over a long period. Most manuscripts in this literature were edited only during the late Middle Ages, in the circles of Ḥasidei Ashkenaz.³⁷ Consequently, attempting to designate the traditions found in this literary corpus contextually, according to period and location, is problematic. Nevertheless, there are significant differences between the Hekhalot texts and those of Ḥasidei Ashkenaz, and there is no reason to doubt the origins of the Hekhalot literature in Babylonia and even earlier in Palestine. The common scholarly assumption is that most of this literature was created between the late tannaitic and geonic periods.³⁸ I have therefore chosen to adopt an approach to the Hekhalot literature that is based on an inclusive and comprehensive overview rather than a reading of specific isolated paragraphs. This overview allows us to distinguish and extract the predominant approach to the creation of the world from letters in the Hekhalot literature.

The creation of the world from the ineffable name figures in the version of a prayer transmitted by R. Akiva to R. Ishmael at the end of ma’aseh merkavah, in which R. Ishmael asks how one can look above the seraphs, to which R. Akiva responds that when he stood in the first celestial palace, he uttered a certain prayer that allowed him to see from the first palace as far as the seventh: “R. Ishmael said: I said to R. Akiva: How can one contemplate above the Seraphs that stand above the head of ROZYY³⁹ YWY, God of Israel? He told me: when I ascended to the first palace, I prayed a prayer, and I saw from the first palace to the seventh palace … and what was the prayer? Blessed be You, YY, Unique God, who created His world with His one name, who makes everything with one utterance.”⁴⁰

The special formula in the blessing of R. Akiva enlightens us as to the existence of two traditions of creation that appear side by side: the creation of the world from the ineffable name; and from the speech of God: “who created His world with His one name, who makes everything with one utterance.” This is similar to the thought expressed in the above-mentioned Prayer of Manasseh.⁴¹