More instructive still for the study of the development of cabalistic lore is the Book of Jubilees written under King John Hyrcanus (see Charles, "The Book of Jubilees," 1902, Introduction, pp. lviii.
et seq.)—which also refers to the writings of Jared, Cainan, and Noah, and presents Abraham as the renewer, and Levi as the permanent guardian, of these ancient writings (ch. iv. 18, viii. 3, x. 13; compare Jellinek, "B. H." iii. 155, xii. 27, xxi. 10, xlv. 16)—because it offers, as early as a thousand years prior to the supposed date of the "Sefer Yeẓirah," a cosmogony based upon the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and connected with Jewish chronology and Messianology, while at the same time insisting upon the heptad as the holy number rather than upon the decadic system adopted by the later haggadists and the "Sefer Yeẓirah" (ch. ii. 23; compare Midr. Tadshe vi. and Charles's note, vi. 29
et seq.; Epstein, in "Rev. Et. Juives," xxii. 11; and regarding the number seven compare Ethiopic Enoch, lxxvii. 4
et seq. [see Charles's note]; Lev. R. xxix.; Philo, "De Opificios Mundi," 80-43, and Ab. v. 1-3; Ḥag. 12a). The Pythagorean idea of the creative powers of numbers and letters, upon which the "Sefer Yeẓirah" is founded, and which was known in tannaitic times—compare Rab's saying:"Bezalel knew how to combine [
] the letters by which heaven and earth were created" (Ber. 55a), and the saying of R. Judah b. Ilai (Men. 29b), quoted, with similar sayings of Rab, in Bacher, "Ag. Bab. Amor." pp. 18, 19—is here proved to be an old cabalistic conception. In fact, the belief in the magic power of the letters of the Tetragrammaton and other names of the Deity (compare Enoch, lxi. 3
et seq.; Prayer of Manasses; Ḳid. 71a; Eccl. R. iii. 11; Yer. Ḥag. ii. 77c) seems to have originated in Chaldea (see Lenormant, "Chaldean Magic," pp. 29, 43). Whatever, then, the theurgic Cabala was, which, under the name of "Sefer (or "Hilkot" Yeẓirah," induced Babylonian rabbis of the fourth century to "create a calf by magic" (Sanh. 65b, 67b; Zunz, "G. V." 2d ed., p. 174, by a false rationalism ignores or fails to account for a simple though strange fact!), an ancient tradition seems to have coupled the name of this theurgic "Sefer Yeẓirah" with the name of Abraham as one accredited with the possession of esoteric wisdom and theurgic powers (
see Abraham, Apocalypse of, and
Abraham, Testament of; Beer, "Das Leben Abrahams," pp. 207
et seq.; and especially Testament of Abraham, Recension B, vi., xviii.; compare Kohler, in "Jew. Quart. Rev." vii. 584, note). As stated by Jellinek ("Beiträge zur Kabbalah," i. 3), the very fact that Abraham, and not a Talmudical hero like Akiba, is introduced in the "Sefer Yeẓirah," at the close, as possessor of the Wisdom of the Alphabet, indicates an old tradition, if not the antiquity of the book itself.
The "wonders of the Creative Wisdom" can also be traced from the "Sefer Yeẓirah," back to Ben Sira,
l.c.; Enoch, xlii. 1, xlviii. 1, lxxxii. 2, xcii. 1; Slavonic Enoch, xxx. 8, xxxiii. 3 (see Charles's note for further parallels); IV Esdras xiv. 46; Soṭah xv. 3; and the Merkabah-travels to Test. Abraham, x.; Test. Job, xi. (see Kohler, in Kohut Memorial Volume, pp. 282-288); and the Baruch Apocalypse throughout, and even II Macc. vii. 22, 28, betray cabalistic traditions and