The Earliest Version of Sefer Yeirah: Text, Format, Structure, and Genre1

Sefer Yeirah (The Book of Formation) was known throughout the Middle Ages in three primary versions: two similar in their internal arrangement—the “short recension” and the “long recension”; and the third, which differed in its internal arrangement from the other two, and is known as “Saadia’s recension,” which scholarly consensus has determined to be the product of late redaction and artificial arrangement. This study aims to establish the opposite chronology, that the version known as “Saadia’s recension” reflects the oldest form of Sefer Yeirah. In the first part of the article, I outline the general contours of the history of scholarship on the so-called “Saadia’s recension,” which I suggest should instead be called “the earliest Genizah-attested version,” following the discovery of early attestations to this version among the fragments of the Cairo Genizah. (A more detailed account of the reception history of this version from the Cairo Genizah to its copying in the early modern period is offered in the appendix). In the second part, I discuss the unique structure of this earliest version and present a novel structural division of the treatise into four chapters, each of which is further divided into several sections.

opening section of the treatise. While the sections of the chapters function as commentaries on these fixed lemmata, each chapter is distinguished by its focus on a different topos. In the third and final part of the article, I address the chronological relationship that emerges between the three primary versions of Sefer Yeirah, basing my reassessment on the analyses of the earliest textual witnesses. I argue that the earliest version served as the basic material from which the treatise was later recast into a new format—that of the “long recension,” which was later shortened to the “short recension.” This rewriting consisted mainly of rearranging the sections of the treatise into new divisions based on formal and technical criteria. The change in the format of the treatise can still be traced in the earliest variants of all versions of the work, in particular an early corruption of its logical flow, which is reflected in all subsequent versions of the treatise known today.