Peri Etz Hadarפרי עץ הדר
Tzfat · 1600
סי
Sefer Yetzirah (trad. Avraham Avinu)
Sefer Yetzirah (trad. Avraham Avinu)
200 BCE–500 CE · Tannaim · Tiberias
Tradition attributes Sefer Yetzirah to Avraham Avinu (some sources, to R. Akiva); academic dating varies widely, from roughly the 2nd century BCE to the 6th century CE.
Anonymous author of Sefer Yetzirah ('Book of Formation'), the oldest extant work of Jewish mystical speculation. Reconstructs Creation as the combinatorial work of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet and ten primordial 'sefirot.' Variously dated from the 2nd to 6th century.
Life journeyclick any stop, or use ←/→Trace on the orchard map →
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Stop 1 of 1200–600Composed
TiberiasLand of Israel
What they did here
Where and when Sefer Yetzirah was composed is unknown. Tradition ascribes it to Avraham Avinu, or to Rabbi Akiva; scholarly estimates run from about the 3rd to the 6th century CE, and some date it later. The pin marks the Land of Israel, not a documented place, and the years are a range, not a lifetime.
About Tiberias
Tiberias, on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel, was founded around 20 CE by Herod Antipas and named for the emperor Tiberius. After the Sanhedrin settled there around 220 it became a leading centre of Jewish learning: by tradition beginning with Rabbi Yochanan bar Nappacha, the Jerusalem Talmud took shape there (scholars date its completion to about 400), and the Masoretes of Tiberias later devised the Tiberian vocalisation of Hebrew. After the Muslim conquest around 636 it was the capital of the district of Jund al-Urdunn, and the hadith scholar al-Tabarani was born there in 873. Maimonides was buried in Tiberias, and in 1783 the Hasidic leader Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk moved there from Safed with his followers.
In Tiberias at the same time
Anonymous Merkavah mystics, Shimon ben Eleazar, Yose ben Yehuda, Chiyya HaGadol, Levi bar Sisi, R. Yochanan
In the same place & time
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Sages whose lives overlapped with Sefer Yetzirah (trad. Avraham Avinu)’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
The world in their lifetime
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Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Sefer Yetzirah (trad. Avraham Avinu)’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Works(2)
Sefer Yetzirahספר יצירה
Jerusalem · 500
The proto-text of Jewish mysticism. A short, dense work attributed traditionally to Abraham and dated by scholars to somewhere between the 2nd century BCE and the early Geonic period. It describes the creation of the world through ten primordial numbers (sefirot) and twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet — the architecture every later kabbalistic system would build on.