The Sefer Yetzirah in its Mediterranean Context

In spite of centuries of being under the careful scrutiny both by scholars and pious men, the Sefer Yetzirah still holds many secrets, not only about its meaning but also about its very origins, namely the date of its composition and the milieu in which it was written or redacted. One way to try to answer this twofold riddle is to use the comparativistic method, in order to determine, if not precise influences, at least points of similarity with other works across the Mediterranean. A new interpretation will be suggested, which will will focus on the text itself, rather than later exegesis. It is already known, from the studies of Shlomo Pines and other scholars, that it has some points of similarity with Christian works composed in III Century Syria, such as Bardaisan of Edessa’s Against fate and the pseudo-Clementine Homilies, and this hypothesis will be further validated by other elements, that apparently have been overlooked until now, which seem to point in the same direction, such as the apparent cosmology that the work seem to implicitly describe. At the same time, a new interpretation of the role of the wheel of letters will be presented, together with a hypothesis about the peculiar sequence of celestial bodies (namely planets and constellations), in order to explain a possible reason why it differs from virtually any other melothesia, from Late Antiquity until the Middle Ages.