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
