page_title: Sefer Yetzirah
section_title: Manuscripts
hierarchical_section_title: Sefer Yetzirah / Origin / Manuscripts
caption_attribution_description: English: Title Page of Sefer Yetzirah, Mantua, Italy, 1562
context_page_description: Sefer Yetzirah is the title of the earliest extant book on Jewish mysticism, although some early commentators treated it as a treatise on mathematical and linguistic theory as opposed to Kabbalah. Yetzirah is more literally translated as "Formation"; the word Briah is used for "Creation". The book is traditionally ascribed to the patriarch Abraham, although others attribute its writing to Rabbi Akiva. Modern scholars have not reached consensus on the question of its origins. According to Rabbi Saadia Gaon, the objective of the book's author was to convey in writing how the things of our universe came into existence.
  The famous opening words of the book are as follows:
context_section_description: The Sefer Yetzirah exists in multiple versions, including:
  1) The Short Version,
  2) The Long Version,
  3) The Saadia Version, and
  4) The Gra Version, among others.
  The differences among these versions tend to be minor.
  The Short Version comprises about 1300 words while the Long Version about twice that. In the 13th century, Abraham Abulafia noted the existence of both of them.
  In the 10th century, Saadia Gaon wrote his commentary based on a manuscript which was a reorganized copy of the Longer Version, now called the "Saadia Version".
  In the 16th century, Isaac Luria redacted the Short Version to harmonize it with the Zohar, and then in the 18th century, the Vilna Gaon (known as "the Gra") further redacted it. This text is called the "Gra Version".
caption: Title Page of Sefer Yetzirah, Mantua, Italy, 1562
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