Sefer Yetzirah §§ 1-2 -- the thirty-two paths and the ten Sefirot (v1, baseline)

Sefer Yetzirah · Anonymous; pseudepigraphically ascribed to the patriarch Abraham. Composed c. 2nd-9th century CE; the dating is contested, with Hayman 2004 favoring an earlier (late-antique) provenance.

canonical

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About Sefer Yetzirah §§ 1-2 -- the thirty-two paths and the ten Sefirot (v1, baseline)

this is a first-pass rendering of the opening of Sefer Yetzirah (the "Book of Formation"), kept on its own page as evidence of the Targum engine's development. The fuller, scaffolded v2 edition supersedes it.

The text itself is the oldest work of Jewish cosmological speculation: creation derived from the "thirty-two wondrous paths of wisdom," the ten sefirot and the twenty-two Hebrew letters, made "with three books": text, number, and telling. Comparing this baseline with the v2 run is part of the glass-box method, showing exactly what the controlled glossary and frame controller add.

Sefer Yetzirah §§ 1-2 -- the thirty-two paths and the ten Sefirot (v1, baseline)

Sefer Yetzirah

ספר יצירה · א · א-ב

canonical c. 2nd-9th c. CE Hebrew Anonymous; ascribed to Abraham tr. Hekhal Targum Project (machine-assisted, provisional)

This chunk is the baseline Targum-translated form of sefer-yetzirah.1.1-2.baseline. It was drafted by the Hekhal Targum Project on 2026-05-09 with the corpus deliberately set to a non-matching slug, so the pardes frame controller did not fire, the kabbalah glossary did not apply, and the dense retriever returned zero hits. The model received only the source text, the morphology stream, and the schema.

This is a provisional draft pending editor review. The point of publishing this baseline alongside the scaffolded v2 is to make the delta visible: what scaffolding actually contributes, measured on the same source. The baseline performs a competent rendering, but the audit closes with twelve drift incidents (range_cards reference lexicon entries that do not exist on the Hekhal side) and the apparatus footnotes carry no controller-anchored interpretive register.

בשלשים ושתים נתיבות פליאות חכמה חקק יה יהוה צבאות אלהי ישראל אלהים חיים ומלך עולם אל שדי רחום וחנון רם ונשא שוכן עד וקדוש שמו וברא את עולמו בשלשה ספרים בספר וספר וסיפור׃ עשר ספירות בלי מה ועשרים ושתים אותיות יסוד שלש אמות ושבע כפולות ושתים עשרה פשוטות׃
By thirty-two wondrous paths of wisdom, Yah — YHVH of hosts, God of Israel, living God and king of the world, El Shaddai, merciful and gracious, high and exalted, dwelling forever, and holy is his name — engraved and created his world by three books (sefarim): by book, and count, and recounting (sefer, sefar, sippur). Ten sefirot of nothingness (beli mah), and twenty-two foundational letters: three mothers, seven doubles, and twelve simples.
Provisional draft (pending scholarly review)
An orientation

This edition sets the verbatim original-language text beside a fresh English rendering and a critical apparatus: a running commentary on the passage, notes on the controlled vocabulary and the rendering chosen for each term, and cross-references to the lexicon and to related sections. It is a provisional scholarly draft, released openly for correction and not yet reviewed by a credentialed editor.

Apparatus
Tradition
jewish-mysticism
Language
Hebrew
Period
c. 2nd-9th c. CE
Attribution
Anonymous; pseudepigraphically ascribed to the patriarch Abraham. Composed c. 2nd-9th century CE; the dating is contested, with Hayman 2004 favoring an earlier (late-antique) provenance.
Translator
Hekhal Targum Project (machine-assisted draft; pending scholarly review)
License
CC-BY-SA-4.0
Provenance
The underlying text is in the public domain by age. The original-language text is reproduced verbatim from an openly-licensed digital transcription (credited on the page), and this English rendering and its apparatus are a provisional scholarly draft, released openly for correction and not yet reviewed by a credentialed editor.
Cite this page

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Anonymous; pseudepigraphically ascribed to the patriarch Abraham. Composed c. 2nd-9th century CE; the dating is contested, with Hayman 2004 favoring an earlier (late-antique) provenance.. "Sefer Yetzirah §§ 1-2 -- the thirty-two paths and the ten Sefirot (v1, baseline)." Hekhal: An Open Reference for Esoteric Tradition. Last modified May 2, 2026. https://hekhal.org/texts/sefer-yetzirah-1-1-2-targum.