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The earliest extant Hebrew text of systematic, speculative thought--the Sefer Yezirah, written sometime in the sixth century--states that God created the world by means of thirty-two secret paths of wisdom, ten Sefirot or numbers and twenty-two letters. From the Sefirot were created all abstract things; from the twenty-two letters were created all the real beings in the three strata of the cosmos--the world, time and the human body. This Kabbalistic interpretation of the world's beginning reflects a general characteristic of Western thought. The universe, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, is conceived of as a written Book made from numbers and letters; the key to understanding the universe lies in our ability to read these properly and master their combination, and thereby learn to give life to some part of that colossal text, in imitation of our Maker.

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It is impossible to decide whether he’s joking or wholly serious; he would probably regard the issue as irrelevant.

--Frank Kermode, reviewing Harold Bloom’s Jesus and Yahweh: the Names Divine

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