[Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought, 20, 2005] “Engraved, Hewed, Sealed”: Sefirot and Divine Writing in the Sefer Yetzirah Giulio Busi At its appearance in the Sefer Yetzirah, the word sefirah is enveloped in mystery. The beginning of the book – where the idea of sefirot is introduced – still represents today one of the most difficult passages in all of Hebrew literature. Even though, from the second chapter on, the discussion of the 22 letters can be generally followed and analyzed, the real cultural meaning of the sefirotic dynamic has so far resisted scholarly inquiry. Notwithstanding a large amount of new research on the Sefer Yetzirah, the most influential discussion about the etymology and the setting of the sefirot is probably still the one offered by Scholem at the beginning of his Origins of the Kabbalah. Scholem is, as usual, very clear in his pres- entation. According to him, “the ten primordial numbers [Urzahlen, in the original German text] are called sefirot – a Hebrew noun, newly formed here, that bears no relation to the Greek word sphaira, but is derived from a Hebrew verb meaning ‘to count’”. 1 It is worth mention- ing here that Scholem’s statement, according to which the word sefirah is an innovation by the author of the Sefer Yetzirah, reflects his extremely early dating of the book. 2 In fact, in the Origins of the Kabbalah, Scholem attributed the book to the 2nd–3rd century. He revised this idea in his article in the Encyclopaedia Judaica, where he writes that it was com- posed between the 3rd and 6th century. 3 Without entering here into the 1 G. Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, ed. Z. Werblowski, trans. A. Arkush, Philadelphia-Princeton 1987, p. 26 (cf. Ursprung und Anfange der Kabbala, Berlin ¨ 1963, p. 22). 2 In fact, in defining the relationship between sefirah and mispar, Scholem echoes a similar statement by Leo Baeck, who wrote in 1938: “hier [im Sefer Yetzirah] an Stelle des ublichen Mispar Zahl dieser besondere Terminus Sefirah gebildet ¨ worden ist” (L. Baeck, “Ssefer [sic] Jezira”, in Aus drei Jahrtausenden, Tubingen ¨ 1958 (first ed.: 1938), pp. 256–271: 257). 3 G. Scholem, s.v. “Yezirah, Sefer”, in Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 16, Jerusalem 1972,