Some esoteric texts have been read and copied without interruption for centuries. Others have resurfaced almost by chance, thanks to the patient work of scholars. The Sefer ha-Razim, the "Book of Mysteries", belongs to the second category: a Hebrew work of late antiquity reconstructed in the twentieth century from scattered fragments. Today it is regarded as one of the most important witnesses to ancient Jewish magic.
A modern reconstruction
The text has not come down to us in a complete manuscript. The Israeli scholar Mordecai Margalioth reconstructed and published it in 1966, bringing together fragments from the Cairo Genizah, the storeroom of a synagogue where disused texts had accumulated for centuries, together with quotations and reworkings preserved in later works, including the Sefer Raziel, and medieval translations.
Margalioth's reconstruction has been discussed and partly revised by later scholars, but it made it possible to recognise the existence of a coherent and ancient work.
Dating and setting
The Sefer ha-Razim is written in a Hebrew recalling that of early rabbinic literature and contains numerous loanwords from Greek. Scholars place it in late antiquity, generally between the third and fifth centuries, although the precise date remains debated. The text reflects a setting in which Jewish culture was in close contact with the Greco-Roman world, and in which magical practices circulated between different communities.
The frame
According to the introduction, the book was revealed to Noah by the angel Raziel before the flood. Noah wrote it on a precious stone and kept it in the ark. The book then passed down the generations to Solomon, who drew from it his wisdom and his power over spirits.
This frame places the text in a sacred genealogy, similar to the one found in the Sefer Raziel, and gives it a primordial authority.
The seven firmaments
The structure of the Sefer ha-Razim follows the order of the seven firmaments, the stacked heavens of ancient cosmology. For each firmament the text describes:
- the hosts of angels who dwell there;
- their leaders and their names;
- the functions they perform;
- the ritual operations that can be carried out by invoking them.
The first six firmaments contain the angels who can be invoked for various purposes. The seventh, by contrast, is the place of God's throne, and its description takes on the tone of a hymn of praise, without ritual instructions. The structure of the book is therefore ascending: one rises from the angels closest to the world up to the divine presence.
The prayer to Helios
One of the most surprising passages of the text concerns the fourth firmament, linked to the sun. Here the Sefer ha-Razim contains a prayer addressed to Helios, the personified sun, written in Greek but transliterated into Hebrew characters. The sun is greeted as a luminous being travelling across the sky.
This passage has aroused great interest among scholars, because it shows how permeable the boundary between Jewish and Greek culture was in late antiquity. It should be said that in the text the sun remains subordinate to God: it is a luminous creature, not an independent deity. It is worth recalling that in the same period some synagogues in the land of Israel were also decorated with mosaics showing Helios at the centre of the zodiac.
An ordered magic
The operations described in the Sefer ha-Razim touch many aspects of life: knowledge of the future, protection, relations with others. Yet the text frames them within an ordered cosmology in which every angel has a place and a function. Magic appears as knowledge of the structure of heaven and of its government.
The book also requires purifications and abstinence, and insists on the need to act at the proper time and place.
The importance of the text
The Sefer ha-Razim is valuable for several reasons:
- it is one of the oldest Jewish magical works organised in a systematic way;
- it documents the contacts between Jewish culture and the Greco-Roman world;
- it shows the continuity between ancient magic and medieval texts such as the Sefer Raziel;
- it offers a detailed angelic cosmology connected with the literature of the heavenly palaces.
In short
- The Sefer ha-Razim is a late antique Hebrew text, reconstructed by Mordecai Margalioth in 1966.
- It is based on fragments from the Cairo Genizah and on later reworkings.
- According to its frame, it was revealed to Noah by the angel Raziel.
- It is organised by the seven firmaments, with the seventh devoted to God's throne.
- It contains a prayer to Helios in Greek transliterated into Hebrew characters.
