Sêfer Yetsiráh: a natureza da linguagem na criação do mundo e sua manutenção através do alfabeto hebraico

Abstract

Instead of language been created by men, Jewish mysticism believes the world and everything that exists has been created and is mantained by God through language, specifically among the infinite combinations of the Hebrew Alphabet (the twenty two letters and the ten first numbers). This way, the entire universe is a phenomenon of language. The present paper discusses the importance of language and a type of Metaphysics of the Hebrew Alphabet, comparing the different views between the philosophical tradition, represented here by the following texts: Cratylus, by Plato and De Magistro, by Augustine, and, representing the jewish tradition, especially the jewish mysticism, the Sêfer Yetsiráh, of unknown author. As part of this analysis the paper presents, over all, Gershom Scholem s Theory of Language and The Metaphysics of the Hebrew Alphabet by Elias Lipiner, as well as the approach to Philosophy of Language, through the jewish mystic view, specifically from the Cabalah