The role that Marcus gives to the alphabetical letters in their connection to the organs of the body of “Truth” is similar to the role of the letters at the level of the human body (נפש), one of the three levels of the created world in Sefer Yeṣirah. At this level, as we saw in the Introduction, each letter represents or is responsible for a certain organ of the human body. Sefer Yeṣirah describes the three levels of the three immot letters A-M-Š: “He made alef rule over air [ruaḥ], and bound to it a crown, and combined them with each other, and formed with them air [awir] in the universe, and humidity in the year, and the chest in mankind male and female. He made mem rule over water, and bound to it a crown, and combined them with each other, and formed with it earth in the universe, cold in the year, and the belly in mankind male and female. He made shin rule over fire, and bound to it a crown, and combined them with each other, and formed with it heaven in the universe, heat in the year, and the head in mankind male and female.”18
Of special interest is Irenaeus’s account of the similarity in both structure and content of the emanation of the upper worlds from letters as presented by Marcus and the myth of creation widespread in Mandaean sources. In her book on the Mandaeans, Ethel Stefana Drower describes their particular approach to the alphabet and the role of letters in the creation of the world.19 A reading of Mandaean sources discloses the importance of letters in the divine realm20—for example, the use of letters to name various elements in the pleroma and the title given to the great mother in one of the Mandaean creation myths, “Mother of the Twenty-Four Letters of the Alphabet,”21 which recalls Marcus’s “Truth.” One can infer from Mandaean texts that, similar to the description of the body of the truth in the Valentinian myth, the body of Adam Kasia, the primordial man, is also composed of letters.22 The fact that similar depictions can be found in early Valentinian Gnosticism and in later Mandaean sources demonstrates that those beliefs were prevalent over an expanse of time and geographic location. This illustrates and justifies my claim that Sefer Yeṣirah, in around the seventh century, represents a variant of these diverse expressions.
Another point relevant to my argument follows from Marcus’s contention concerning the hierarchy between different groups of letters. According to him, the consonants are superior to the vowels and semivowels.23 Marcus believes that since the creator lacks voice or utterance, the vowels, being closer to vocalization, have a lower status: “Know, then, that these your twenty-four letters are symbolical emissions of the three powers which embrace the entire number of characters on high. You are to consider the nine mute letters as belonging to Father and Truth, because these are mute, that is, they are unspeakable and unutterable. The eight semivowels, as belonging to Word and Life, because they are, as it were, intermediate between the mutes and the vowels, they receive the emission from the Aeons above; but an ascent from those below. The vowels too are seven. They belong to Man and Church, because the voice that came forth through Man formed all things; for the sound of the voice clothed them with form. So Word and Life possess eight [of the letters]; Man and Church seven; Father and Truth, nine.”24
This text is unusual among those from late antiquity that I know of, in attesting to the superiority of the consonants over the vowels. The more prevalent attitude in late antiquity to the letters was opposite; the seven Greek vowels symbolized the seven planets or divine beings and were considered to be superior to the other letters. Long sequences of Greek vowels in many Greek and Coptic amulets testify to the uniqueness and high status of the vowels. Certain texts from the Nag-Hammadi library25 contain sequences of vowels in this vein, symbolizing the highest realm of human cognition. In a treatise called “The Discourse of the Eighth and the Ninth,” for example, combinations of vowels are used to praise God: “Grace! After these things, I give thanks by singing a hymn to you. For I have received life from you, when you made me wise I praise you. I call your name that is hidden with me: a ō ee ō ēēē ōōō iii ōōōō ooooo ōōōōō uuuuuu ōōōōōōōōōōōōōōōōōōōōōō.26 You are the one who exists with the spirit. I sing a hymn to you reverently.”27
The vowels, specifically because of their vocalization, are seen here as hidden and exalted and therefore are apt for the praise of God; as Patricia Cox-Miller puts it: “[T]he vowels of the alphabet designate that point at which the human and divine worlds intersect.… [T]o speak this language is not only to invoke the God; it is also to sound the depths of one’s own primal reality. These strings of vowels are hymnic recitations of praise to the God and to human Godlikeness.”28
Another well-known example of the symbolic meaning of the vowels can be gleaned from the Pythagorean Nicomachus of Gerasa’s (60–120 CE) treatise “Introduction to Arithmetic.” Nicomachus writes that the seven vowels are the sounds of the seven celestial spheres. Those sounds are ineffable but can be revealed through other means, such as arithmetic, geometry, and grammar. In terms of hierarchy, the vowels, according to Nicomachus, are like the soul of the material consonants that constitute the body: “For indeed the sounds of each sphere of the seven, each sphere naturally producing one certain kind of sound, are called ‘vowels.’ They are ineffable in and of themselves, but are recalled by the wise with respect to everything made up of them. Wherefore also here (i.e., on earth) this sound has power, which in arithmetic is a monad, in geometry a point, in grammar a letter (of the alphabet). And combined with the material letters, which are the consonants, as the soul to the body.”29
The elevation of the vowels over the consonants, on the one hand, and taking the consonant to be superior to the other letters, on the other—this divergence will contribute to our discussion in the following two chapters. It is an opposition reflected in the differences between the two main traditions concerning the creation of the world from letters. As we will see, the main tradition in Jewish sources, in both rabbinic and Hekhalot literature, sees the world as having been created by the letters of the ineffable name: Y, H, W. This is similar to, and probably caused by, the approach that gives higher status to the vowels, compared with the other letters. Similarly, the second approach to the creation of the world from letters, arguing that the world was created by all the letters of the alphabet, being the approach at the heart of Sefer Yeṣirah, does not hold the vowels to be superior and, as such, is much closer to Marcus’s account.30
Irenaeus, however, rejects Marcus’s opinions, calling them stupid and unfounded. To illustrate their absurdity, he refers to a historical argument concerning the evolution of Greek writing. According to Irenaeus, the Greeks received an alphabet, comprising only sixteen letters, from the Phoenicians via Cadmus, and the remaining letters were gradually formed only later. Irenaeus employs ridicule to ask whether the “Truth,” which, for Marcus, comprises twenty-four letters, did not exist until the Greek alphabet was fully developed:
Who would not hate the deplorable contriver of such falsehoods, when he sees the Truth made into an idol by Marcus and branded with letters of the Alphabet? The Greeks confess that it is only recently—relative to what was from the beginning, which is expressed by “Yesterday and the day before yesterday” that first they received sixteen letters through Cadmus. Then, as time went on, they themselves invented others; at one time the aspirate, at another the double letters; last of all, Palamedes added the long letters to the rest. By inference, before these letters were made by the Greeks, Truth did not exist! For the body of Truth, according to you, Marcus, was begotten later than Cadmus, and so later than those who existed before him. It is also begotten later than those who added the rest of the characters; later than yourself, because you alone reduced to an idol her whom you call Truth.31
Irenaeus rejects another assertion about the importance of the alphabetical letters, contained in a legend common in early Christian circles about the young Jesus, who, in the process of learning the letters of the alphabet, reveals to his teacher the secrets concealed in them. Irenaeus contends that the story is false and should be completely disregarded.32