Chasidut su Salmi 47:5

Similarly, we find that the generations of the Bible produced several oral traditions of the mysteries of the Torah that were received as valid by our sages. It is accepted that one of the classic Kabbalistic texts, “Raziel HaMalakh” is the same as the book of Adam HaRishon and the book of Hanokh. But clearly, when we look at the version of the book, “Raziel HaMalakh,” that exists today, we see many additions from later sages – from the, “letters of Rabbi Akiva,” to the “Chapters of Rabbi Eliezar,” to the manuscripts of the Geonim.³⁷Geonim (coming from the phrase [Tehillim, 47:5], “ge’on Ya’akov,’ meaning, ‘the pride of Ya’akov’) were the Torah leaders who lived in Babylon immediately after the end of the Talmudic period, from roughly 700 C.E. To 1000 C.E.. Additional material was added by each of the sages of the following generations who possessed this text. This was true with many ancient texts. Each one who had the book would add to it, both the great and the small, according to their levels. Certainly we no longer know the identity of many of the contributors to these books. We attribute the Sefer Yetzirah (the Book of Formation) to Avraham. It contains five chapters. The Magen Avot of R. Shimon bar Tzemach z”l, the “Tashbetz,” mentions this in reference to the statement in the Gemara (Avoda Zara, 14b), “The text of Avraham Avinu’s version of the tractate of Avoda Zara contained of four-hundred chapters, and ours contains only five.” That is, what remains is our Sefer Yetzirah. He counts five chapters, because the sixth is contained in the fifth.³⁸That is, the version of the Sefer Yetzirah in our hands contains six chapters. The “Tashbetz” explains that all of these (missing chapters) dealt with the removal any concept of physicality from the supernal forces, which are ultimately only created entities. This was so that human beings not be deceived into thinking these forces to be godly. That which remains (of the missing chapters) in our possession is the Sefer Yetzirah. This is the knowledge that man needs in order to serve God, which entails separating the holy way of serving G-d from the Divine service from the invalid ways. This is as it is written in the Sefer Yetzirah (Chapter One), “Understand with wisdom, and be wise with understanding, and establish the matter with clarity, and return the Creator to His base.”