This marvellous and famous document pretends to be a monologue of the patriarch Abraham, and premises that the contemplations it contains are those which led the father of the Hebrews to abandon the worship of the stars and to embrace the faith of the true God. Hence the remark of the celebrated philosopher, R. Jehudah Ha-Levi (born about 1086)—“The Book of the Creation, which belongs to our father Abraham, ... demonstrates the existence of the Deity and the Divine Unity, by things which are on the one hand manifold and multifarious, whilst on the other hand they converge and harmonize; and this harmony can only proceed from One who originated it.” [39] (Khozari, iv. 25.) The whole Treatise consists of six Perakim (‏פרקיﬦ‎) or chapters, subdivided into thirty-three very brief Mishnas (‏משנות‎) or sections, as follows. The first chapter has twelve sections, the second has five, the third five, the fourth four, the fifth three, and the sixth four sections. The doctrines which it propounds are delivered in the style of aphorisms or theorems, and, pretending to be the dicta of Abraham, are laid down very dogmatically, in a manner becoming the authority of this patriarch. As has already been intimated, the design of this treatise is to exhibit a system whereby the universe may be viewed methodically in connection with the truths given in the Bible, thus shewing, from the gradual and systematic development of the creation, and from the harmony which prevails in all its multitudinous component parts, that One God produced it all, and that He is over all. The order in which God gave rise to this creation out of nothing (‏יצר ממש מתוהו‎), and the harmony which pervades all the constituent parts of the universe are shown by the analogy which subsists between the visible things and the signs of thought, or the means whereby wisdom is expressed and perpetuated among men. Since the letters have no absolute value, nor can they be used as mere forms, but serve as the medium between essence and form, and like words, assume the relation of form to the real essence, and of essence to the embryo and unexpressed thought, great value is attached to these letters, and to the combinations and analogies of which they are capable. The patriarch Abraham, therefore, employs the double value of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet; [40] he uses them, both in their phonetic nature and in their sacred character, as expressing the divine truths of the Scriptures. But, since the Hebrew alphabet is also used as numerals, which are represented by the fundamental number ten, and since the vowels of the language are also ten in number, this decade is added to the twenty-two letters, and these two kinds of signs—i.e., the twenty-two letters of the alphabet and the ten fundamental numbers—are designated the thirty-two ways of secret wisdom; and the treatise opens with the declaration [41]—“By thirty-two paths of secret wisdom, the Eternal,