Again, the _Sepher Jetzirah_ (_Book of Creation_)—though attributed to Abraham and though very archaic as to its contents—is first mentioned in the eleventh century by Jehuda Ho Levi (Chazari). And these two, the _Zohar_ and _Jetzirah_, are the storehouse of all the subsequent Kabalistic works. Now let us see how far the Hebrew sacred canon itself is to be trusted. The word “Kabalah” comes from the root “to receive,” and has a meaning identical with the Sanskrit “Smriti” (“received by tradition”)—a system of oral teaching, passing from one generation of priests to another, as was the case with the Brâhmanical books before they were embodied in manuscript. The Kabalistic tenets came to the Jews from the Chaldæans; and if Moses knew the primitive and universal language of the Initiates, as did every Egyptian priest, and was thus acquainted with the numerical system on which it was based, he may have—and we say he has—written _Genesis_ and other “scrolls.” The five books that now pass current under his name, the _Pentateuch_, are _not_ withal the original Mosaic Records.(317) Nor were they written in the old Hebrew square letters, nor even in the Samaritan characters, for both alphabets belong to a date later than that of Moses, and Hebrew—as it is now known—did not exist in the days of the great lawgiver, either as a language or as an alphabet. As no statements contained in the records of the Secret Doctrine of the East are regarded as of any value by the world in general, and since to be understood by and convince the reader one has to quote names familiar to him, and use arguments and proofs out of documents which are accessible to all, the following facts may perhaps demonstrate that our assertions are not merely based on the teachings of Occult Records: (1) The great Orientalist and scholar, Klaproth, denied positively the antiquity of the so‐called Hebrew alphabet, on the ground that the square Hebrew characters in which the Biblical manuscripts are written, and which we use in printing, were probably derived from the Palmyrene writing, or some other Semitic alphabet, so that the Hebrew _Bible_ is written merely in the Chaldaic phonographs of Hebrew words. The late Dr. Kenealy pertinently remarked that the Jews and Christians rely on A phonograph of a dead and almost unknown language, as abstruse as the cuneiform letters on the mountains of Assyria.(318) (2) The attempts made to carry back the square Hebrew character to the time of Esdras (B.C. 458) have all failed. (3) It is asserted that the Jews took their alphabet from the Babylonians during their captivity. But there are scholars who do not carry the now‐ known Hebrew square letters beyond the late period of the fourth century, A.D.(319) The Hebrew Bible is precisely as if Homer were printed, not in Greek, but in English letters; or as if Shakespeare’s works were phonographed in Burmese.(320)