Spherical Sefirot in Early Kabbalah

In the vein of important observations made by several scholars, in this article I discuss a variegated corpus of early sefirotic passages attesting to the prevalence and conventionality of spherical perceptions of the sefirot, already at the earliest stages of the sefirotic literature known to us. First, I show that for at least a substantial number of the earliest authors, seeing the sefirot as a set of concentric, hierarchical spherical divine entities was a self-evident premise. Second, I offer a tripartite division of the material, based on the different types of inner hierarchies characterizing the spherical descriptions. For each of these types I offer a relevant ideational context, related to contemporary cosmological conventions as well as to various theological notions.