Book II endeavours to shew that all wisdom and true philosophy are

derived from the Hebrews, that Plato, Pythagoras and Zoroaster borrowed their ideas from the Bible, and that traces of the Hebrew language are to be found in the liturgies and sacred books of all nations. Then follows an explanation of the four divine names, which are shown to have been transplanted into the systems of Greek philosophy. The first and most distinguished of them ‏אהיה אשר אהיה‎ ego sum qui sum (Exod. iii, 12), is translated in the Platonic philosophy by τὸ ὄντως ὢν. The second divine name, which we translate by ‏הוא‎ He, i.e., the sign of unchangeableness and of the eternal idea of the Deity, is also to be found among the Greek philosophers in the term ταυτὸν, which is opposed to θατερὸν. The third name of God used in Holy Writ is ‏אש‎ Fire. In this form God appeared in the burning bush when he first manifested himself to Moses. The prophets describe him as a burning fire, and John the Baptist depicts him as such when he says, “I baptize you with water, but he who cometh after me shall baptize you with fire.” (Matt. iii, 11.) The fire of the Hebrew prophets is the same as the ether (αἰθὴρ) mentioned in the hymns of Orpheus. But these three names are in reality only one, showing to us the divine nature in three different aspects. Thus God calls himself the Being, because every existence emanates from him; he calls himself Fire, because it is he who illuminates and animates all things and he is always He, because he always remains like himself amidst the infinite variety of his works. Now just as there are names which express the nature of the Deity, so there are names which refer to his attributes, and these are the ten Sephiroth. If we look away from every attribute and every definite point of view in which the divine subsistence may be contemplated, if we endeavour to depict the absolute Being as concentrating himself within himself, and not affording us any explicable relation to our intellect, he is then described by a name which it is forbidden to pronounce, by the thrice holy Tetragrammaton, the name Jehovah (‏יהוה‎) the Shem Ha-Mephorash (‏שם המפורש‎). There is no doubt that the tetrad (τετρακτύς) of Pythagoras is an imitation of the Hebrew Tetragrammaton, and that the worship of the decade has simply been invented in honour of the ten Sephiroth. The four letters composing this name represent the four fundamental constituents of the body (i.e., heat, cold, dryness and humidity), the four geometrical principal points (i.e., the point, the line, flat and body), the four notes of the musical scale, the four rivers in the earthly paradise, the four symbolical figures in the vision of Ezekiel, &c., &c., &c. Moreover if we look at these four letters separately we shall find that each of them has equally a recondite meaning. The first letter ‏י‎, which also stands for the number ten, and which by its form reminds us of the mathematical point, teaches us that God is the beginning and end of all things. The number five, expressed by ‏ה‎ the second letter, shows us the union of God with nature—of God inasmuch as he is depicted by the number three, i.e., the Trinity; and of visible nature, inasmuch as it is represented by Plato and Pythagoras under the dual. The number six, expressed by ‏ו‎, the third letter, which is likewise revered in the Pythagorean school, is formed by the combination of one, two, and three, the symbol of all perfection. Moreover the number six is the symbol of the cube, the bodies (solida), or the world. Hence it is evident that the world has in it the imprint of divine perfection. The fourth and last letter of this divine name (‏ה‎) is like the second, represents the number five, and here symbolizes the human and rational soul, which is the medium between heaven and earth, just as five is the centre of the decade, the symbolic expression of the totality of things.