Pictured here is the front page of the Lemberg 1892 edition of Sefer ha-Temunah (the Book of the Image). This anonymous work is considered a classical exposition of the Kabbalistic world cycles doctrine (Hebrew: Torat ha-Shemitot). Gershom Scholem, in his groundbreaking studies on the origins of the Kabbalah, considered this text to be a product of the Gerona circle, the earliest Kabbalistic circle in Spain, whose activities are traced to the first half of the thirteenth century. Late in his life Scholem acknowledged that his conclusions about the date and the historical circumstances of Sefer ha-Temunah are unsustainable. Subsequent studies carried by Efraim Gottlieb and especially by Moshe Idel suggested that Sefer ha-Temunah was written well into the Fourteenth century by a Kabbalist who most probably lived outside Spain. The reassessment concerning of the time and the place of Sefer ha-Temunah open the door for a new understanding regarding the development of the world cycles doctrine in early Kabbalah. Rather than emerging suddenly, it seems now that the world cycles doctrine was developing gradually, from its concise formulations in writings of the Gerona circle of Kabbalists of the first half of the thirteenth century, to the elaborate expositions of works such as Ma'arekhet ha-Elohut (The Divine System) and Sefer ha-Temunah, about a century later.
