And it is not at all unlikely that our manuscript, in spite of obviously late additions introducing in the appendix of the work the names of Prague and Vienna, may have been brought from the East into Europe by those turbulent spirits who acknowledged a Magician as the Messiah and followed him This likely refers to the followers of Sabbatai Zevi, whose messianic movement caused massive upheaval in 17th-century Jewish communities.. Strange to say, there occurs in the appendix to our manuscript one passage (folio 6a.) which would seem to favor this theory, for it leads us on to a perfectly new track, namely, to the times of the dreamer and pseudo-Messiah, Sabbatai Zevi. In a variant incorporated in the text, the very name Sabbatai original Hebrew: שבתי (Sabbatai) introduced by the abbreviation for "Another Version" original Hebrew: נ"א (Nusach Acher), a standard scholarly abbreviation used to denote a variant reading in a text. seems to occur. The name Rabbi Shalom original Hebrew: ר' שלום (R. Shalom) (folio 6b.) also points to the same origin.

Several times the word “Tetragrammaton,” the Greek equivalent of JHVH The four-letter, ineffable name of God in Hebrew, often transliterated as Yahweh or Jehovah., is used in this manuscript; this substitution in the Jewish Kabbalah was adopted solely by Sabbatai Zevi and his party (Compare with “House of Study” original Hebrew: Beth Hamidrash, Weiss, article by N. Brüll, pp. 63 and 103).

The manuscript begins thus:—

With the help of God, may He be blessed original Hebrew: בעה"י (B'ezrat Hashem Yitbarach), a common pious invocation at the start of Jewish documents.

From here the book begins

Introduction of the Book