text · B0104
Zohar זהר
The central text of kabbalah. It enters THIS era of the atlas — the rishonim — because that is when it verifiably enters history: whatever one holds about its origin, its publication belongs to 13th-century Castile. On the pattern of the Mishnah entity (Mishnah), the traditional attribution and the academic account are carried as separate claims, and the entity is dated by its documented appearance, not its claimed antiquity.
I. Who
- Hebrew
- זהר
- Also known as
- Sefer HaZohar, Midrash of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai
- Era
- rishonim
II. When
- Traditional
- teachings of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai (2nd century CE); revealed/published late 13th century
- Academic
- composed/compiled in Castile, c. 1280–1300, in the circle of Moshe de Leon
- Duration
- ≈20 years
- Precision
- disputed
IV. What
- Language
- Aramaic (a distinctive literary Aramaic)
- Redaction
- Circulated in Castile from the 1280s by R' Moshe de Leon as the ancient midrash of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai; academic scholarship attributes its main strata to de Leon's circle, with later strata (Tikkunei Zohar, Ra'aya Mehemna) added within decades.
- Structure
- A vast mystical midrash arranged on the Torah's portions, with major embedded units (Idra Rabba, Idra Zuta, Sifra DeTzniuta) and companion strata; the standard editions follow the Mantua/Vilna pagination.
V. How do we know
| Claim | Evidence | Confidence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tradition attributes the Zohar to Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai (Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai) and his circle, concealed for a millennium and revealed in the generation of the rishonim.
Confidence reflects historical attestation of authorship, not the text's canonical standing in kabbalah, which is not this field's subject.
|
tradition | ★★☆☆☆ | |
| The Zohar first appears, quoted and circulated, in Castile in the 1280s–90s through R' Moshe de Leon; Yitzchak of Akko's inquiry after de Leon's death (1305) — recording the widow's alleged denial of an ancient exemplar — is the earliest source-critical investigation of it, and modern scholarship (Scholem and after) assigns the main corpus to de Leon's circle. | reconstruction external | ★★★★☆ | |
| Its opening discourse expounds the rose among thorns as Knesset Yisrael — the style, at once midrashic and symbolic, that made it kabbalah's core curriculum, canonized in Tzfat (the Arizal's teaching presupposes it) and printed at Mantua and Cremona in the 1550s amid controversy. | tradition | ★★★★☆ |