(Hebrew: “The book of Splendor, Radiance, Enlightenment”) Medieval Qabbalistic book of immense proportions and commensurate influence, completed by the fourteenth century in Spain; a mystical commentary on biblical passages; stories of the mystical life of the early Rabbinic authority Simeon b. Yohai; the principal document for conveying Judaism’s story in mystical form. The work is a multi-layered commentary on the Pentateuch and the Five Scrolls (Esther, Ruth, Song of Songs, Qohelet (Ecclesiastes) and Lamentation s). It is an anthology of texts composed and revised over a long period of time, from the latter part of the thirteenth century into the fourteenth century. The main, but not the sole, author was Moses de Leon, who worked in Spain between 1281 and 1286. We can speak of a completed book of the Zohar only from the sixteenth century, when Qabbalists began to prepare the manuscripts for printing.
The Zohar speaks in the name of important second-century rabbis. This is because the mystics took for granted that their doctrines were tradition, part of the Torah, and derived from the same authorities who gave them the MISHNAH and other parts of the Oral Torah. In the Zohar, hidden meanings of Scripture are spelled out. These meanings contain the story of the creation and the cosmos that unfolds in the structure of the ten emanations (sefirot) of God. These provide the paradigmatic plan for all that unfolds from the supreme deity, called the “En Sof,” or infinity. See QABBALAH.
