Since the secret oral traditions of the Kabbala were first committed to parchment in the 13th century, the controversy has raged fast and furious. Who wrote the Zohar? And why?

In 1286 the Jewish world was in turmoil. Groups of rabbis and kabbalists whispered tidings of a new book of mysticism that had come to light. The rumors stated that the book had been written by Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai, the legendary tanna who lived and taught in Eretz Israel in the 2nd CE. According to the rumors, the pages of the book had been hidden in earthenware jugs and secretly handed down from rabbi to student for generations, until they were revealed by one of the great kabbalists of that period – Rabbi Moshe de Leon.

 

The Quest for the Source

The authenticity of the book immediately became a subject of intense controversy. Leaders and Torah scholars divided into schools of thought some claiming one thing, some another.  The question was of great enough urgency to cause one such scholar, Rabbi Yitzhak of Akko, to embark on a personal quest to determine the origin of the Zohar.

Rabbi Yitzhak of Akko (1250-1340), one of the great sages of his generation, was a disciple of Nachmanides and Rabbi Shmuel Tzarfati. When Akko was conquered by Sultan al-Ashraf Khalil of Egypt in 5051 (1291), most of Akko’s Jewish and Christian residents were killed or captured, and Rabbi Yitzhak was among the captives. It is unclear when and in what country he was redeemed and released, but there is evidence of his presence in Italy in 5061 (1301). That same year he traveled to Spain to research the source of the Zohar.

The full report of Rabbi Yitzhak of Akko’s research is recorded in his chronicle, Divrei Ha-yamim, but this work was never printed and the manuscript disappeared. An excerpt from it appeared in 1510 in Constantinople, in the first edition of Sefer Ha-yuhasin (The Book of Geneology) by Rabbi Abraham Zacuto (1418-1515). That excerpt was deleted from all subsequent editions of the book. This is what Rabbi Yitzhak of Akko wrote:

Since I saw that its words were wondrous, drawn from a heavenly source, the flowing wellspring… I pursued Rabbi Moshe de Leon … and asked the scholars who held his works in their possession how they came to acquire these wondrous secrets, which had always been passed on by word of mouth and never been written down, but were now written plainly in his book for anyone who could read to see?

 

Tradition, Inspiration, or Fake?

Rabbi Yitzhak  documented the different versions of the source of the Zohar. One opinion avowed that the book passed from generation to generation and was given to Rabbi Moshe b. Nahman (Nachmanides or Ramban, 1194-1270), one of the prominent and most credible rabbinical figures of his generation. Nachmanides sent the book from Eretz Israel to his son in Catalonia, but the book never reached its destination and instead fell into the hands of Rabbi Moshe de Leon. The second version was that Rabbi Moshe de Leon wrote the book “in the author’s name,” an expression referring to a kind of mystically inspired vision in which the subject identifies with an ancient figure and serves as a medium for transmissions from him, writing while in an ecstatic trance (See Zohar Unzipped and Z-rated.

Opponents of the Zohar said there was no communication and no other heavenly source. Rather, Rabbi Moshe de Leon wrote the book himself, for monetary gain: “He claims his utterances are of lofty origins, faithfully copied down from a book composed by Rashbi, his son Rabbi Elazar and their colleagues – to justify taking an inflated price for his manuscript.”

In Valladolid, Spain, Rabbi Yitzhak of Akko caught up with Rabbi Moshe de Leon, who swore to him: “May God do so unto me and even more, if this is not the ancient book written by Rashbi, which is now in my home in the state of Seville, which is Avila. When you come to me there I will show it to you.” They parted ways, but unfortunately Rabbi Moshe de Leon died before Rabbi Yitzhak of Akko arrived in Seville to view the purportedly original manuscripts. Instead he recorded the testimony of “a revered old sage” named Rabbi David of Corfu,  who claimed that Rabbi Moshe de Leon’s wife told him her husband had written the book himself:

May God do so unto me and even more if this book was ever with my husband, but from his head and his heart and his mind he wrote all its contents. I said to him when I saw him writing without anything in front of him, ‘Why say that you copied from a book when there is no book and you are writing from your own head? You will be more respected if you admit that you are writing your own thoughts.’ And he replied:‘If I tell them I devised this mystic tract from my own mind, they call it fabricated, will pay no attention to what I have written and will not give me a peso for my efforts. But when they hear that I am copying  from the book of the Zohar written by Rashbi with divine inspiration, you’ll see that they will pay me significant sums of money.’

Later Rabbi Yitzhak of Akko met Rabbi Yosef Halevi, the son of Rabbi Todros the kabbalist, who told him unequivocally: “Know and believe that the book of the Zohar, written by Rashbi, was in the hands of that Rabbi Moshe, and he copied it and gave it to whomever he saw fit.” Rabbi Yosef claimed that he tested Rabbi Moshe de Leon and asked him to write him a copy to replace part of a manuscript he had lost. It turned out that the new copy was identical to the original and Rabbi Yosef saw this as proof that Rabbi Moshe de Leon had an original manuscript, from which he was making copies. Rabbi Yitzhak of Akko found other scholars who claimed Rabbi Moshe de Leon had an authentic original in his possession, and that his wife lied because she was afraid of being censured for selling the original for a pittance, as parchment to be reused. At this point the testimony of Rabbi Yitzhak of Akko ends.

This excerpt is the only surviving part of Rabbi Yitzhak of Akko’s original Divrei Ha-yamim, and since it ends in the middle we have no way of knowing what his conclusions were and whether he accepted Rabbi Moshe de Leon’s account as credible or not.

Despite the continuing controversy, the Zohar became ensconced over the centuries as the most important canonical Jewish mystical text. Its greatest impact was on the Jews exiled from Spain, and subsequently on the group of kabbalists in Safed in the 16th century. After Rabbi Yitzhak Luria, the Arizal, established the principles of his kabbalistic doctrine as a commentary on the main texts from the Zohar – the Adarot (Assemblies) and Safra De-tzniuta (The Book of Mystery) – his writings became firmly accepted as the “Bible of Kabbala.”