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First edition of R. Menachem Recanati's commentary on the Torah (Venice, 1523)
INTRODUCTION:
We have
previously looked at the origins of the Zohar, one of (modern[1])
Kabbalah’s foundational works, which first emerged around 1290. The traditional view is that it was authored
by R. Shimon bar Yochai, a second-century Tannaic sage; whereas
historical evidence, as well as some rabbinic sources, point to its author being
R. Moshe de León (1240-1305). The latter
claimed to have found the writings of R. Shimon bar Yochai from a thousand
years earlier and simply published[2]
them in the Zohar. Either way, the Zohar only surfaced at
around 1290.
This
article, based extensively on the research of Professor Oded Yisraeli[3]
explores how three of the earliest mystics explained the origins of the Kabbalah
in general.
Yisraeli
takes an interesting tack because instead of relying on later scholarship, he
focuses on early contemporaneous mystical sources which attempt to explain the
origins of Kabbalah to other mystics. His research led him to uncover
three primary yet divergent views on when and where Kabbalah originated.
