4worlds

According to Daniel Chanan Matt, in the preface to the Classics of Western Spirituality edition of the abridged Zohar, scholarship has proven beyond all reasonable doubt that the Zohar was originally written "between 1280 and 1286" by Moses DeLeon of Sefardic Spain. This assertion is based on the similarity of writing style to Moses' own known Midrash ha-Ne'elam and the accounts of his contemporaries.

Moses DeLeon himself claimed to be copying the work out from a more ancient source, Rebbi Shimeon Bar Yochai from second century Yisrael. This "traditionalist" viewpoint, contrary to the "scholarly" approach, is strictly adhered to by Rav Yehuda Berg in his introduction to the Kabbalah Centre publication of the unabridged Zohar.

The primary split in the Moses DeLeon attribution of authorship by the "scholasticists" and the Rebbi Shimeon attribution by the "traditionalists" occured around the turn of the twentieth century, when, according to Rav Berg in his introduction to the unabridged Zohar, Rav Yehudah Ashlag completed his compendius commentary on the complete Zohar. Around this same time Gershom Scholem was coming to light as a luminary scholar of Hebrew history.

While Rav Ashlag asserted Shimeon as the author, Scholem asserted Moses. This is the most recent, and most pronounced event in the history of the Zohar, but is indicative of its entire history, at least according to Rav Berg, who asserts that the forces who attempt to refute the Zohar's mystical origin are outright "evil" and "responsible for anti-semitism." As an example of this form of anti-semitic prejudice against Kabbalah, which Berg asserts finds its origin in the Zohar, Berg goes on to list General Rommel, the so-called "Red Baron" of WWII, and the incident with the Protectorate of Morocco.

I understand the Rav Berg's intention in taking this approach to the Zohar. It is important to "market" Kabbalah to the right "target audience." In this admittedly fortuitous event of the unabridged Zohar being translated into English, it is necessary for the furtherance of this historical event for there to be money trading hands over it.

This edition (the third printing) of the unabridged Zohar published by the Kabbalah Centre offers an extensive introduction by Rav Yehudah Berg and a brief preface by his son Michael Berg. Following this is the text of the Zohar, with interpolated the commentary written by Yehudah Ashlag.

well, tonight I finished with the Bereshit B cosmology. For those of you who haven't been keeping up (LOL!) this is the cosmology described by book 2 of the 22 volume Zohar, the book named Bereshit B (bereshit from the first word in Torah, the letter B for the fact it is the second volume in the Bereshit sub-series). In this book, it describes a cosmology for one of the four worlds, Beriah, that is similar to the cencentric rings model of the four worlds itself. In this cosmology, a series of vessels connect the Garden of Eden to the Ark of the Covenant.