The Zohar and the Emergence of Kabbalistic Cosmology

The Zohar ("Book of Splendor" or "Radiance") is the foundational text of what came to be called Kabbalah (literally "receiving" or "tradition"), the esoteric mystical current within medieval Judaism. It emerged into circulation in Castile, in the Iberian Peninsula, during the 1280s, written for the most part in an artificial, literary form of Aramaic and structured as a mystical, often homiletic commentary running through the weekly Torah readings, framed as the teachings of the 2nd-century Palestinian rabbinic sage Shimon bar Yochai and his circle of disciples, presented as though recorded in antiquity and only now being brought to light. This traditional attribution to a Tannaitic-era authorship placed the Zohar's teachings within an unbroken chain of ancient rabbinic authority, lending its speculative doctrines a claim to venerable pedigree that proved central to its rapid and wide acceptance within traditional Jewish learning.