The Strange and Convoluted Tale of the Origins of the Zohar

According to tradition, the Zohar—the major canonical work of Jewish mysticism—was written by the 2nd-century sage Simon bar Yohai (the anniversary of whose death will be celebrated on May 26), and the well-guarded manuscript was discovered and revealed to the world in 13th-century Castille by Moses de Leon. In the 19th and 20th centuries, academics applied modern scholarly methods to the text and determined that it was in fact composed in Medieval Spain by Moses de Leon himself—a conclusion still rejected by the pious. Or, at least, that’s the most common version of the story of what we know about the Zohar.