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(homiletical body) of the text, he is not thought to be the only writer
narrative
Multiple layers of literary creativity can be discerned within the text.
involved.
may be that the Zohar should be seen as the product of a school of mystical
It
and writers, one that may have existed even before 1270 and con-
practitioners
into the early years of the fourteenth century. Certain texts, including
tinued
Midrash ha-Ne'lam (perhaps an earlier rescension of it than that which has
the
belongto the oldest stratum of writing. Then the main part of the
survived?)
includingboth the epic tale and teachings of Rabbi Shim'on and his dis-
Zohar,
was indeed composed in the decades claimed by Scholem. Work on the
ciples,
did not cease, however, with the turn of the fourteenth century or the
Zohar
Moses de LeoÂn. In fact, the author of the Tiqqunei Zohar and the
passingof
Meheimna, seen by Scholem as ``later'' addenda to the Zohar corpus,
Ra'aya
represent the third ``generation'' of this ongoing school. It would have
may
in his day, and perhaps with the cooperation of several editors, that the
been
of the Zohar as ®rst circulated were linked together into the somewhat
fragments
larger units found in the surviving fourteenth- and ®fteenth-century
manuscripts.
is no single, utterly convincing piece of evidence that has led scholars
There
this revision of Scholem's view. It is rather a combination of factors stemmingfrom
to
close readings of the text and a body of scholarship on it that did
yet exist in Scholem's day. There is considerable evidence of what might be
not
``internal commentary'' within the Zohar text. The ``Secrets of the Torah''
called
an expansion of the brief and enigmatic Matnitin, astheIdrot comment
are
enlarge upon themes ®rst developed in the Sifra di-Tsni'uta. IntheZohar
and
whole or partial stories are told more than onceÐone version seemingly
narrative,
an expansion of an earlier rescension. The same is true of certain
some of which are repeated in part or whole several times within
homilies,
text. These expansions and repetitions could be explained as the developing
the
of a single author; however, when taken together with other factors (the
project
of the Zohar and the multiple ``voices'' that speak within the
differingsections
they point more toward multiple or collective authorship. Historical
text),
has shown that closed schools or societies (ḥavurot) for various pur-
evidence
were a common organizational form within Spanish Jewry. The image of
poses
Shim'on and his followers, encounteringa series of mysterious teachers
Rabbi
the course of their wanderings, looks rather like a description of a real such
in
meetingvarious mystics from outside its ranks who were then accepted
school,
the school's leader as legitimate teachers of secret Torah.
by
is particularly intriguing to compare this ®ctionalized but historically real
It
of kabbalists to another that is rather more clearly described in documents
school
available to us. In neighboring Catalonia, the kabbalistic school of
lastedÐside by side with his halakhic schoolÐfor three generations.
Naḥmanides
Naḥmanides' disciple Solomon ben Adret (ca. 1235±ca. 1310) carried his
Introduction
liii
master's teachings forward to a group of disciples who then wrote multiple