The Bahir emerged in twelfth-century Provence, not as a historically verified work of its ancient attributed author.
Imported citation, not independently checked: G. Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah; D. Abrams, The Book Bahir (1994)
religion · Shared topic · Revision 0
Who wrote the Bahir?
What Is the Bahir? The First Book of Kabbalah
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An anonymous, disorderly little book surfaces in twelfth-century Provence, and the entire sefirotic tradition grows from it.
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The Bahir enters history in Provence (the same region and generation as Isaac the Blind, the first Kabbalist we can name with confidence) in the last decades of the twelfth century.
Imported citation, not independently checked: G. Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah
The early Kabbalists of Gerona, a generation later, quote it as an authoritative ancient midrash, and through them its vocabulary spread.
Imported citation, not independently checked: Joseph Dan and Ronald C. Kiener, The Early Kabbalah (1986)
The Sefer Yetzirah contributed the word sefirot and the sanctity of letters.
Imported citation, not independently checked: Sefer Yetzirah; G. Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah
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