The Zohar speaks in Shimon bar Yochai's voice but was composed in thirteenth-century Castile.
Imported citation, not independently checked: G. Scholem, Major Trends (1941); Y. Liebes, Studies in the Zohar
religion · Shared topic · Revision 0
Who Was Shimon bar Yochai?
Who Was Shimon bar Yochai?
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The current answer
A second-century sage, a thirteen-year cave, and the strange afterlife by which a Roman-era lawyer became the face of a book written eleven centuries after his death.
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Shimon bar Yochai's cave narrative is recorded in the Babylonian Talmud centuries after its setting.
Imported citation, not independently checked: Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 33b-34a; J. L. Rubenstein (1999)
The story honors radical devotion and then disciplines it, which is precisely the tension between contemplative withdrawal and ordinary life that this site has traced elsewhere.
Imported citation, not independently checked: Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 33b-34a; J. L. Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories
Nothing in the tannaitic record makes Shimon bar Yochai a mystic.
Imported citation, not independently checked: G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1941)
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