Most of the Zohar (Sefer ha-Zohar, Book of the Brightness), is written as a commentary on the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible/Tanakh). But it is a commentary like no other, written from a level of imagination, intuition, and mysticism that is truly astonishing.
We find, in my opinion, a great example of this intuitional level on the lower half of page 63 in my Soncino edition (page 15a in the Mantua edition): "There was indeed a 'brightness' (Zohar). The Most Mysterious struck its void, and caused this point to shine. This "beginning" then extended, and made for itself a palace for its honour and glory." And closer to the bottom of the same page: "The Zohar is that from which were created all the creative utterances through the extension of the point of this mysterious brightness." Higher on the page we are told that: "Beyond that point there is no knowable, and therefore it is called Reshith (beginning) . . ."
Another tradition, that called Advaita Vedanta, would tell us that the "brightness," the "beginning," before which there is "no knowable," can only be Consciousness, and that there is only Consciousness. The word "consciousness" does not appear anywhere in the Bible. Here, in the form of "brightness" and "beginning," the Zohar supplies that deficiency.
About three-quarters of the way down p. 64 (Mantua 15a-15b), we find something else that is remarkable: another reference to Hebrew vowel-points, anachronistic at the time of Simeon Bar Yohai. The three vowel points mentioned, "holem," "shureq," and "hireq," are even called by the names by which we still know them. Since pointed biblical texts only came into common use after about 800 CE, this shows that not only the Prologue, but also the rest of the Zohar, dates from the medieval period.
Text and image Copyright © 2021 by Donald C. Traxler aka Donald Jacobson Traxler.
