The Bahir and Its Historiography: A Reassessment

Abstract

The book Bahir is a linchpin in the current historiography of Kabbalah, yet its origins are murky. The dominant theory, espoused by Gershom Scholem and his successors, treats the Bahir as a stratified work whose earliest elements originated in antiquity in the East. The book supposedly underwent a long, tortuous process of textual consolidation, during which its components came into contact with various esoteric circles, such as the German Pietists and “first kabbalists” of southern France. This account is to a large extent the foundation of an all-encompassing history of Kabbalah’s emergence, which has not gone unchallenged but still profoundly shapes scholarly discourse. This study thoroughly reassesses all of the evidence for this grand narrative, and concludes that it is a blend of biased interpretation and imaginative invention, which proceeds from a purist, dichotomizing approach to textual, philological, socio-intellectual, and conceptual history. Furthermore, the narrative’s conceptual constructs have constricted scholarly thinking about core kabbalistic ideas, the nature of theosophical kabbalists, and more. Therefore, despite the satisfyingly granular detail of this narrative, we remain very much in the dark about the true origins of the Bahir and, by extension, of early Kabbalah. In the epilogue, I suggest fully reinvestigating the Bahir’s textual tradition, especially in light of recent discoveries, and partly reviving forgotten but promising historical and philological avenues of inquiry in order to write a new history of the so-called first kabbalistic book.