two is ambiguous. Throughout the work, the Zohar
never loses sight of its goal: to create a mystical com-
mentary on the Torah in which God is simultaneously
revealed and concealed. To study Torah is to meditate
on the name of God. As Daniel C. Matt explains, “Zohar
is an adventure, a challenge to the normal workings of
consciousness. It dares you to examine your usual ways
of making sense, your assumptions about tradition, God,
and self. Textual analysis is essential, but you must en-
gage Zohar and cultivate a taste for its multiple layers of
meaning. It is tempting and safe to reduce the symbols
to a familiar scheme: psychological, historical, literary,
or religious. But do not forfeit wonder.”
The authorship of the text, its method of composition
and its use of sources (contemporary or ancient) have
remained polemical among scholars. Among the most
representative opinions in this controversy are Jellinek,
Graetz, Scholem, and Giller. Jellinek concluded that
many of the passages in the Zohar were derived from
ancient sources and that Mosés de León was at least
one of the authors of the work. Graetz concurred with
Jellinek on the nature of its sources, but believed that the
text represented a forgery executed entirely by Mosés de
León. Scholem argued that the text was purely a product
of the thirteenth century and was based on medieval Jew-
ish Neoplatonism and Gnosticism. For him, the author
and the translator were one and the same. More recent
scholarship in the tradition of Giller and Liebes tends to
view the Zohar as the product of a group collaboration
among thinkers who grappled with cabalistic doctrine.
Mosés de León was a main fi gure in this group but is
not the sole author.
Regarding the overall structure of the Zohar, there is
some consensus among scholars. The work is divided
into distinct sections or strata, each of which has its
own literary nature and mystical doctrines which are
unique to it. The Midrash ha-Ne’elam is the earliest
and is followed by the long midrash on the Torah and
another group of compositions resembling it; the Tiqqu-
nei ha-Zohar (Embellishments on the Zohar) and the
Ra’aya Meheimna (The Faithful Shepherd) constitute
another stratum. The Midrash ha-Ne’elam establishes
an organizing fulcrum for the entire work in creating a
protagonist Shim’on bar Yohai who does not appear until
later. Until his subsequent appearance in the text, the
teachings are conveyed by other rabbis from the second
century with no single dominant fi gure. Further, there
is a pattern of development in which certain ideas and
themes are developed and reach their culmination over
the course of the work’s composition.
The Zohar was not accepted immediately as an
ancient work. Students of Rabbi Solomon ibn Adret
of Barcelona treated it with restraint. In 1340, the
philosopher and cabalist Joseph ibn Waqqar warned
about the preponderance of errors in the book. Slowly,
its antiquity became accepted by cabalists, but as late
as the mid-fi fteenth century was not read or circulated
except in small circles. It did not become the Bible of
the Cabalah movement until after the Jewish expulsion
from Spain in 1492. After 1530, Safed (Israel) gained
importance as a meeting place for cabalists. Among
them was Mosés Cordovero who wrote two systematic
books based on the Zohar, along with an extensive com-
mentary. Isaac Luria developed a new system based on
Cabalah that relied heavily on portions of the Zohar. The
trend of mystical-ethical literature emerging from this
circle helped popularize the Zohar’s teachings as did the
messianic fervor that encouraged the dissemination of
its enigmas. If early qabbalists had drawn an analogy
between spread of Cabalah and the redemption of Israel,
in the sixteenth century, studying the Zohar became
elevated to the level of a divine command, equal in im-
portance to studying the Bible and the Talmud. Today,
the Zohar retains its distinction as the fundamental text
of cabalistic thought.
See also Ibn Adret, Solomon; MaimonidesFurther Reading
Fine, L. Essential Papers on Kabbalah. New York, 1995.
Giller, P. Reading the Zohar: The Sacred Text of the Kabbalah.
Oxford, 2001.
Holtz, B. (ed.) Back to the Sources: Reading the Classic Jewish
Texts. New York, 1984.
Liebes, Y. Studies in the Zohar. Trans. A. Schwartz, St. Nakache,
and P. Peli. Albany, N.Y., 1993.
Matt, D. C. (ed.) Zoliar: Book of Enlightenment. New York,
- Matthew B. Raden
LÉONIN (Leoninus; fl. 1154–ca. 1201)
Anonymous 4’s epithet optimus organista (“the best
singer/improviser/composer/compiler/notator of or-
ganum”) assured Léonin a signifi cant place in music
history long before any convincing identifi cation of
the person was suggested. Since he was responsible for
the new polyphonic repertory of the cathedral of Notre-
Dame in Paris in the decades after its founding in the
1160s, his place was evidently among the dignitaries of
its ecclesiastical hierarchy, but the familiar use of the
Latin diminutive of his name, as “Magister Leoninus,”
in the theoretical treatise of Anonymous 4—the only
source for information on his considerable musical
achievement—long seemed to belie this. Anonymous
4 credited Léonin with the Magnus liber organi de
gradali et antifonario some one hundred years after
its compilation, a fact that recommends cautious use
of his testimony and the need for independent verifi ca-
tion. Three major manuscript sources (W1, F, and W2)
confi rm a repertory of organum that fi ts Anonymous 4’sLEÓNIN