It should be clear to my dear readers that I do not consider the Zohar to be from R. Shimon Ben Yochai.
Perhaps people think that from that point on I ought to repudiate the validity of the Kabalah of the Remak and the Ari which are based on the Zohar.
But this would be a false conclusion. I hold that the Remak and the Arizal were in fact privy to deep mystical secrets. I admit that this conclusion is based on criteria that most people would consider invalid. First is the most obvious fact that the Geon from Vilnius [aka Villna] held strongly from the Kabalah.
I consider Moshe De Leon putting the Zohar in the name of Rabbi Shimon to be a simple literary device that was common at the end of the Roman Empire and continued into the Middle Ages. Though I admit that by the time of Moshe De Leon, this device was rarely used. But being not a particularly smart person, I tend to defer judgment to people smarter than me like the Geon from Vilna.
[This whole subject came up when we were reading Genesis and I thought about the fact that the only explanation I have of most of the stories of Genesis are mystically based. For example the seven days of Creation I have thought for several years refer to the seven spheres of briah [the world of creation] and are not literal days.
In the same vein I consider the flood to refer to the feminine waters מיין נוקבין that did not have male waters מיין דוכרין coming to greet them. I don't think the flood was literal and I also think like the Rambam that many stories in Genesis are allegories.
[I don't think the Rambam was thinking exactly like Isaac Luria. The Rambam I think was more literal unless he had to explain things as allegories. The Ari is the first place see the whole Torah from beginning to end including the Talmud as mainly talking about the higher mystical worlds of Emanation etc and in fact having little to do with what goes on in the physical universe in the first place.].
[At any rate, I highly recommend the whole set of Isaac Luria. It is the size of a set of Encyclopedia Britannica, but you don't need to go through the whole thing to get the main idea. It is enough to go through the Eitz Chaim [or the Mavo Shearim] to get the theory and then the couple of the volumes which explain verses of the Torah like Shaar HaPesukim. ]
Also do this with the Shalom Sharabi 's Nahar Shalom if you can because of the problem that after about half of the Eitz Chaim, the Ari goes into the order of the worlds and it modifies everything he said up until that point. So to get it you need the Reshash. (At least that is my opinion.)
I any case that is how I did this. You could do it also with the Ramchal [Moshe Lutzatto] or Yaakov Abuchatzaira's writings also I imagine but that is not how I did it.
Perhaps people think that from that point on I ought to repudiate the validity of the Kabalah of the Remak and the Ari which are based on the Zohar.
But this would be a false conclusion. I hold that the Remak and the Arizal were in fact privy to deep mystical secrets. I admit that this conclusion is based on criteria that most people would consider invalid. First is the most obvious fact that the Geon from Vilnius [aka Villna] held strongly from the Kabalah.
I consider Moshe De Leon putting the Zohar in the name of Rabbi Shimon to be a simple literary device that was common at the end of the Roman Empire and continued into the Middle Ages. Though I admit that by the time of Moshe De Leon, this device was rarely used. But being not a particularly smart person, I tend to defer judgment to people smarter than me like the Geon from Vilna.
[This whole subject came up when we were reading Genesis and I thought about the fact that the only explanation I have of most of the stories of Genesis are mystically based. For example the seven days of Creation I have thought for several years refer to the seven spheres of briah [the world of creation] and are not literal days.
In the same vein I consider the flood to refer to the feminine waters מיין נוקבין that did not have male waters מיין דוכרין coming to greet them. I don't think the flood was literal and I also think like the Rambam that many stories in Genesis are allegories.
[I don't think the Rambam was thinking exactly like Isaac Luria. The Rambam I think was more literal unless he had to explain things as allegories. The Ari is the first place see the whole Torah from beginning to end including the Talmud as mainly talking about the higher mystical worlds of Emanation etc and in fact having little to do with what goes on in the physical universe in the first place.].
[At any rate, I highly recommend the whole set of Isaac Luria. It is the size of a set of Encyclopedia Britannica, but you don't need to go through the whole thing to get the main idea. It is enough to go through the Eitz Chaim [or the Mavo Shearim] to get the theory and then the couple of the volumes which explain verses of the Torah like Shaar HaPesukim. ]
Also do this with the Shalom Sharabi 's Nahar Shalom if you can because of the problem that after about half of the Eitz Chaim, the Ari goes into the order of the worlds and it modifies everything he said up until that point. So to get it you need the Reshash. (At least that is my opinion.)
I any case that is how I did this. You could do it also with the Ramchal [Moshe Lutzatto] or Yaakov Abuchatzaira's writings also I imagine but that is not how I did it.
