Zohar

The Zohar is a foundational work of Kabbalistic literature. It is a group of books including commentary on the mystical aspects of the Torah and scriptural interpretations as well as material on mysticism, mythical cosmogony, and mystical psychology. The Zohar contains discussions of the nature of God, the origin and structure of the universe, the nature of souls, redemption, the relationship of ego to darkness and "true self" to "the light of God".
The Zohar was first publicized by Moses de León, who claimed it was a Tannaitic work recording the teachings of Simeon ben Yochai. This claim is universally rejected by modern scholars, most of whom believe de León, also an infamous forger of Geonic material, wrote the book himself between 1280 and 1286. Some scholars argue that the Zohar is the work of multiple medieval authors and/or contains a small amount of genuinely antique novel material. Later additions to the Zohar, including Tiqqune hazZohar and Ra'ya Meheimna, were composed by a 14th century imitator.

Language

Zoharic Aramaic

According to Gershom Scholem and other modern scholars, Zoharic Aramaic is an artificial dialect largely based on a linguistic fusion of the Babylonian Talmud and Targum Onkelos, but confused by de León's simple and imperfect grammar, his limited vocabulary, and his reliance on loanwords, including from contemporaneous medieval languages. The author further confused his text with occasional strings of Aramaic-seeming gibberish, in order to give the impression of obscure knowledge.

Zoharic Hebrew

The original text of the Zohar, as cited by various early Kabbalists beginning around the 14th century was partly in Hebrew and partly in Aramaic. By the time of the first edition the text was entirely in Aramaic, with the exception of the Midrash haNe'elam, where Hebrew words and phrases are often employed as in the Babylonian Talmud. "The Hebrew of the Midrash haNe'elam is similar in its overall form to the language of the early midrashim, but its specific vocabulary, idioms, and stylistic characteristics bear the imprint of medieval Hebrew, and its midrashic manner is clearly that of a later imitation."

Authorship

Initial view

's 1504 work Sefer Yuhasin quotes from the Kabbalist Isaac ben Samuel of Acre's 13th-century memoir Divre hayYamim, which claims that the widow and daughter of de León revealed that he had written it himself and only ascribed the authorship to Simeon ben Yochai for personal profit:
Isaac goes on to say that he obtained mixed evidence of Zohar's authenticity from other Spanish Kabbalists, but the fragment ends abruptly, mid-sentence, without any conclusion. Though Isaac is willing to quote it in his Otzar haChayyim and his Meirat Einayim, he does so rarely. Isaac's testimony was censored from the second edition and remained absent from all editions thereafter until its restoration nearly 300 years later in the 1857 edition. In 1243 a different Jew had reportedly found a different ancient mystical book in a cave near Toledo, which may have been de Leon's inspiration.
Within fifty years of its appearance in Spain it was quoted by Kabbalists, including the Italian mystical writer Menahem Recanati and Todros ben Joseph Abulafia. However, Joseph ben Waqar harshly attacked the Zohar, which he considered inauthentic, and some Jewish communities, such as the Dor Daim from Yemen, Andalusian, and some Italian communities, never accepted it as authentic. Other early Kabbalists, such as David b. Judah the Pious, Abraham b. Isaac of Granada,, and David b. Amram of Aden, so readily imitate its pseudepigraphy by ascribing contemporaries' statements to Zoharic sages that it is obvious they understood its nature. The manuscripts of the Zohar are from the 14th-16th centuries.

Late Middle Ages

By the 15th century, the Zohar's authority in the Iberian Jewish community was such that Joseph ibn Shem-Tov drew arguments from it in his attacks against Maimonides, and even representatives of non-mystical Jewish thought began to assert its sacredness and invoke its authority in the decision of some ritual questions. In Jacobs' and Broyde's view, they were attracted by its glorification of man, its doctrine of immortality, and its ethical principles, which they saw as more in keeping with the spirit of Talmudic Judaism than are those taught by the philosophers, and which was held in contrast to the view of Maimonides and his followers, who regarded man as a fragment of the universe whose immortality is dependent upon the degree of development of his active intellect. The Zohar instead declared Man to be the lord of creation, whose immortality is solely dependent upon his morality.
Conversely, Elia del Medigo, in his Beḥinat ha-Dat, endeavored to show that the Zohar could not be attributed to Simeon ben Yochai, by a number of arguments. He claims that if it were his work, the Zohar would have been mentioned by the Talmud, as has been the case with other works of the Talmudic period; he claims that had ben Yochai known by divine revelation the hidden meaning of the precepts, his decisions on Jewish law from the Talmudic period would have been adopted by the Talmud, that it would not contain the names of rabbis who lived at a later period than that of ben Yochai; he claims that if the Kabbalah were a revealed doctrine, there would have been no divergence of opinion among the Kabbalists concerning the mystic interpretation of the precepts.
Believers in the authenticity of the Zohar countered that the lack of references to the work in Jewish literature was because ben Yochai did not commit his teachings to writing but transmitted them orally to his disciples over generations until finally the doctrines were embodied in the Zohar. They found it unsurprising that ben Yochai should have foretold future happenings or made references to historical events of the post-Talmudic period.
By the late 16th century, the Zohar was present in one-tenth of all private Jewish libraries in Mantua. The authenticity of the Zohar was accepted by such 16th century Jewish luminaries as Joseph Karo, and Solomon Luria, who wrote nonetheless that Jewish law does not follow the Zohar when it is contradicted by the Babylonian Talmud.
Luria writes that the Zohar cannot even override a minhag. Moses Isserles writes that he "heard" that the author of the Zohar is ben Yochai. Elijah Levita did not believe in its antiquity, nor did Joseph Scaliger or Louis Cappel or Johannes Drusius. David ibn abi Zimra held that one can follow the Zohar only when it does not conflict with any other source and records that "You asked me about scribes modifying torah scrolls to accord with the Zohar... and I was shocked, for how can they consider the Zohar better than the Talmud Bavli, which has come down to us?... So I went myself to the house of the scribe and I found three scrolls which he had edited, and I fixed them, and I restored the Torah to its proper glory."

Enlightenment Period

Debate continued over the generations; del Medigo's arguments were echoed by Leon of Modena in his Ari Nohem, by Jean Morin, and by Jacob Emden.
Emden—who may have been familiar with Modena through Morin's arguments—devoted a book to the criticism of the Zohar, called Mitpachas Sefarim, in an effort against the remaining adherents of the Sabbatean movement. Emden argued that the book on which Zevi based his doctrines was a forgery, arguing that the Zohar:

misquotes passages of Scripture
misunderstands the Talmud
contains some ritual observances that were ordained by later rabbinical authorities
mentions the Crusades against Muslims
uses the expression esnoga, a Portuguese term for the synagogue
gives a mystical explanation of the Hebrew vowel points, which were not introduced until long after the Talmudic period.

Saul Berlin argued that the presence of an introduction in the Zohar, unknown to the Talmudic literary genre, itself indicates a medieval date.
In the Ashkenazi community of Eastern Europe, religious authorities including Elijah of Vilna and Shneur Zalman of Liadi believed in the authenticity of the Zohar, while Ezekiel Landau, in his sefer Derushei HaTzlach, argued that the Zohar is to be considered unreliable as it was made public many hundreds of years after Ben Yochai's death and lacks an unbroken tradition of authenticity, among other reasons.
Isaac Satanow accepted Emden's arguments and referred to the Zohar as a forgery, also offering new evidence. By 1813 Samuel David Luzzatto had concluded that "these books are utter forgeries," in part because they repeatedly discuss the Hebrew cantillation marks, which were not invented until the 9th century. In 1817 Luzzatto published these arguments, and in 1825 he penned a fuller treatise, giving many reasons why the Zohar could not be ancient. However, he did not publish this until 1852, when he felt it justified by the rise of Hasidism. Moses Landau, Ezekiel's grandson, published the same conclusion in 1822. Isaac Haver admits the vast majority of content comes from the 13th century but argues that there was a genuine core. Solomon Judah Loeb Rapoport spoke against the Zohar's antiquity. Eliakim ha-Milzahgi accepted Emden's arguments.
The influence of the Zohar in Yemen contributed to the formation of the Dor Deah movement, led by Yiḥyah Qafiḥ in the later part of the 19th century. Among its objects was the opposition of the influence of the Zohar, as presented in Qafiḥ's Milhamoth Hashem and Da'at Elohim.
Shlomo Zalman Geiger, in his book Divrei Kehilot on the liturgical practice of Frankfurt am Main, records that "We do not say brikh shmei in Frankfurt, because its source is in the Zohar, and the sages of Frankfurt refused to accept Qabbalah."