Sefer ha-Bahir ספר הבהיר
The first book of kabbalah: it appeared in Provence at the end of the twelfth century and was the first to speak of the sefirot as powers, and of the soul returning to the world more than once.
The book opens with the words of Rabbi Nechunya ben ha-Kanah, and by them it is called "the Midrash of Rabbi Nechunya ben ha-Kanah". It is small, written in fragments, parables and questions without answers, and hard to read—but with it begins everything later called kabbalah.
What is in it for the first time. The ten sefirot here are not numbers, as in the Sefer Yetzirah, but powers through which the Almighty governs the world, each with its own name and its own place in the tree. Here too the transmigration of souls is first spoken of plainly: the parable of the vineyard that its owner plants again if the first planting failed.
On its date and its author the sources differ, and we do not choose for them. The book comes to light in Provence at the end of the twelfth century, about 1176; Rabbi Isaac the Blind and the circle of Girona speak of it as ancient. Scholars hold that the form that reached us took shape then and there, in Provence, out of older pieces. Both sides agree on one thing: by the twelfth century the book exists, and before that no one quotes it.
Through Girona the Bahir entered the Ramban, and through the Ramban the whole Jewish world; the Zohar, the Ramak and the Ari all stand on what is first said here.
Related
Sources
Rishonim
- Sefer ha-Bahir — the sefirot as powers, and the parable of the vineyard—on the return of the soul
- Nachmanides' Torah commentary and the writings of the Girona circle — through them the book entered common reading
Basis: accounts differ.