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the works, amongst a host of early and medieval works known
by the title “Book of Secrets.” Recent scholarship has suggested
that some passages in the Bahir are based on the Babylonian
vocalization, pointing to ancient sources in the East. These
claims aside, the literary production and kabbalistic recension
are the products of unidentified circles of medieval, European
esotericists which did not feed into, nor cause, the apparent
“eruption” of kabbalistic thinking and literature at the end of
the 12th and the beginning of the 13th centuries.
Literary Character of the Bahir
The Sefer ha-Bahir was not intended and should not be seen
as a primer for kabbalistic study nor should it be understood
through the lenses of the highly structured sefirotic symbolism
which crystallized in the decades following its final stages
of its composition and editing. The Bahir is rudimentary in its
literary style, as it offers very complex mythic images, defying
simple and structuralist interpretations based on the term sefirot.
Many of its passages are based on parables of a king and
his son or sons and a daughter, pointing to the sefirotic understanding,
but effectively elucidating only some of the relationships
within the supernal world, more than explicating
any one, set doctrine.
Influences and External Sources
Scholem argued that the Bahir is the product of a merging of
rabbinic and Gnostic traditions, at one point claiming that the
work contains a literal translation of the Greek term male, pleroma
(or: fullness), in describing the godhead. These phenomenological
or hermeneutical parallels aside, no evidence can
be shown to suggest the literary influence of Gnostic works
on these early Jewish esotericists and the emerging Kabbalah.
More recent attempts to explain the appearance of the Sefer
ha-Bahir, have sought to explain the work as the first text to
feminize the *Shekhinah and focus on Her as the grade of the
divinity closest to the kabbalist adept. Accordingly, the 12thcentury
Christian rites which focus on Mary in Provence are
seen to be the impetus and influence which informed the
kabbalistic invention of the feminized theosophy. Here again,
only impressionistic parallels can be suggested between the
two corpora and religious traditions, which in any event are
anachronistic as the literary sources of the Seer ha-Bahir predate
this Christian phenomenon and the work emerges from a
different geographical location, Ashkenaz. The Sefer ha-Bahir
does offer many sexualized interpretations of the drama within
the divine structure although it rarely mentions the Shekhinah.
Locutions from Sefer Yeẓirah are central to a number of
passages although no systematic attempt is made to transform
the ancient esoteric work into a kabbalistic interpretation. The
term “sefirah,” taken from Sefer Yeẓirah, rarely appears and
there is no systematic use of the sefirotic names more commonly
found in the later works to depict the ten divine grades
of the divine theosophy. The term “kabbalah” is also not mentioned
as the proper name for the esoteric lore, although there
are two important uses of the root in other forms.
bahlul
The Text and its Editions
The earliest dated manuscript from 1298 formed the basis for
Scholem’s annotated German translation which comprised his
doctoral dissertation in 1923. Scholem “corrected” or rather
amended his Hebrew transcription, which formed the basis of
his translation, with “better” readings from 13th-century kabbalists,
changing the earliest textual witness in key places. The
discrepancies between the earliest manuscript and the many
citations which appear in later kabbalistic works, demonstrate
that even the kabbalistic editing of the Sefer ha-Bahir was still
in flux after the literary and social emergence of the Kabbalah.
This process continued through the early modern period and
on through the 20th century, when Reuven Margolioth edited
a very popular edition of the Hebrew text by integrating all
the readings from three late manuscripts, including words
and phrases not found in the early manuscript witnesses. A
number of passages cited as coming from the Sefer ha-Bahir
but not found in the main manuscripts are quoted in other
kabbalistic works. Numerous commentaries and translations
were prepared from the 14th century to the present. In 1994
an edition based on the earliest manuscripts was published
including a facsimile of the first printed edition (Amsterdam
1651), the celebrated Munich manuscript copied in 1298, listings
of the Bahiric passages not found in the Sefer ha-Bahir,
variant readings from citations found in manuscript works,
listings of all translations and commentaries and a bibliography
of references to the Sefer ha-Bahir in printed works and
modern scholarship.
Bibliography: D. Abrams, The Book Bahir: An Edition Based
on the Earliest Manuscripts (with intro. by M. Idel (Heb., 1994); J. Dan,
“Midrash and the Dawn of Kabbalah,” in: G. Hartman and S. Budick
(eds.), Midrash and Literature (1986), 127–39; A. Green, “Shekhinah,
the Virgin Mary and the Song of Songs: Reflections on a Kabbalistic
Symbol in Its Historical Context,” in: AJS Review, 26 (2002), 1–52;
R. Meroz, “A Citation Attributed to the Book Bahir,” in: Kabbalah, 7
(2002) 319–26; idem, “On the Time and Place of Some of Sefer ha-
Bahir,” in: Da’at, 49 (2002), 137–80 (Heb.); H. Pedaya, “The Provençal
Stratum in the Redaction of Sefer ha-Bahir,” in: Jerusalem Studies
in Jewish Thought, 9 (1990), 139–64 (Heb.); P. Schaefer, Mirror of
His Beauty: Feminine Images of God from the Bible to the Early Kabbalah
(2002); G. Scholem, Das Buch Bahir (1923); idem, Origins of
the Kabbalah, trans. A. Arkush, ed. R.J.Z.Werblowsky (1987); M. Verman,
The Books of Contemplation: Medieval Jewish Mystical Sources
(1992), 166–73; E. Wolfson, “Hebraic and Hellenistic Conceptions of
Wisdom in Sefer ha-Bahir,” in: Poetics Today, 19 (1998), 147–76; idem,
Language, Eros, Being (2005), 46–166; idem, “The Tree That Is All:
Jewish-Christian Roots of a Kabbalistic Symbol in Sefer ha-Bahir,” in:
Along the Path: Studies in Kabbalistic Myth, Symbolism and Hermeneutics
(1995), 63–88.
[Daniel Abrams (2nd ed.)]
BAHLUL, family of rabbis in Meknès, Morocco. DANIEL BEN
JUDAH (second half of 17th century) was a halakhist, kabbalist,
and preacher. He wrote copious notes on Yazeḥ Yakar, a
work by Abraham Galanté on the Zohar to Exodus (Jerusalem
National Library Ms.), and a volume of sermons which is fre-
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3 63