Q&A: Is the Zohar Authentic or a Forgery?
Is the Zohar Authentic or a Forgery?
Question
I’ve seen bundles of evidence that there’s no way Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai wrote the Zohar — not even close, not approximately, not in any sense.
A friend who is a yeshiva rabbi told me that while no serious person thinks Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai wrote the Zohar, it’s still not such a big deal to have this kind of forgery in Judaism, because the people need “spiritual material to latch onto,” so what if it’s a forgery…
I feel that a forgery is a forgery, and also that there are ideas and outlooks there that may be the opposite of Judaism, and it seems really problematic.
What does the Rabbi think about this?
Answer
What do I think about what?
Indeed, Rashbi did not write the Zohar, but it does contain some tannaitic sources. So it is not a forgery but a mistake in identifying the editor. It is certainly possible that various strange ideas got mixed into it. So what? Accept what seems right to you and reject what does not.