Medieval alchemy, Kabbalah and Islamic esotericism
Sefer ha-Bahir
The Book of Brightness: the earliest work of sefirotic Kabbalah proper, and the hinge on which the tradition turns from Merkavah ascent to a doctrine of ten divine potencies.
- Dates
- circulated in Europe by the late twelfth century
- Dating
- tradition or corpus
The life
It appears in Provence around 1176, drawing on older material, and reads as a midrash rather than as a system.
Place in the tradition
Where the sefirot first appear as a structure of the divine rather than as the numbers of Sefer Yetzirah.
a note on the record
History and later legend
Attributed traditionally to the first-century Nehunya ben HaKanah; nobody maintains that. The text has no stable form — manuscripts differ, section numbering differs between printings, and it breaks off mid-sentence. The editor of its critical edition warns it 'should not be seen as a primer' of sefirotic symbolism, and that the word sefirah rarely appears in it.
the written record
Principal works
-
appears c. 1176; incorporates older material
Sefer ha-Bahir
ספר הבהיר
Fragmentary, deliberately obscure, and the earliest place the ten sefirot appear as divine potencies.
held in the source catalogue Read at sefaria.org ↗