Back باهير ARZ Sefer qa-Bagir Azerbaijani Sefer ha-Bahir Catalan Bahir Danish Sefer ha-Bahir German Sefer ha-Bahir Spanish بهیر Persian Sefer HaBahir French ספר הבהיר HE Sefer haBahir Italian
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Bahir or Sefer HaBahir (Hebrew: סֵפֶר הַבָּהִיר, Hebrew pronunciation: [ˈsefeʁ ˌ(h)abaˈ(h)iʁ]; "Book of Clarity" or "Book of Illumination") is an anonymous mystical work, attributed to a 1st-century rabbinic sage Nehunya ben HaKanah (a contemporary of Yochanan ben Zakai) because it begins with the words, "R. Nehunya ben HaKanah said".[1] It is also known as Midrash of Rabbi Nehunya ben HaKanah מִדְרָשׁ רַבִּי נְחוּנְיָא בֶּן הַקָּנָה.
First mentioned in late 12th century Provencal works,[2] the Bahir is an early work of the esoteric Jewish mystical tradition that eventually became known as Kabbalah. The work is considered by scholars to be pseudepigraphical, composed in Provence in the late 12th century.[3]
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- ^ "Sefer Ha-Bahir - the Book of Illumination". Archived from the original on 2015-03-09. Retrieved 2009-12-21.
- ^ Matt, Daniel C. (2004). The Zohar, Pritzker Edition, Vol. 1 (Pritzker ed.). Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-4747-9.
This slim volume is known as Sefer ha-Bahir, awkwardly renderable as The Book of Clarity. We first find reference to it in Provençal works of the latter twelfth century, and from that time forward it has a continuous history as a major shaper of Jewish mystical ideas.
- ^ Chazan, Robert (2018-10-11). The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 6, The Middle Ages: The Christian World. Cambridge University Press. pp. 475, 476, 769. ISBN 978-1-108-34019-9.
The first major mystical book in Christendom was Sefer ha-Bahir [The Book of Brightness], which was either produced or edited in Provence in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, based on earlier sources and attributed to the Tanna R. Nehunya ben Haqanah. (...) It is noteworthy that the first phase of intense kabbalistic activity is bounded by two compositions considered by academic scholars to be pseudepigraphic, Sefer Bahir on one end of the spectrum and Sefer ha-Zohar on the other end.