Sefer ha-Bahir: The Book of Brightness and the First Sefirot

Sefer ha-Bahir ("The Book of Brightness") is the earliest surviving work of Kabbalah in the strict sense. A short, enigmatic Hebrew midrash attributed to the second-century sage Rabbi Nehunya ben ha-Kanah, it surfaced among Jewish scholars in Provence around 1180 and introduced, in the language of parables, the idea of a structured set of divine powers that later Kabbalists called the sefirot. Its images of a cosmic tree, a feminine divine presence and the return of souls shaped the whole later tradition.

Title, Attribution and Form§

The book takes its name from its first passage, which begins with Job 37:21, a verse that says people "see not the bright light (bahir) which is in the skies." The opening line names Rabbi Nehunya ben ha-Kanah, a sage of the Mishnaic period who also appears in the Hekhalot literature as a master of heavenly secrets, and medieval readers often called the work "the Midrash of Rabbi Nehunya ben ha-Kanah." Modern scholars agree that the attribution is pseudepigraphic: the text as we have it is medieval.

The Bahir is short, perhaps sixty pages in a printed edition, and divided by modern editors into roughly two hundred paragraphs (the count differs between editions). It reads like a rabbinic midrash: disciples ask questions about a verse, a letter or a word, and a master answers, often with a mashal, a parable about a king, his palace, his garden, his daughter or his treasures. The passages are loosely joined, sometimes interrupted, and appear to have been assembled from different sources. Much of the book comments on the opening chapters of Genesis, on the shapes and names of the Hebrew letters and vowel signs, and on the meaning of divine names.

Provençal Origins and the Question of Older Sources§

The Bahir is first quoted in the circle of Kabbalists in Languedoc and Provence associated with Rabbi Abraham ben David of Posquières and his son Isaac the Blind, in the last decades of the twelfth century. Gershom Scholem, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on the book and published a German translation with commentary in 1923, argued that it was edited in Provence from older material, some of which may have come from the Near East. He pointed in particular to references to a lost work called Raza Rabba ("The Great Mystery") and to motifs he believed were related to ancient Gnostic ideas.

Later scholars have debated how much of the Bahir is genuinely old. Some passages show affinities with late antique Jewish esotericism and with the Sefer Yetzirah, while others reflect twelfth-century concerns. Moshe Idel has stressed continuity with earlier Jewish myth rather than Gnostic borrowing. Daniel Abrams's critical edition (1994), based on the earliest manuscripts, has shown how fluid the text remained in transmission. What is clear is that the Bahir became the founding document of a new way of reading scripture in Provence and Catalonia.

The Divine Powers: Utterances, Attributes and the Cosmic Tree§

The Bahir's most important contribution is its picture of God as a structured unity of powers. It speaks of the ten "utterances" (maʾamarot) with which, according to the Mishnah, the world was created, and of divine "attributes" (middot) and "forms." It does not yet present the neat system of the later Tree of Life, but many later sefirot are recognisable: a supreme crown, wisdom, a primordial light, mercy and judgement, a "righteous one" who is the foundation of the world, and a lower feminine power.

Several images became central to Kabbalah:

• The cosmic tree. God says, in a parable, that he planted a tree so that the whole world might delight in it, and that its roots and branches are his powers. The tree is watered from a spring of wisdom, an image that anticipates the later diagrams of the sefirot as a tree.
• The righteous one as a pillar. Reading Proverbs 10:25, "the righteous is the foundation of the world," the Bahir describes a pillar reaching from earth to heaven, a power later identified with the sefirah Yesod.
• The seven holy forms. The text links the divine powers with the limbs of the human body, created "in the image of God," so that the human form becomes a map of the divine.
• Light and its hiding. Developing a rabbinic theme, the Bahir speaks of the light created on the first day, which God hid away for the righteous in the world to come.

Because the Bahir links these powers to the letters, vowels and names of scripture, it laid the ground for the Kabbalistic conviction that every word of the Torah refers to some aspect of the divine life.

The Daughter of the King: The Feminine Shekhinah§

The Bahir gives the Shekhinah, in rabbinic sources God's indwelling presence, a clearly feminine and symbolic role. In several parables a king has a daughter, beautiful and precious, whom he gives in marriage to a prince while still longing for her; elsewhere a precious stone or pearl is set in the king's crown, or a queen dwells in the palace. These figures were read as the lowest divine power, which receives from the higher powers and is closest to the world and to Israel.

This feminine imagery, combined with images of marriage and union, became the core of later Kabbalistic theosophy, in which the purpose of religious life is to unite the masculine and feminine aspects of God. The Zohar a century later developed the theme into a whole drama of exile and reunion. Peter Schäfer has studied how these images relate to older Jewish and Christian traditions of divine wisdom and to the medieval cult of Mary, a debated but illuminating comparison.

Evil, the North and the Transmigration of Souls§

The Bahir is daring on the question of evil. In one passage it speaks of a quality in God whose name is "evil," associated with the north, the direction from which, according to Jeremiah 1:14, evil breaks forth. Satan is presented as acting within the divine order rather than as an independent rival. These passages anticipate later Kabbalistic teachings in which evil arises from the power of judgement when it is separated from mercy, an idea that the Zohar and Lurianic Kabbalah developed at length.

The Bahir is also the first Jewish text to teach the transmigration of souls, later called gilgul. Interpreting Ecclesiastes 1:4, "one generation passes away and another generation comes," it explains, through a parable of a king who replants his vineyard, that souls return to new bodies. Medieval Jewish philosophers such as Saadia Gaon had rejected reincarnation; through the Bahir it entered Kabbalah, and by the sixteenth century it was a central doctrine in Safed.

Reception, Controversy and Editions§

The Bahir quickly became authoritative among Kabbalists. Isaac the Blind's circle studied it, the Kabbalists of Gerona quoted it, and Nahmanides cited it in his Torah commentary as an ancient midrash. Not everyone accepted it. In the mid-thirteenth century Rabbi Meir ben Simon of Narbonne denounced the new Kabbalists and their book, charging that they attributed to a respected sage a work full of heretical notions, including the multiplication of divine powers. His protest shows that the Bahir's novelty was felt by contemporaries.

The work was first printed in Amsterdam in 1651 and has been reprinted many times. Scholem's German translation of 1923 founded its modern study, and Aryeh Kaplan's English translation and commentary of 1979 made it accessible to a wide readership, though from a traditional rather than a historical standpoint. Today the Bahir is read both as a sacred text in Kabbalistic circles and, by historians, as a key witness to the moment when Jewish esoteric tradition took on the form of Kabbalah. For the broader story, see What Is Kabbalah? and Gershom Scholem.

Frequently asked questions§

What is the Sefer ha-Bahir?§

It is a short Hebrew text in the style of a midrash, attributed to Rabbi Nehunya ben ha-Kanah, which appeared in Provence around 1180. It is regarded as the first book of Kabbalah because it describes God through a set of divine powers.

Who wrote the Bahir?§

The author is unknown. The attribution to Rabbi Nehunya ben ha-Kanah is traditional but pseudepigraphic; scholars think the text was edited in Provence in the twelfth century, probably from older materials of uncertain origin.

Does the Bahir mention the sefirot?§

It speaks of ten "utterances" and divine "attributes" rather than using the later system of named sefirot. Many of the later sefirot can be recognised in its images, so it is seen as the seed of the doctrine.

Is reincarnation in the Bahir?§

Yes. The Bahir is the earliest Jewish text to teach that souls return to new bodies, a doctrine later called gilgul and greatly developed by the Kabbalists of Safed.

Sources and further reading§

• The Bahir: Illumination — Aryeh Kaplan, 1979
• Origins of the Kabbalah — Gershom Scholem, 1962
• Kabbalah: New Perspectives — Moshe Idel, 1988
• The Early Kabbalah — Joseph Dan, 1986
• Mirror of His Beauty: Feminine Images of God from the Bible to the Early Kabbalah — Peter Schäfer, 2002
• Along the Path: Studies in Kabbalistic Myth, Symbolism, and Hermeneutics — Elliot R. Wolfson, 1995
• Kabbalah — Gershom Scholem, 1974