ONE OF THE STRIKING FEATURES of zoharic literature is the frequent comparison between its central protagonist, R. Shimon bar Yohai (Rashbi), and Moses, and the depiction of the mishnaic rabbi as surpassing the biblical prophet. I believe that by means of this comparison the compilers of the Zohar sought to establish a canonical literature which did not only equal the Torah of Moses but which, they claimed, was superior to it. In the chapters that follow I explore the reception of zoharic literature through time; I wish to begin, however, by examining the way in which that literature presented itself to readers through the juxtaposition of R. Shimon and Moses.

The comparison of the two figures reflects the struggle over cultural capital between competing schools of kabbalah on the Iberian peninsula in the thirteenth century. As I show below, this competition was the framework in which the zoharic texts were created and in which their distribution and reception began.

The dominant school of kabbalah at the time was that of the followers of Nahmanides and R. Solomon ben Adret (Rashba). Centred in Catalonia, their school was characterized by an esoteric and conservative stance that opposed the public revelation and dissemination of kabbalistic knowledge. Members of this circle, the disciples of Nahmanides and their students, claimed to have exclusive authority in this field by virtue of the oral tradition that they had received directly from their masters. Nahmanides formu lated the essence of this approach in the introduction to his commentary on the Torah. The only way to understand the secrets of kabbalah, he explained, was ‘through oral transmission from a master transmitter [mekubal] to the ear of a capable recipient [mekabel], and any assumption [regarding these secrets] has no merit and is very harmful’.

Nahmanides and his disciples were part of a social class that Moshe Idel has classified as the ‘primary elite’. They were the spiritual leadership of the Jewish community in Catalonia and were occupied mainly with halakhah.2 During the same period, in Castile, a different school of kabbalists was active, whose members, according to Idel's typology, were part of the ‘secondary elite’.