Bahir

[3] Nahmanides, in his commentary on the Torah, (Genesis 1) is one of the first to quote the work under the title Midrash R. Nehunya ben HaKanah.

Medieval Kabbalists write that the Bahir did not come down to them as a unified book, but rather in pieces found in scattered scrolls and booklets.

[4] However, modern scholars of Kabbalah now hold that at least part of the Bahir was an adaptation of an older work, the Sefer Raza Rabba.

This older book is mentioned in some of the works of the Geonim; however no complete copies of Sefer Raza Rabba are still in existence.

The 13th-century kabbalist, Rabbi Isaac HaKohen, reports that the Sefer HaBahir "came from the Land of Israel to the early pietists, the sages of Ashkenaz, the kabbalists of Germany and from there to the early wise men in Provence who chase after all sorts of written (records of) wisdom, those who know the divine, supernal knowledge.

The Book Bahir's use of the Babylonian grammar and vocalization system (which also reflects a different pronunciation and was widely utilized throughout the East) decisively proves the existence of an Oriental layer.

The Babylonian vocalization, as opposed to the Tiberian one used in Hebrew to this day, is mainly upper (that is, marked above the letters) and is characterized, among other properties, by the segol being pronounced like a patah.

Only if Bahir was written in a region in which the Babylonian system was in use can the claim "the Lord placed a patah above (a letter) and a segol beneath" be meaningful.

It is divided into sixty short paragraphs or a hundred and forty passages,[10] and is in the form of a dialogue between master and disciples.

A king, his servants, his daughter and his gardens are all used to explain a meaning, first of Torah and then in general, of the main topic of the text.

Section 2 (v. 17–44) talks about the Aleph-Beth or the Hebrew alphabet and gets its inspiration from the Sefer Yetzirah, which links these letters of creation to the overall mysticism presented in the Torah.

The Hebrew word "sefirot" was first described in Sefer Yezirah as corresponding to the ten basic numbers, and did not possess the meaning that later Kabbalists gave to it.

Flavius Mithridates' Latin Translation, the Hebrew Text, and an English Version, edited by Saverio Campanini with a Foreword by Giulio Busi, Torino, Nino Aragno Editore 2005.