WI: The Zohar was never written?

Alkahest

Banned
As the title says, what do you think the consequences would be if the Zohar (also known as "the Book of Splendor"), probably the most influential work in the Jewish tradition of Kabbalah, had never been written? How would Jewish and Christian mysticism have developed in the absence of that work?
 
As the title says, what do you think the consequences would be if the Zohar (also known as "the Book of Splendor"), probably the most influential work in the Jewish tradition of Kabbalah, had never been written? How would Jewish and Christian mysticism have developed in the absence of that work?

Without fully answering your question:
Lots of consequences beyond the development of mysticism. Hasidism or something analogous would develop differently, having lost one of its major texts. The Baal Shem Tov's influence might be butterflied away. The Haskalah movement (Jewish Enlightenment) might have less competition. Orthodox Judaism in general might develop on alternative lines of mysticism and/or even follow some of the Haskelic rationalist lines of development. There were also other lines of Kaballic tradition that might alternatively flourish. Kaballah is a deep well. The Zohar interprets and organizes theosophical-cosmogonical, meditative-ecstatic, and "practical" (magical and psychological) lines of thought that make up the various teachings of Kaballah. Without the Zohar, perhaps one of these 3 areas is emphasized over the others.
I know the Zohar influenced Christian scholars like Pico de Mirandola (who was sort of a Mystical polyglot) and reinforced certain syncretic lines of mysticism within the Christian tradition. Would the absence of the Zohar critically change Christian mysticism? I don't really know.
 
Different false messiahs, for one thing - most OTL claimants from the 13th century onward were cabalists or influenced by cabalism. Maybe there would be more David Alroys or Jacob Franks and fewer Sabbatai Zevis.
 
As the title says, what do you think the consequences would be if the Zohar (also known as "the Book of Splendor"), probably the most influential work in the Jewish tradition of Kabbalah, had never been written? How would Jewish and Christian mysticism have developed in the absence of that work?

The thing about the Zohar is the ideas contained within it probably (and in some cases most definitely) pre-dated its writing so no Zohar doesn't mean no impact on Kabbalism. If it isn't written down for some specific mystical reason like maybe an oath of silence (pretty common among occult practitioners the world over really) or something that could lead to some interesting twists in the development, essentially making it as more of a mystery sect than it already was for starters.
 

Alkahest

Banned
It's true that most of the ideas in the Zohar, as far as I know, predated it significantly. However, it's my understanding that the Zohar "canonized" certain ideas, metaphors and symbols to a large degree, and that subsequent Kabbalah looked to the Zohar as a kind of mystical "baseline".

Is it possible that without the Zohar, Kabbalah would be a far more fractured thought system, with many competing ideas about not only the interpretation of different symbols but also about the symbols themselves?
 
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