כשושנה בין החוחים Introduction

Keshoshanah bein hachochim “As a Rose among the thorns”

This book is a commentary on a book called the Zohar and so the format will be that I will quote a text and give analysis on the text.I do not personally view the Zohar as divinely inspired or to be taken literally like the Bible, but I view it as a group of Rabbi’s doing a mystical meditation on the Torah.I will discuss further in this book and I will elaborate on exactly how I think the Zohar was constructed and who wrote it. I also believe it has a secret message behind it’s already esoteric meanings!

So first of all you ask, what is the Zohar?

The Zohar is a Jewish sacred mystical text first discovered in Medieval Spain by Moses De Leon in the late 13th century.Now the Zohar זֹהַר meaning radiance or splendor, and was written in Jewish Aramaic and is a big part of the basis of modern Kabbalah.The true believers in Kabbalah believe it was written by Shimon Bar Yochai, a second century CE Tannaitic Rabbi and student of Rabbi Akiva.True believers believe it was lost and Moses De Leon simply found it maybe in a cave although skeptics believe De Leon wrote it himself albeit inspired by Yochai.I myself do take either of these two positions on it’s origin and I am open to varying theories on the Zohar’s origin.Tannaitic refers to the Tannaim (Aramaic for teachers) a generation of Rabbis who codified the Mishnah.The Tannaim were active in Jewish law and teaching from about 0 to 200 CE in Roman years or about 3760 to about 3975 in the Hebrew calendar.

The authenticity of the massive 6 volume with 23 smaller books and more chapters than I can recount book is not what is for discussion.Also, I am in no way saying the writers of the book intended Jesus to be in the Zohar. Few Kabbalists are believers in Yeshua as the Messiah and it would be insane to say the Zohar is in any way about Jesus.However, I purpose a theory that Jesus was secretly encoded in the Zohar without it’s writers whether they be Yochai or Leon, even knew it.Is Jesus in the Zohar in secret code without most readers even knowing it or the writers knowing it?

That is what we will talk about? So how is the Zohar structured? It’s in six main parts and is a mystical meditation on the Torah and has an Introduction and sections on Breishit(Genesis), Shmot (Exodus), Vayikra (Leviticus),B’midbar (Numbers), Devarim (Deuteronomy) and has sub sections on the of the annual Torah reading Parashat’s.But it features interactions with several recurring Rabbi’s especially Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai and the Zohar concludes with the death of Yochai.But it also features Rabbi’s Elazar,Yehudah,Aba,Yossi and Chaya and they converse with each other. I am not going to analyze the whole Zohar even though I did read it. What I will discuss is that Jesus/Yeshua secretly in code in the Zohar.

So Aramaic has about 16 subdialects and only 4 are Jewish and so the question on which Aramaic dialect this was written in is hard to say and it appears to be a mix.Jewish Babylonian Aramaic,Jewish Palestinian Aramaic and the Galilean dialect are some common ones although there are a few others.The Zohar is written in two different styles of the Jewish Babylonian Aramaic along with a certain amount of Biblical and Medieval Hebrew.

According to Gershom Scholem and other modern scholars, Zoharic Aramaic is an artificial dialect largely based on a linguistic fusion of the Babylonian Talmud and Targum Onkelos, but confused by de León’s simple and imperfect grammar, his limited vocabulary, and his reliance on loan words, including from contemporaneous medieval languages.The author further confused his text with occasional strings of Aramaic-seeming gibberish, in order to give the impression of obscure knowledge.Later in this book I will explain why I think the Zohar is written in multiple subdialects and that does make some sense.

So my purpose here is to look at the Zohar and other Jewish texts that concern mystical and throne vision material (called Heikhalot Literature).My main concern will be do parts of the Zohar and other texts like it reveal a Christian world view or hashkafah as they say.I do not see the Zohar as inspired scripture but it does reveal where mystical thought was at a given times and that long before Jesus came the Rabbis thought there were two powers in Heaven.Here in Genesis 19:24 is a example of why this began be be believed in ancient Israel.

וַֽיהֹוָ֗ה הִמְטִ֧יר עַל־סְדֹ֛ם וְעַל־עֲמֹרָ֖ה גָּפְרִ֣ית וָאֵ֑שׁ מֵאֵ֥ת יְהֹוָ֖ה מִן־הַשָּׁמָֽיִם:

And the Lord caused rain upon S’dom and upon Amorah (Gommorah) sulfur and fire from the Lord from The Heavens.

What is interesting here and why the Two Powers theory emerged. Hebrew never likes to waste words and even in in English would you I say: John went to the store and John bought a soda.Does that make a lot of sense wouldn’t “John went to the store and bought a soda” make more sense.Why two Lords (are are the heavens the Holy Spirit) so did the Trinity destroy S’dom and Amorah?