Page "Zohar" Paragraph 17

Most of Orthodox Judaism holds that the teachings of Kabbalah were transmitted from teacher to teacher, in a long and continuous chain, from the Biblical era until its redaction by Shimon ben Yochai.

Many ( most?

) accept fully the claims that the Kabbalah's teachings are in essence a revelation from God to the Biblical patriarch Abraham, Moses and other ancient figures, but were never printed and made publicly available until the time of the Zohar's medieval publication.

The greatest acceptance of this sequence of events is held within Haredi Judaism.

Some claim the tradition that Rabbi Shimon wrote that the concealment of the Zohar would last for exactly 1200 years from the time of destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.

The Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 CE and so before revealing the Zohar in 1270, Moses De Leon uncovered the manuscripts in a cave in Israel.

R ' Yechiel Michel Epstein ( d. 1908 ), and R ' Yisrael Meir Kagan ( d. 1933 ) both believed in the authenticity of the Zohar.