How was Tiqqunei Zohar Written?

While much has been written about the origins of the Zohar, nearly nothing has been said about how Tiqqunei Zohar was created. As recent scholarship has already noted the first printed edition, and even more so subsequent editions, display evidence of heavy handed editing. Despite all the scholarly contributions on Tiqqunei Zohar in recent years it is somewhat surprising that so little has been said about the numerous manuscripts of the text, especially considering the degree to which they differ both from all print editions and each other.

In this lecture I intend to analyze the more than 50 manuscripts containing text printed in Tiqqunei Zohar in an effort to understand the its origins. Using a comparison between different manuscript families I am able to identify around 10 textual units that are more or less intact across different the families. While it is impossible to gain any sense of the “original” version of Tiqqunei Zohar from these sections, comparing them yields unprecedented insights into the shape of the text in the distant past.