The Greater Holy Assembly (Idra Rabba Qadisha)

The Idra Rabba Qadisha ("Greater Holy Assembly"), the most dramatic section of the Zohar: Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai gathers his companions in a field to reveal, at last, the mysteries of the Godhead, which the treatise describes through the thirteen "conformations" of the divine beard, and the assembly ends with the deaths of some of the companions who heard it. Tradition ascribes the Zohar to the second-century Shimon bar Yochai; most modern scholars place its composition in late thirteenth-century Spain. This is S.L. MacGregor Mathers's English of 1887 (The Kabbalah Unveiled), made from Knorr von Rosenroth's Latin version and collated with the Aramaic, not translated directly from the original; his own commentary and notes are not reproduced. Not scripture in any tradition. Mathers's printed table of the 72 names is reproduced as the Table of the Schemahamphorasch; his other diagrams are not reproduced.