The Book of Bahir: Flavius Mithridates' Latin Translation, the Hebrew Text, and an English Variation

Although Flavius Mithridates (1450–83) may not be part of the working vocabulary of Renaissance scholars in general, he is important for the study of the Renaissance because he was one of the teachers of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Mithridates was a humanist and Orientalist whose name was Shmuel ben Nissim ben Shabbatai Abu al Faraj before his conversion to Christianity around 1470. Born in Agrigento, Sicily, and representative of Jewish culture there, he used various names after his conversion, Flavius Mithridates being the most well-known (he also called himself Guglielmo Moncada Siculus and Romanus.). He was fluent in many languages, including Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, Latin, and perhaps Ethiopic. In 1481, in the presence of Pope Sixtus IV, he delivered a sermon on Christ's passion drawing on Midrash, Jewish, and Muslim sources. He attempted to demonstrate that the passion of Christ had been foretold in ancient Jewish texts, although he did not mention the Kabbalah, which he taught in the prophetic tradition of Abraham Abulafia. Teaching in Italy, France, and Germany, he had influence on such scholars as Johannes Reuchlin, Rudolf Agricola, and Guillaume Postel. Mithridates translated some of the Koran, numerous Jewish philosophical texts, and works of the Kabbalah into Latin. Herein lies his significance: he introduced the Kabbalah to Renaissance scholars aiming to show the relationship of Jewish mysticism, as defined in Kabbalistic texts, to Christian tenets.

Pico was the first Christian by birth who tried to work with the original text. At the same time as he was writing the Conclusiones, Pico bought a copy of the work in Hebrew and employed Mithridates to translate it. The Bahir was first translated into Latin during the summer or fall of 1486, and Pico made use of Mithridates' translation in his Conclusiones.

After Pico's discovery of Kabbalah, new interest in Jewish mysticism aroused interest in the Bahir, which had been edited at the end of the twelfth or the beginning of the thirteenth century by one or more Kabbalists. Not long after its appearance, Rabbi Me'ir ben Shim'on of Narbonne wrote that the book was a real danger to the Jewish faith, yet the Bahir continued to be studied.

In the sixteenth century the Bahir was often cited and translated, and its transmission represents an important aspect in the history of Christian Kabbalah. Paul Riccius is pictured on the title page of his Porta lucis holding a Sefirot tree of divine emanations. The symbolism of the tree is of great significance in the Bahir, where God is described as a tree which contains all things within itself. Johannes Reuchlin, in his De arte cabalistica . . . (Frankfurt, 1612, I, 650), cites the Porta lucis by noting the readings of Riccius on the microcosm and the anima Messihae, where the light is defined by various appellations of God commonly associated with the Sefirot tree. In fact, many citations from the Porta lucis appear in Reuchlin, who studied the Bahir directly and notes variants in the text from those found in Menahem Recanati's commentary. Francesco Zorzi mentioned the Bahir in his In Scripturam Sacram problemata and wrote a commentary on Pico's kabbalistic theses in addition to that of Arcangelo da Borgonovo, who had been considered the sole commentator on Pico's Conclusiones until Chaim Wirszubski discovered a hitherto unknown manuscript in Jerusalem.

A Latin translation of the Bahir, independent of Flavius's translation, was made for Cardinal Egidio da Viterbo. Guillaume Postel made a third independent translation, in which he used the style he had employed in translating the Sefer Iezirah published in 1552 in Paris under the title Abrahami Patriarchae Liber Iezirah. In a letter addressed to Conrad Pellican in 1553 (Zentral Bibliothek, Zürich, ms. F47, fol. 226^r–v), Postel indicated that he had translated both the Zohar and the Bahir, which were still unpublished. Postel had sent both manuscripts to Ioannes Oporinus in Basel, who never published them. He began his translation of the Zohar in 1548, commenting that he had received the manuscript "from Venetian blood." The reference was, in all likelihood, to Daniel Bomberg, the Venetian printer for whom Postel had worked in the 1530s and 1540s. Bomberg had also provided Postel with his copy of the Bahir, which Postel had collated with his own copy found in Ferrara, as he notes in his translation of the Bahir (Universität Bibliothek, Basel, ms. A. IX. 99, fols. 36^r–98^v. See fol. 70^v for statement about Bomberg.). Postel played an important part in the transmission of Hebrew texts in the Renaissance, and his Zohar was with him on the day of his death, 6 September 1581.

Saverio Campanini's edition of Mithridates' Latin translation should kindle a rebirth of interest in the Bahir and in other important Hebrew texts which were studied so avidly in the Renaissance. Campanini's edition provides all that a scholar could desire in a text. The introduction is detailed but clearly written, and the foreword by Giulio Busi introduces the reader to the world of the Bahir and its transmission. In Campanini's introduction we find a careful explanation of the manuscript tradition. Flavius's Latin translation is printed and annotated, as is the Hebrew text. The English translation is accurate and readable, a difficult task to accomplish for a work like the Bahir. The printing of this book is beautiful and the type large enough to provide easy reading. One could wish for an index of concepts as well as one of names, although this is a minor fault in comparison with what Campanini has provided for us.