This article represents a refreshingly balanced view which I agree with to a large extent. This is compounded by the fact that most people of the author’s basic orientation in Judaism write off the Zohar as a forgery or through a lack of understanding simplistically declare it heretical. So, I commend the author for not being bound and shackled by any of the “party lines” regarding this issue.

I would add (in the name of Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, who wrote a piece about the subject) that to simplistically write off the Zohar as a forgery is difficult to justify also because:

1) Rav Moshe DeLeon was known as a ssadiq. It’s very hard to imagine that he would lie, let alone swear falsely regarding the authenticity of the Zohar. If the point was to garner readership, there’s no reason to believe that people wouldn’t have read a work he penned himself.

2) The Kaballistic system of Rav DeLeon differs dramatically from that presented in the Zohar. In fact, none of his works are similar to the Zohar, neither stylistically nor as far as content is concerned.

3) I realize that the following may not be logically airtight, but the truth is that a work such as the Zohar is simply beyond the abilities of Rav DeLeon to write himself.

4) Rav Yitzkah of Acco, who lived during the time period, went to investigate the issue himself. It is apparent from his later works that he himself accepted the basic authenticity of the Zohar.

Now, positing that the Zohar is a multi-faceted, multi-layered text is actually very reasonable. When dealing with the Talmud, for example, people generally understand that this is so, and that errors crept into the text due to copying mistakes, censorship, and so on. And yet the party line for most Jews around today is that the entire Zohar, from beginning to end, with almost no exception, was penned by the students of the Rashbi, in particular R’ Abba. Thus from beginning to end the Zohar has no errors at all and every word came straight from the lips of Rabi Shimon.

Kol tuv,
Micha

The Zohar does not say 708. It says 408, and that is to be a date that is 40 years after Binyan HaBayit. The 708 drash is external. Don’t know where it originated.

If you examine the text closely there, the association of 408 with the pasuk in Behar seems to be a late addition. The Zohar many times gives a siman for numbers. Here it gave B’nei Chet, where Chet is 408. This time it is different, it gave a secondary siman, that you have quoted.