Sepher Ha-Zohar (Le Livre de la Splendeur) Doctrine Esoterique des Israelites.

(SCHOLEM, GERSHOM).

Ernest Leroux

Paris

1906-11

FIRST FRENCH EDITION. Translated by Jean de Pauly. One of 750 numbered copies. Complete in six volumes. The Gershom Scholem set, annotated by him throughout. Each volume with Scholem’s Hebrew book-plate tipped onto front pastedown.

The mysterious Albanian(!)-born Jean de Pauly (1860-1903) had translated into French portions of the Talmud prior to undertaking this work - his universally well regarded chef-d’oeuvre - the first complete translation of the Zohar into a modern European language. France’s largest paper manufacturer Emile Lafuma-Giraud published the set whereby each page utilized the Hebrew name of God as a watermark. Gershom Scholem (1897-1982) was the leading academic authority in the study of Jewish mysticism during the second half of the 20th century. It was he who established Kabbalah research as a formal discipline, which has in turn, influenced a host of writers and thinkers both within and without the scholarly world. Throughout this 6-volume Zohar one finds Scholem’s manuscript corrections in regard to sources and the like, something for which de Pauly received much critical comment by Scholem. See B. Paul, Qabbalah and Academia: The Critical Study of Jewish Mysticism in France, in: Shofar, vol. 18, no. 2 (2000); Gershom Scholem, From Berlin to Jerusalem: Memories of My Youth (1980) pp. 116-17; and Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1980) p. 330.