Scholem argued that the Bahir is an edited compilation rather than a single composition, and that some of its material is older than its Provencal setting and eastern in origin. He could not reconstruct what that material was or how it travelled, and neither has anyone since. The manuscript tradition begins after the book was already circulating in Languedoc, so there is no witness to the stage before editing.
What would resolve this A manuscript or a citation predating the Provencal circulation, or a securely dated eastern text sharing the Bahir's distinctive images and its fragmentary form. Comparative work on the Gnostic and Merkavah parallels Scholem noted, done against dated witnesses rather than against reconstructions, would narrow it even without a new manuscript.
OpenMedieval Jewish intellectual history, Hebrew and Aramaic codicology, and the study of late antique Jewish esoteric literatureGershom Scholem, translated by Allan Arkush, Origins of the Kabbalah