This new translation is based on comparing varied Aramaic editions. It will run to 12 volumes when finished. Daniel Matt is the primary translator, who seems to have a genuine love for, and understanding of, the Kabbala. There are three volumes out now, from Stanford U. Press. They cover all of Genesis.
HP Blavatsky studied Kabbala for 40 years, thus the many references to Kabbala & Zohar in her writings.
Here is a definition by HPB:
"For the Kabalah is no special volume, nor is it even a system. It consists of seven different systems applied to seven different interpretations of any given Esoteric work or subject. These systems were always transmitted orally by one generation of Initiates to another, under the pledge of the Sodalian oath, and they have never been recorded in writing by any one."
Volume Four came out last year; here is part of Matt's Preface:
| QUOTE |
| [This volume] covers the first half of Exodus, including Pharaoh's enslavement of the Israelites, the birth of Moses, the deliverance from Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea, and the Revelation at Mount Sinai. In exploring the mystical dimension of these dramatic events, the Zohar treats the nature of evil and it relation to the divine realm, the romance of Moses and Shekhinah, and the inner meaning of the Ten Commandments. In the context of the miraculous splitting of the Red Sea, Rabbi Shim'on reveals the mysterious Name of 72, a complex divine name consisting of 216 letters (72 triads), formed out of three verses in Exodus 14. |