The Authenticity of the Zohar -- pt x

Shadal continues his Vikuach al Chochmat haKabbalah. (See previous segment.) The author suggest that this absence of redemption points before the sixth millennium was because they knew it would not be "discovered" before then. The guest counters that this statement, found in Tikkunim, is itself proof of forgery. And he compares it to a case from the Christian world, in similar time and place. The text of the Vikuach follows:

The author: This is no matter, for perhaps Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai know with Divine inspiration that his sefer would not come to be revealed until the sixth millennium, and therefore he did not write any end-time before the beginning of the sixth millennium.

The guest: And this thing itself, which is written in the introduction to the Tikkunim, that the sefer haZohar will not be revealed until the beginning of the sixth millennium, do you not see that it itself is a sign of forgery? Do you not see that the one who forged it, who invented the Zohar, was clever to write in it this thing, so that those who saw it would not be astounded at it and say "what is this sefer haZohar, who our fathers and fathers' fathers did not see?"

And you, do not think that the author of the sefer haZohar was the first who found this trick, for already like this think has been done close to his time, and close to his place.

For still you should know that in the third year to the sixth millennium a certain Jew in the city of Tolitula {=Toledo}, when he was digging in the mountain to expand his vineyard, found (so do they say) within the rock a book written in three languages -- the Holy Tongue {=Hebrew}, Greek, and Latin, and it encompassed everything that was and will be from Adam until the end of the world. And it was written in it that the son of God would be born from the virgin Miriam {=Mary}, and that he would suffer in order to save mankind; and it was written in it as well that this book would in the future be revealed when Ferdinando ruled in the kingdom of Castile {= Ferdinando III el Santo, who received the kingdom of Castile from his mother and the Kingdom of Leon from his mother}. (He is the Ferdinand who is nicknamed "holy" {=Santo} who ruled in Castile and Leon at the end of the 5th millennium and in the beginning of the 6th millennium.)