the Zohar. They found it unsurprising that ben Yochai should have foretold future happenings or made references to historical events of the post-Talmudic period. By the late 16th century, the Zohar was present in one-tenth of all private Jewish libraries in Mantua. The authenticity of the Zohar was accepted by such 16th century Jewish luminaries as Joseph Karo (d. 1575), and Solomon Luria (d. 1574), who wrote nonetheless that Jewish law does not follow the Zohar when it is contradicted by the Babylonian Talmud. Luria writes that the Zohar cannot even override a minhag. Moses Isserles (d. 1572) writes that he "heard" that the author of the Zohar is ben Yochai. Elijah Levita (d. 1559) did not believe in its antiquity, nor did Joseph Scaliger (d. 1609) or Johannes Drusius (d. 1616). Enlightenment Period Debate continued over the generations; Delmedigo's arguments were echoed by Leon of Modena (d. 1648) in his Ari Nohem and Jean Morin (d. 1659), and Jacob Emden (d. 1776), who may have been familiar with Morin's arguments, devoted a book to the criticism of the Zohar, called Mitpachas Sefarim (מטפחת ספרים) to fight the remaining adherents of the Sabbatai Zevi movement (in which Zevi, a false messiah and Jewish apostate, cited Messianic prophecies from the Zohar as proof of his legitimacy), and endeavored to show that the book on which Zevi based his doctrines was a forgery. Emden argued that the Zohar misquotes passages of Scripture; misunderstands the Talmud; contains some ritual observances that were ordained by later rabbinical authorities; mentions The Crusades against Muslims (who did not exist in the 2nd century); uses the expression "esnoga", a Portuguese term for "synagogue"; and gives a mystical explanation of the Hebrew vowel points, which were not introduced until long after the Talmudic period. Saul Berlin (d. 1794) argued that the presence of an introduction in the Zohar, unknown to the Talmudic literary genre, itself indicates a medieval date. In the Ashkenazi community of Eastern Europe, religious authorities including Elijah of Vilna (d. 1797) and Shneur Zalman of Liadi (d. 1812) believed in the authenticity of the Zohar, while Ezekiel Landau (d. 1793), in his sefer Derushei HaTzlach (דרושי הצל"ח), argued that the Zohar is to be considered unreliable as it came into our hands many hundreds of years after Ben Yochai's death and lacks an unbroken tradition of authenticity, among other reasons. Isaac Haver (d. 1852) admits