Zohar abstract concepts that are never completely expressed. The earlier part of the Zohar, also known as "Zohar 'Al haTorah" (Zohar on the Torah, זוהר על התורה) or "Midrash Rashbi", contains several smaller "books", as described below. This book was published in three volumes: Volume 1 on "Bereishit" (Genesis), Volume 2 on "Shemot" (Exodus) and Volume 3 on "Vayikra, Bamidbar and Devarim" (Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). At the start of the first volume is printed a "Preface to the Book of the Zohar" (pages 1a to 14b). After this introduction is the Zohar's commentary on most of the parashahs of the
The Book of Genesis (comics) on the work, as would have been expected. Reviewers have called the style "humanizing", with a "human-looking deity" with "enormous, hairy, veiny hands"; unlike much later Christian art, which Europeanized the characters from the Old and New Testaments, the characters in Crumb's book are "plac[ed...] squarely in the Middle East — and populat[ed...] with distinctly Semitic-looking people". The clothing and sets in the book were based on stills from classic Hollywood movies, as "there's not a lot of documentation about how people dressed and lived in ancient Mesopotamia." Crumb originally intended to do a sendup of the Book of Genesis,