Gershom Scholem argued that Moses de León (1240-1305) was the sole author of the Zohar. More recently, Yehuda Liebes contended that while De León may have been the primary author, he incorporated or recast selections from contemporary kabbalists (e.g. Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla, Rabbi Joseph of Hamadan, Rabbi Bahya ben Asher). Most recently, Kabbalah scholars such as Ronit Meroz, Daniel Abrams and Boaz Huss have been demonstrating that the materials within the Zohar underwent several generations of writing, re-writing and redaction. De León claimed to discover the text of the Zohar while in the land of Israel and attributed it to the 2nd-century Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, who is the main character of the text. The text gained enormous popularity throughout the Jewish world.