The following is an excerpt from the article: Monotheism Vs. The Outlook That Everything is G-d
Recently it became known that a photocopy containing passages from the original handwriting of Rabbi Chaim Vital made it by some way to the National Library of Israel in Givat Ram. Armed by means of the photocopy, Rabbi Kosman came to the Library and after a strenuous examination of the original handwritten text, he succeeded in finding the relevant passage and found the passage that was subject to dispute. Now it was clarified beyond any doubt that the true text is indeed what appears in the book, Shmona Sh’earim.
Now it was possible to reconstruct the chain of errors that led to the errant text. A comparison between the various editions and between another early ancient handwritten addition in the Oxford Library teaches us that the scribal error was caused as a result of copying from a handwritten text, with the words: “the reason שמ’ 0
[ a Hebrew abbreviation] Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai on Log Ba’Omer is because …”
The person that copied the text chose to decipher the abbreviation to mean the day he died and such he wrote down, while according to the truth he should have deciphered the abbreviation to stand for, for the day of joy of . It turned out that the day of joy of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai was transformed by an error to the day of death of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai.
How did it occur that such a fundamental copying mistake took place? The Chid”a himself already offered a hint to the answer and thus he wrote, “and it is already known that among the texts attributed to the Ari {short for Arizal} there fell confusion”… Behind this vague statement is hidden a concealed or unknown historical event. It turns out that after the Holy Ari died, Rabbi Chaim Vital contacted all his disciples and gathered from them the writings that were in their hands with the reasoning that the fit time had not yet arrived to reveal the secrets. The writings were all gathered under his hand {guard and control} for the duration of 15 years. One of the sages of Tzfat {Safed} by the name of Yehoshua Bin Nun pleaded with him that he would be allowed to look at the manuscripts but Rabbi Chaim Vital rejected his request and said that the time had not yet arrived. When Rabbi Chaim Vital was extremely ill and was taken to Damascus, Rabbi Yehoshua exploited the opportunity and paid Rabbi Chaim Vital’s brother 50 gold coins in order to allow him to copy the manuscripts. He brought 100 scribes who worked during a 3 day period and they copied all the manuscripts. In this hasty copy, which was made without the knowledge of Rabbi Chaim Vital, many mistakes and errors were introduced and it is no wonder that also in the detail dealing with Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai was written in a short way. A matter which led to the story, as if the day of the death of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai is on Log Ba’Omer.