Aqa Buzurg Tehrani says...

Aqa Buzurg Tehrani says, “Bihar al-anwar is a comprehensive book which contains the narrations of the (a); accurate researches, better than which cannot be found and it must be said that similar to this book has neither been written in the past, nor would ever be written in the future.”(11) Imam Khomeini wrote, “Bihar al-anwar is the work of the great scholar of hadith, Muhammad Baqir al-Majlisi which contains nearly 400 books and treatises; Bihar al-anwar is itself a library and its author wrote it when he saw that many hadiths books are about to be lost and wasted due to their small size and being less accessed.”(12) The important point about writing of Bihar al-anwar is that the author’s limited usage of the Four Books made it a less important jurisprudential reference and even though it has a great coverage of other fields in Shi’a culture, it is not used in jurisprudential discussions as a common reference.

Also, the type of analyses al-‘Allama al-Majlisi gives about hadiths have been made in moderate Akhbari atmosphere and even where he faces rational issues, he criticizes that with a theological approach based on the apparent meaning, not with a rational and philosophical approach; therefore, some Shi’a scholars believe that al-‘Allama al-Majlisi’s explanations and comments are not accurate enough.

(13) Thus, some commentaries and comments al-Allama al-Majlisi gives under some titles such as soul, self,…