Books by Peter Schafer

Die vorliegende Untersuchung geht davon aus, da abstrakte Kategorienwie die des reinen Gottesbegriffes"e;, der Transzendenz Gottes"e; oder derVermeidung von Anthropomorphismen"e; von auen an die rabbinischen Texteherangetragen werden und nicht geeignet sind, diese zu erhellen. Denkformen,unter denen eine bestimmte Vorstellung zu subsumieren und von denen hersie zu interpretieren ist, konnen sich nur aus der rabbinischen Literatur selbstergeben. Der Ausgangspunkt der Arbeit war daher die Sammlung und Sichtungsamtlicher Stellen in der rabbinischen Literatur, in denen die Engel erwahntwerden.

Taking a fresh look at what the Greeks and Romans thought about Jews and Judaism, Peter Schafer locates the origin of anti-Semitism in the ancient world and firmly establishes Hellenistic Egypt as the generating source of anti-Semitism, with roots extending back into Egypt's pre-Hellenistic history.

The Merkavah movement is widely recognized as the first full-fledged expression of Jewish mysticism, one that had important ramifications for classical rabbinic Judaism. This title offers a look at the history of Jewish mysticism from the book of "Ezekiel" to the Merkavah mysticism of late antiquity.

Scattered throughout the Talmud, the founding document of rabbinic Judaism in late antiquity, can be found quite a few references to Jesus--and they're not flattering. In this lucid, richly detailed, and accessible book, Peter Schafer examines how the rabbis of the Talmud read, understood, and used the New Testament Jesus narrative to assert, ultimately, Judaism's superiority over Christianity. The Talmudic stories make fun of Jesus' birth from a virgin, fervently contest his claim to be the Messiah and Son of God, and maintain that he was rightfully executed as a blasphemer and idolater. They subvert the Christian idea of Jesus' resurrection and insist he got the punishment he deserved in hell--and that a similar fate awaits his followers. Schafer contends that these stories betray a remarkable familiarity with the Gospels--especially Matthew and John--and represent a deliberate and sophisticated anti-Christian polemic that parodies the New Testament narratives. He carefully distinguishes between Babylonian and Palestinian sources, arguing that the rabbis' proud and self-confident countermessage to that of the evangelists was possible only in the unique historical setting of Persian Babylonia, in a Jewish community that lived in relative freedom. The same could not be said of Roman and Byzantine Palestine, where the Christians aggressively consolidated their political power and the Jews therefore suffered. A departure from past scholarship, which has played down the stories as unreliable distortions of the historical Jesus, Jesus in the Talmud posits a much more deliberate agenda behind these narratives.

The period chosen for this study is that represented by the global domination of Hellenism, from the conquest of Palestine by Alexander the Great in the second half of the 4th century BCE until the seizure of the land by the Arabs in the 7th century CE.

Investigates the origins of a female manifestation of God in Jewish mysticism. Examining Judaic history from the biblical Wisdom tradition to the Middle Ages, this work finds some precedents for the Kabbalah's feminine divinity.