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.

In late antiquity, as Christianity emerged from Judaism, it was not only the new religion that was being influenced by the old. The rise and revolutionary challenge of Christianity also had a profound influence on rabbinic Judaism, which was itself just emerging and, like Christianity, trying to shape its own identity. In The Jewish Jesus, Peter Schafer reveals the crucial ways in which various Jewish heresies, including Christianity, affected the development of rabbinic Judaism. He even shows that some of the ideas that the rabbis appropriated from Christianity were actually reappropriated Jewish ideas. The result is a demonstration of the deep mutual influence between the sister religions, one that calls into question hard and fast distinctions between orthodoxy and heresy, and even Judaism and Christianity, during the first centuries CE.

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.

Examines Judaism in Palestine throughout the Hellenistic period, from Alexander the Great's conquest in 334 BC to its capture by the Arabs in AD 636

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.