Peter Schäfer - "Jewish Responses to the Emergence of Christianity"

Wikipedia:

Peter Schäfer (born 29 June 1943, Mülheim an der Ruhr, North Rhine-Westphalia) is a prolific German scholar of ancient religious studies, who has made contributions to the field of ancient Judaism and early Christianity through monographs, co-edited volumes, numerous articles, and his trademark synoptic editions. He was a Professor of Religion and the Ronald O. Perelman Professor of Judaic Studies at Princeton University from 1998 to 2013.

. . .From 1983 to 2008 he was Professor for Jewish Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. Since 1993, he has been co-editor of Jewish Studies Quarterly. Schäfer’s research interests include Jewish history in late antiquity, the religion and literature of Rabbinic Judaism, Jewish mysticism, 19th- and 20th-century Wissenschaft des Judentums and Jewish magic. He is a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He won the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award in December 2006. In 2014 he was awarded the Dr. Leopold Lucas Prize by the Protestant Faculty of the University of Tübingen, and in 2021 the Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts.

. . .Schäfer became a target for anti-BDS activists when Berlin’s Jewish Museum presented an exhibition “Welcome to Jerusalem”, which included a Muslim narrative as part of its depiction of Jerusalem. The criticism reached a peak when the museum’s spokesperson issued a tweet critical of a May 2019 Bundestag resolution that said the BDS movement had an anti-semitic character. Schäfer resigned as director of the museum in June 2019 to protect it from further attacks. Regarding the criticism, he said: “The accusation of antisemitism is a club that allows one to deal a very rapid death blow, and political elements who have an interest in this used and are using it, without a doubt”.

“Two Gods in Heaven: Jewish Concepts of God in Antiquity” by Peter Schäfer (Princeton University Press, 2020):

Contrary to popular belief, Judaism was not always strictly monotheistic. Two Gods in Heaven reveals the long and little-known history of a second, junior god in Judaism, showing how this idea was embraced by rabbis and Jewish mystics in the early centuries of the common era and casting Judaism’s relationship with Christianity in an entirely different light.

Drawing on an in-depth analysis of ancient sources that have received little attention until now, Peter Schäfer demonstrates how the Jews of the pre-Christian Second Temple period had various names for a second heavenly power—such as Son of Man, Son of the Most High, and Firstborn before All Creation. He traces the development of the concept from the Son of Man vision in the biblical book of Daniel to the Qumran literature, the Ethiopic book of Enoch, and the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria. After the destruction of the Second Temple, the picture changes drastically. While the early Christians of the New Testament took up the idea and developed it further, their Jewish contemporaries were divided. Most rejected the second god, but some—particularly the Jews of Babylonia and the writers of early Jewish mysticism—revived the ancient Jewish notion of two gods in heaven.

Describing how early Christianity and certain strands of rabbinic Judaism competed for ownership of a second god to the creator, this boldly argued and elegantly written book radically transforms our understanding of Judeo-Christian monotheism.

Video Title: Peter Schäfer “Jewish Responses to the Emergence of Christianity. ” Source: CISMOR2. Date Published: March 15, 2012.