{"title":"Books by Peter Schäfer","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780691181325","title":"Two Gods in Heaven – Jewish Concepts of God in Antiquity","description":"A book that challenges our most basic assumptions about Judeo-Christian monotheismContrary 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.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56293048058229,"sku":"9780691181325","price":32.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780691181325_7cfd59d1-addb-494d-b58b-c093f4824b59.jpg?v=1786015014"},{"product_id":"9780691143187","title":"Jesus in the Talmud","description":"\u003cp\u003eScattered 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 Schäfer examines how the rabbis of the Talmud read, understood, and used the New Testament Jesus narrative to assert, ultimately, Judaism's superiority over Christianity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Schäfer 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A departure from past scholarship, which has played down the stories as unreliable distortions of the historical Jesus, \u003ci\u003eJesus in the Talmud\u003c\/i\u003e posits a much more deliberate agenda behind these narratives.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56294504038773,"sku":"9780691143187","price":30.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780691143187_cafaa0d8-5918-4afd-b00c-6cd09da7cebe.jpg?v=1786014653"},{"product_id":"ashkenazi","title":"Ashkenazi","description":"From a prize-winning historian, the first comprehensive narrative history of Ashkenazi Jews: their culture, their religion, their daily lives, and their many migrationsCovering two millennia of history, from late antiquity to the twentieth century, this landmark volume by an eminent historian traces the long trajectory of Ashkenazi Jews, that branch of the Jewish people who migrated from the Levant into central and then eastern Europe. Because religion, in the form of rabbinic Judaism, played so central a role in the lives of almost all Jews before modernity, author Peter Schäfer examines the ways in which the institutions and practices of the rabbis were transplanted, and transformed, during these periods of migration. Schäfer describes the establishment and flourishing of centers of rabbinic learning and innovation in the new European homelands—places including Cologne, Frankfurt, Worms, and Troyes, the French home of the legendary medieval Talmudic sage Rashi. He discusses the long and often fraught period of intellectual, cultural, economic, and political exchange with the Christian majority, and chronicles such Jewish movements as kabbalah (Jewish mysticism), messianism (Sabbateanism), and (in the modern period) Jewish socialism (“Bundism”) and Zionism.   The scope of Ashkenazi is vast, beginning with a portrait of Jews in the late Roman Empire and then mapping the first central European Jewish settlements in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the expulsions of the late fifteenth century, the subsequent migration to Russia, Lithuania, and Poland, followed by remigration westward in the nineteenth century after the start of Russian pogroms. Finally, Schäfer considers the impact of the Holocaust, and the founding of the state of Israel—which was spearheaded by Zionist leaders of largely Ashkenazi origins.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57499200160117,"sku":"9780691267449","price":35.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780691267449.jpg?v=1786694517"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-peter-schafer.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}