JSJ 052 1 Peter Schafer Two Gods

Book Reviews 141 Peter Schäfer, Two Gods in Heaven. Jewish Concepts of God in Antiquity. Transl. Allison Brown (Princeton: Princeton University Press) 2020. Pp. 192. £25.00 / $29.95. ISBN 9780691181325 (hardcover). The 2017 German edition of this book had already been reviewed before in this journal (by Anders Klostergaard Petersen).1 In this review of the English translation, I can therefore focus on some aspects less discussed by Petersen, whose review I endorse. The main asset of Two Gods in Heaven is that it brings all the material together in a very concise volume. After having read this book no one can still be convinced that binitarianism (the belief that there is more than one divine power) is an invention of Christianity and that it was never found in Judaism, before and after the New Testament. Petersen already remarked that this book is so concise that it is only readable by scholars who have an extensive background in Jewish Studies, and even in the subject matter at hand. This contrasts somewhat with its accessible, sometimes even popular language. At some points, the book is incomprehensible without knowledge of Schäfer’s previous work and the reactions to it. For example, on p. 23, Michael is introduced: “This will become clearer if we adopt the identification of the Son of Man with the archangel Michael.” Michael figuratively falls from the sky here because he has not been mentioned before in this book. Schäfer is convinced that, already in the famous vision in Dan 7, the earliest attestation of the “Son of Man” with a possibly divine or messianic connotation, the Son of Man is Michael (24). In chapter 10, the first chapter in part 2 about “Rabbinic Judaism and Early Jewish Mysticism,” a section is devoted to the Apocalypse of David. I find this section particularly inconsistent and at one point also mistaken. The said Apocalypse is considered a late exponent of the Hekhalot tradition. It features a vision by Rabbi Ishmael where David is enthroned next to God. That this is the fact cannot be denied. The text includes a liturgy in which God (and, according to Schäfer, David) are venerated by a variant of the Qedushah prayer included in various forms in Jewish liturgy until today. First the mistake. The author refers to the presence of Ps 146:10 as the “Opening verse of the long version of the Qedushah (Qedushah de-Sidra)” (92). On the one hand, Ps. 146:10 is never the opening verse of the Qedushah; that is Isa 6:3. If it does occur, it is the third verse (the second is Ezek 3:12). Secondly, this version of the Qedushah is 1 Anders Klostergaard Petersen, “Zwei Götter im Himmel. Gottesvorstellungen in der jüdischen Antike, written by Peter Schäfer,” JSJ 48 (2017), 304-307, https://doi.org/ 10.1163/15700631-12324301. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/15700631-bja10030 Downloaded from Brill.com04/20/2021 01:04:54PM by [email protected] via Lieve Teugels 142 Book Reviews not found in the Qedushah de-sidra, but in the Qedushah in the Amida. In the Qedushah-de-sidra, it is Exod 15:8 that is used. Now as to the inconsistency. Schäfer argues that it is David who is the object of at least part of this Qedushah ritual, i.e., David is not only enthroned but also venerated as a god, with words that are usually reserved for God alone. Schäfer attributes this to the influence of Christian beliefs or texts on the formulation of this Hekhalot text in Jewish Babylonia around the fourth century. Yet he compares the David Apocalypse to Revelations 4, and states that the Apocalypse is a “response to the Revelation in the New Testament” (96), while still adhering to its late date (as opposed to other scholars who think that the Apocalypse is older). Turning to fourth-century Christian anti-Jewish polemic, such as by Ephrem the Syrian in his Contra Haereses, and John Chrysostom, Schäfer demonstrates that these use the vision of Dan 7 to show that God had a son. Whereas he first spoke of a response (be it not necessarily a direct response, see p. 96) to a New Testament text, now Schäfer concedes, more in his line of thought, that these contemporary Christian authors served as “models for a dialogue between Jews and Christians in the fourth century.” One could ask: what kind of model? Apparently, some Jews (represented in the Hekhalot) agreed with the Christians, at least as to the fact that the idea of a son of God is feasible, although not to his identity. This conclusion was debated by Menahem Kister, who doubts the influence of such high Christian “theology” on Jewish, let alone rabbinic texts— something that Schäfer refers to as “modern polemics” (98) (or that he would not want to respond to with modern polemics, which is in fact the same). I would not see this is terms of polemics and certainly not as the Kister’s inability to accept any closeness of Jewish and Christian views, something which he definitely does in other studies.2 In addition, I think Schäfer’s interpretation of the Apocalypse of David goes too far: indeed, David is sitting on a throne next to God, and in this sense he can be considered a semi-divine or even divine figure; but it is David who leads the Qedushah here, together with (other) angels, a Qedushah that is addressed to God, as usual, much as in the Geniza text edited by Schäfer and discussed at the end of the book (128). Daniel Boyarin is Schäfer’s largest nemesis in this volume. In 2012, both scholars had simultaneously authored two books with quasi-identical titles 2 E.g. in Menahem Kister, “Allegorical Interpretations of Biblical Narratives in Rabbinic Literature, Philo, and Origen: Some Case Studies.,” in New Approaches to the Study of Biblical Interpretation in Judaism of the Second Temple Period and in Early Christianity, ed. Gary A. Anderson, Ruth A. Clements, and David Safran (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 133-83. Journal forDownloaded the Study of Judaism 52 (2021) 127-158 from Brill.com04/20/2021 01:04:54PM by [email protected] via Lieve Teugels Book Reviews 143 (Schäfer: The Jewish Jesus; Boyarin: The Jewish Gospels).3 Boyarin does not refer even once to Schäfer’s previous work in his book, which is of course a red rag to a bull. I cannot restrain from making a point here that applies to many more books by the greatest scholars in our field. I refer to the ongoing fighting between Schäfer and Boyarin, Schäfer and Milikowsky, Boyarin and Stern, Neusner z’’l and everyone else, and several more: would these books not be more pleasant to read if arguments would be brought in the form of dialogue without resorting to aggressive or insulting language? The Talmud may serve as the example for these scholars, yet most of the time in the Talmud the attacks are there for the sake of the argument, and not for the sake of the attack. When considered in due perspective, the differences between Boyarin and Schäfer are often matters of nuance: both agree that binitarianism was present in Judaism from the start. One of the points of debate between Boyarin and Schäfer is a passage in the Mekhilta, where it is stated explicitly that: “Scripture would not let the nations of the world have an excuse for saying that there are two powers” (Mekh. Rab. Ish. Baḥodesh 5 and Shirata 4). While this seems sufficient evidence that there is a trace—be it as a reaction against them—of binitarian ideas, whether Roman or Christian, in the Mekhilta, this phrase itself is not tackled in the chapter on early rabbinic midrash (ch. 9). Although it had been well explained in Schäfer’s 2012 The Jewish Jesus (p. 55 ff), in the present chapter this most important point is completely overshadowed by his debate with the “irked” (74) Boyarin over the exact role and interpretation of the individual prooftexts. The most important difference is that Boyarin (as Segal had already done in 1977)4 sees in this midrash a reference to the Son of Man in Dan 7:13—which then would serve as the rabbinic bridge between early Jewish apocalyptic texts and the Bavli—and Schäfer does not. While I think there are good arguments for each of their readings of the specific prooftexts, the most important point for me is the overly clear reference to two powers in heaven in this text, irrespective of the fact to exactly which prooftexts it refers, and whether or not one of these two powers is called the Son of Man. The position of the statement about the two powers immediately after the citation of Dan 7:10, however, makes it hard to deny that it has (also) something to do with that verse and possibly its continuation. 3 Peter. Schäfer, The Jewish Jesus: How Judaism and Christianity Shaped Each Other (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012); Daniel Boyarin, The Jewish Gospels. The Story of the Jewish Christ (New York: The New Press, 2012). 4 Alan F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism, Studies in Judaism in Late Antiquity ; Vol. 25 (Leiden: Brill, 1977). Journal for the Study of JudaismDownloaded 52 (2021) 127-158 from Brill.com04/20/2021 01:04:54PM by [email protected] via Lieve Teugels 144 Book Reviews An interesting feature that had already been noted by Petersen in his review is Schäfer’s almost systematic use of the word “usurpation” when he relates to Christian use of Daniel 7. This has remained the same in the English version. “Usurpation,” in contrast to “use” has a negative connotation. One wonders why the Self-Glorification Hymn of Qumran or the Apocalypse of David, or the other Jewish texts from the various periods that identify the Son of Man with a specific human are not dubbed so. Despite, but maybe also because of its conciseness, this book is a must-have for all scholars of religions in antiquity. Its first main point, that monotheism “is nothing more than an idea that was pursued again and again, yet seldom achieved … not only for authors of antiquity but also for modern researchers” (134) is made crystal clear. Schäfer has collected decisive proof in the form of a wide range of Jewish texts from the Bible to the Bavli that are not only discussed, but provided in the form of extensive quotations that makes the book a handy reference work. To finish I will summarize the second main point of the book: Schäfer’s own view of his position relative to his two main “opponents,” Menahem Kister and Daniel Boyarin. Boyarin, on the one extreme, is the maximalist: he sees an ongoing line of binitarian ideas (sometimes affirmed, sometimes in the form of rejection) from Second Temple Judaism through Palestinian rabbinic texts (“the bridge”) to Babylonian Judaism.5 Kister, on the other extreme, holds that rabbinic Judaism “resisted binitarian temptations of any kind” (133) and allegedly makes a sharp divide between rabbinic Judaism and non-rabbinic Judaism, especially Christianity. Schäfer, in the middle, holds that Babylonian Judaism advanced, and reacted against, binitarian ideas that were already held in pre-Christian Judaism, but was not conscious about the antiquity and Jewishness of its ideas. In Babylonian Judaism, they were triggered by similar ideas in contemporary Christianity, a minority and persecuted religion in the Persian Empire, which it either adopted (as in the Hekhalot texts), or refuted (as in the Bavli). The influence of eastern Christianity on Babylonian Judaism has not been studied extensively so far, and is certainly worth exploring further, also with respect to other topics. Lieve M. Teugels Protestant Theological University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands [email protected] 5 Interestingly, Boyarin also presents his ideas as a middle way, see his Daniel Boyarin, “Is Metatron a Converted Christian?,” Judaïsme Ancien/Ancient Judaism, 2013, 13-62. Journal forDownloaded the Study of Judaism 52 (2021) 127-158 from Brill.com04/20/2021 01:04:54PM by [email protected] via Lieve Teugels