Mirror of His Beauty : Feminine Images of God from the Bible to the Early Kabbalah / Peter Schäfer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Schäfer, Peter, author.

Series:

Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the ancient to the modern.

Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cabala.

Femininity of God--Biblical teaching.

Femininity of God.

Femininity of God--History of doctrines.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (325 pages).

Place of Publication:

Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

In this beautifully realized study, Peter Schäfer investigates the origins of a female manifestation of God in Jewish mysticism. The search itself is a fascinating exploration of the idea of a feminine divinity. And Schäfer's surprising but persuasive conclusions yield deeper understanding of the complex but frequently intimate relationship between Christianity and Judaism--and of the development of religious concepts more generally. Toward the end of the twelfth century, a small book titled the Bahir (Light) appeared in Provence. The first document of Judaism's emerging kabbalistic movement, it introduced a completely new view of God, one that included a divine potency that was essentially female. This female divinity was portrayed both as a mediator between Jews and God and as part of the Godhead itself. Examining Judaic history from the biblical Wisdom tradition to the Middle Ages, Schäfer finds some precedents for the Kabbalah's feminine divinity. But he cannot account for her forceful appearance in twelfth-century southern France without reference to the immediate Christian environment, particularly the flourishing veneration of the Virgin Mary. Indeed, twelfth-century Jews and Christians were simultaneously rediscovering the feminine as an aspect of the Godhead after having abandoned it in favor of either an abstract, disembodied God or an exclusively male one. In proposing that the medieval cult of Mary--rather than eastern Gnosticism--is the appropriate framework for understanding the feminine elements in Jewish mysticism, Mirror of His Beauty represents a sea change in Kabbalah and Jewish-Christian cultural studies. It shifts our attention from the Byzantine East to the Latin Christian West. And in contrast to histories that treat the development of Judaism and Christianity in isolation, it leads us to a fuller understanding of Jews and Christians living in proximity, aware of each other.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

FIGURES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABBREVIATIONS

Introduction

PART I: From the Bible to the Bahir

Chapter 1. Lady Wisdom

Chapter 2. Philo's Wisdom

Chapter 3. The Gnostic Drama

Chapter 4. The Rabbinic Shekhinah

Chapter 5. The Shekhinah of the Philosophers

Chapter 6. The Shekhinah in the Bahir

PART II. THE QUEST FOR ORIGINS

Chapter 7. Gnosis

Chapter 8. Christianity

Chapter 9. Counter-Evidence: Mary and the Jews

Chapter 10. How Much "Origins," Or: The Anxiety of Influence

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (p. [289]-300) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Mai 2019)

ISBN:

9780691187730

0691187738

OCLC:

1132218583