Anziehung und Abstoßung

The question as to the relationship between Judaism and Christianity in the first centuries has long been answered, as a matter of course, with the explanation that a permanent boundary was drawn between the two at some point in the first or second century. The claim that such a demarcation of the two religions was established so early on has subsequently undergone critical revision because sources do actually indicate that this process took place over a much longer period of time. Indeed, the process has been shaped by the mutual refueling of arguments to such an extent that one has to speak of »the birth of Christianity from the spirit of Judaism« as much as of »the birth of Judaism from the spirit of Christianity«. Peter Schäfer shows in this gripping analysis of the written traditions and interpretations of the patriarch Enoch and the archangel Metatron just how attraction and repulsion between Judaism and Christianity took shape in the formative early centuries.