Peter Schäfer (German judaic scholar) Add a review

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.

He was the director of the Jewish Museum of Berlin until June 2019 when he resigned amid criticism after a museum spokesperson issued a tweet critical of a Bundestag resolution that said the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement had an anti-semitic character. Subsequently, he received letters of support from 95 museum directors and curators, 445 Jewish studies scholars and 45 Talmudists.

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 is Catholic.