Göttlicher Messias und Inkarnation : Die Rolle der rabbinischen Uberlieferungen in der Disputation zu Barcelona
Résumé
Recent scholarship about Judaism of Late Antiquity revealed the existence of a widespread binitarian and anthropomorphic conception of God, particularly among the Rabbis. Furthermore, Jewish binitarian and anthropomorphic texts have obvious similarities with contemporary Christian conceptions about Jesus as a divine Messiah who incarnated in a human body. Therefore, it is not surprising that during the Disputation of Barcelona (1263) the converted Jew Pablo Christiani used rabbinic binitarian and anthropomorphic traditions to justify the veracity of Christian Messianic doctrine. By contrast, his Jewish challenger Nahmanides made considerable efforts to show that these texts should not be understood in a literal way. It is likely however that his metaphorical interpretations of the texts did not always reflect his real opinion, for Nahmanides was also a follower of the Medieval Kabbala, which was to a large extent in line with binitarian and anthropomorphic traditions of the ancient Rabbis.