God: An Anatomy - As heard on Radio 4

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And, taking the standard philosophical definition of knowledge as justified true belief, Job actually knows bupkis about the physical assault — his loss of family, wealth, etc. Therefore, he does not know he is under assault from the eye of god. What does she say about the modern debate about statues? Does he ask whether we should be putting them up and what they mean and all that sort of thing? Does she have a particular take on that?

This reminds us that religious belief becomes a reality to us only when accompanied by the bodily gestures, intense mental concentration and evocative ceremonial of ritual. Because it imparts sacred knowledge, a myth is recounted in an emotive setting that sets it apart from mundane experience and brings it to life. Because they could no longer perform the impassioned rites of the Jerusalem temple, the traditionally vivid experience of Yahweh became opaque and distant to the Judean exiles in Babylonia. And the complex doctrine of Trinity devised by Greek theologians in the fourth century was not something to be “believed” but was the result of a mental and physical discipline that, accompanied by the rich music and ceremony of the liturgy, enabled Eastern Christians to glimpse the ineffable. The God we worship is a glorified Being in whom all power and perfection dwell, and he has created man in his own image and likeness (Gen. 1:26–27), with those characteristics and attributes which he himself possesses. And so our belief in the dignity and destiny of [humankind] is an essential part both of our theology and of our way of life. It is the very basis of our Lord’s teaching that “the first and great commandment” is: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind”; and that the second great commandment is: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Matt. 22:37–39). 18 Further ReadingHere, the premortal Christ reveals that humanity was created in the image of His spirit body, which has the same form and appearance as His future body of flesh. Similarly, Joseph Smith’s inspired revision of Genesis 1:26–27, now canonized as part of the book of Moses, indicates that humankind is in the image of the premortal Christ, who in turn is Himself in the image of the Father: Stavrakopoulou is a remarkable and unusual historian. Her attitude to the Bible in this book is controversial. It has a decidedly anthropological slant. She describes how, three thousand years ago in the Holy Land, the inhabitants knew of many deities, led by a Father God called El. Later, one such deity, known as Yahweh, had a human-shaped body and he possessed feet to walk on. He had a wife, offspring and colleagues. His body changed all the time. At one point, he was virile young, strapping, and emanated red hot light. However, in the book of Daniel, he had a more celestial colour. He had the white hair and the beard of an aged deity who possesses wisdom. In some specifications on the Developments in Christian Thought, there are units on liberation theology and feminism. Both of these can include discussions surrounding the work of various womanist scholars. The numerous works of Dr Paula Gooder are highly relevant to the specification. Her book, Phoebe, provides a novel insight into the early Jesus movement and the actions of Paul. It is also useful for considering the importance of hermeneutics when reading various biblical passages, particularly those relating to women, sexuality, marriage and the family.

An intellectually subtle and imaginatively original writer such as the prophet Ezekiel (6th century BC) can deploy deliberately symbolic and archaic narratives of male divine violence against an abused and rejected female who stands for the “unfaithful” people of Israel, in ways that have prompted anxiously sanitising interpretations for most of the last two millennia. Stavrakopoulou, a professor of ancient religion and the Hebrew Bible at the University of Exeter, argues that Judaism and, later, Christianity spiritualized the God of ancient Israel through the centuries. In so doing, once clearly anthropomorphic passages of Scripture were given completely allegorical meanings. As the author notes in the conclusion, “the real God of the Bible was an ancient Levantine deity whose footsteps shook the earth, whose voice thundered through the skies and whose beauty and radiance dazzled his worshippers.” The author presents a lengthy and well-researched tome that draws on multiple ancient sources and archaeological findings to rediscover the physicality of ancient gods and especially the bodily nature of the God of Israel. Stavrakopoulou explores this God one part at a time: feet and legs, genitals, torso, arms and hands, and, finally, head. She explores a remarkable range of Scripture in which Israel’s God is described in fully anthropomorphic terms—and often with attributes of character and action more akin to a god of Olympus than the God of modern Abrahamic religions. The God Stavrakopoulou reveals is a warrior and a lover who lives in close proximity to his people. At times, the author’s rejection of allegorical interpretations of this God is unyielding—e.g., her treatment of scriptural descriptions of God fathering his believers through his lover. Nonetheless, Stavrakopoulou provides a refreshing look at ancient Scripture and the people behind it, reminding readers that the concept of “God” in the 21st century is a world away from that of the earliest people of Israel. If you are exploring topics connected to sexual ethics, particularly going beyond a focus on heterosexuality, the work of Dr Susanna Cornwell and Marcella Althaus-Reid are both eminently relevant. As an undergraduate, Francesca Stavrakopoulou observed “lots of biblical texts suggest that God is masculine, with a male body” and was told by her theology professor that these texts were metaphorical, or poetic. “We shouldn’t get too distracted by references to his body,” her professor asserted, because to do so would be “to engage too simplistically with the biblical texts”. Beyond sexuality and creation, she also talks about Yahweh as an embodied war leader, soaked on blood, and often shown as arguably being addicted to violence. Again, she shows plenty of ANET parallels.

Yahweh (she seems to hint at, but doesn’t openly embrace, some version of the Midianite hypothesis) is just as embodied as Baal or Marduk. More importantly, he’s just as masculinely male, complete with penis. As part of this, she notes that “hand” as well as “foot” is often a biblical synonym for “penis,” as in other southwest Asian religious works. And Yahweh waves his penis. He wields it. He is procreative with it. As Stavrakopoulou notes, at some point in the history of what became Israel, Hebrew mythology identified the high god, El, with his more active deputy. No one is quite sure, but this seems to be happening well before the great disruption of the Babylonian conquest in the sixth century BCE, though the traces of the older distinction can be seen in some rather laboured passages in Genesis and Exodus where a shift in the divine name has to be explained. On the one hand, this means that the biblical god acquires a double set of robustly physical divine attributes – the more sedentary splendours of the enthroned High God as well as the active and violent characteristics of the warrior storm-god. On the other, it reinforces the sense that the supreme divine power can be the subject of diverse attributes; God is less obviously a straightforwardly amplified physical being, a “big man” – though this does not mean that he loses some of his more toxic gendered qualities. In many of the more obviously folkloric narratives, such as the story of Abraham or the account of the call of Moses in the book of Exodus, the voice and agency of the divine is still a regular presence interrupting the human story. But in the very sophisticated account of the life of Joseph, written probably in the fifth century BCE, God is active obliquely and non-coercively, communicating through dreams. In the equally novelistic tales set in the court of King David – above all, the long narrative of the rebellion and death of David’s son Absalom – this obliqueness is even more evident. Ottoman tentacles stretched everywhere, not just politically, but also commercially. They controlled major trade routes by land and sea. This book delves deep into primary and secondary historical sources, but it is written very clearly and accessibly and will be accessible to general readers as well as scholars and students.

God: An Anatomy, written by Professor Francesca Stavrakopoulou, is very useful. Here, she argues for a corporeal view of God in the Jewish scriptures and the Christian Bible. Numerous passages are provided to support her thesis as she moves from looking at those which focus on his feet, to his legs, torso and finally head. The book is useful for exploring how language about God should be understood (via analogy, symbols, the via negativa or something else). It also provides further thought for units focusing on the attributes of God, especially discussions surrounding whether the philosophical concept of God is supported by the Bible. Edmond LaB. Cherbonnier, “ In Defense of Anthropomorphism,” in Reflections on Mormonism: Judaeo-Christian Parallels, ed. TrumanG. Madsen (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1978), 155–171.

El, not Yahweh, was most likely the first god of the people of Israel. But early in the first millennium BCE, Yahweh displaced him. This Yahweh is the god whom Francesca Stavrakopoulou – professor of the Hebrew Bible and ancient religion at the university of Exeter – anatomises. He is not the perfect, abstract, immaterial being of modern conception; his is a visceral presence with an all too corporeal reality and many of the flaws that flesh is heir to. David Cannadine (chair) | Dodge Professor of History at Princeton University, a Visiting Professor of History at the University of Oxford, the editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography