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God: An Anatomy
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20/99
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85/99
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92/99
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51/99
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About This Book
An astonishing and revelatory history that re-presents God as he was originally envisioned by ancient worshippers--with a distinctly male body, and with superhuman powers, earthly passions, and a penchant for the fantastic and monstrous. [A] rollicking journey through every aspect of Yahweh's body, from top to bottom (yes, that too) and from inside out ... Ms. Stavrakopoulou has almost too much fun."--The Economist The scholarship of theology and religion teaches us that the God of the Bible was without a body, only revealing himself in the Old Testament in words mysteriously uttered through his prophets, and in the New Testament in the body of Christ. The portrayal of God as corporeal and masculine is seen as merely metaphorical, figurative, or poetic. But, in this revelatory study, Francesca Stavrakopoulou presents a vividly corporeal image of God: a human-shaped deity who walks and talks and weeps and laughs, who eats, sleeps, feels, and breathes, and who is undeniably male. Here is a portrait--arrived at through the author's close examination of and research into the Bible--of a god in ancient myths and rituals who was a product of a particular society, at a particular time, made in the image of the people who lived then, shaped by their own circumstances and experience of the world. From head to toe--and every part of the body in between--this is a god of stunning surprise and complexity, one we have never encountered before.
Reviews
"Instead, she believes, we should return to the ancient Israelite mythology."
"Stavrakopoulou has the good grace to quote these distinguished opponents, but she never explains why they are wrong."
"Stavrakopoulou is a rousing read, even, or especially, when I tangle with her over particulars ..."
"Some of Stavrakopoulou's assumptions are—although perfectly respectable—not unassailable, namely that there was nothing particularly distinctive about Israel's pre-exilic religion and that ancient Israel's neighbors had a naively literal view of the depictions of their own deities."
"This may all sound like a clever theologian's undermining of faith — she is open about her own atheism — but she also insists there is nothing in her book for atheists either, who tend only to 'disprove' an idea of God as cosmic comfort blanket."
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