I am not well versed on the history of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, but I think this could make sense: Envisioning a God with a body
Contrary to popular opinion, God in the earliest books of the Bible didn’t know all things.
Nor did He exist everywhere, all at once, James Kugel says.
Instead, the God of Israel was a walking, talking deity who needed to seek clarification from time to time, the world-renowned Jewish scholar observed during a recent public lecture at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo.
God is described as having eyes, fingers hands and ears, Kugel added.
So despite the longstanding and widespread view that God is omniscient and omnipresent, “God does indeed have a body in these ancient texts,” he said.
Kugel doesn’t believe authors of the Hebrew Bible employed references to God in human forms simply as metaphors.
Do you think the authors of some of the texts saw God that way?
3 Comments
Not at all, I think what we see from Kugel is typical Liberal theology quackery. They want to criticise Bible believing Christians of “Literalism” yet they import the most absurd forms of literalism to the text when they approach scripture.
OK, I don’t think that I would agree with Kugel on many points, but where do we see the early writers see God in the highly christianized ways we see Him now?
Surely they did not have a conception of the Trinity. Where do you see in the earliest books of the OT God being described as dis-embodied? I can’t think of anything off the top of my head. Is is possible that they realized these ideas (or were shown them by God) later?
I really don’t know. I don’t want to dismiss the idea that Kugel is putting forth because he is a liberal quack (whatever that means). I am more than willing to listen and be persuaded on this matter (either way). Even if I were to grant what Kugel is saying - it does not change the fact that we now know God to be different than that conception of Him. We are not talking about how God really is, instead, how did early Jews and/or the forerunners of the Jews perceive God to be like?
You do bring up a point - when do “literalists” (in any of their flavors) use metaphor?
I wrote about some of these issues in reflecting on difficulties Genesis poses for us. I think Kugel is overstating his point quite a bit, but I also agree that Genesis (by itself) doesn’t paint a picture of God as a Spirit, in and of himself infinite in being, glory, blessedness, and perfection; all-sufficient, eternal, unchangeable, incomprehensible, everywhere present, almighty, knowing all things, most wise, most holy, most just, most merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth (Westminster Catechism).
Having said this, I think context is everything here. If you compare the Genesis writings to the mythology of the time, it is indeed an arrow pointing precisely in the direction of the above description of God. But I think we do ourselves a disservice if we think that looking at God through the eyes of those stories isn’t an essential part of the process (for us as well as humanity in general).