God: An Anatomy

An astonishing and revelatory history that re-presents God as he was originally envisioned by ancient worshipperswith 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 Yahwehs 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 portraitarrived at through the author's close examination of and research into the Bibleof 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 toeand every part of the body in betweenthis is a god of stunning surprise and complexity, one we have never encountered before.