God: An Anatomy

"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. “The book is steeped in unusual interpretations of how the Bible shows the divine” In this whole book God is anthropomorphised. Through a close examination of the Bible , Stavrakopoulou writes about the various gods depicted in ancient myths and rituals. They came from a particular time, and they were made in the image of the people who lived then, who were shaped by their circumstances and experience of the world. She argues that important people in the Hebrew Bible were not historical figures and that probably very little of the Hebrew Bible is historical fact. She bases this on arguments that ancient writers had an understanding of ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’ very different from a modern definition of those terms. The book is steeped in unusual interpretations of how the Bible shows the divine. The author argues that her arguments about the physicality of God enhance our understanding of the history of the great monotheistic religions and Western culture. It is a thought-provoking book and cannot fail to spark controversy."