God’s Body: The Anthropomorphic God in the Old Testament

Abstract

What is the biblical view of God’s body? This simple question has sparked immense scholarly interest at the turn of the 21st century. The scope and methodologies used to engage this question are wide ranging, evidencing an emerging field of study at the intersection of ANE studies, anthropology, and iconography. Originally published as Gottes Körper: Zur alttestamentlichen Vorstellung der Menschengestaltigkeit Gottes (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2010), the present volume includes an English preface cataloging more than a dozen monographs published on the topic of anthropomorphism in the decade between the German original and this translation (pp. xiii–xiv). The engagement with these works, however, appears to be limited to brief references in the footnotes.Wagner provides a clear and judicious study of divine anthropomorphism with an emphasis on understanding the semiotics of human body parts found in ANE iconography and texts of the Hebrew Bible. His stated goal is “to unfold the Old Testament concept of God’s human form in light of modern understanding of Ancient Oriental images and corporeal concepts … [in order] to appreciate the intention of the Old Testament conceptualization of God’s human form and to convey its theological substance” (p. xi). Though not without its detractions or foibles, this volume contains many astute iconographic and philological observations concerning the somewhat dicey issue of the divine corporeal form in a theological text that condemns the physical representation of God.God’s Body is divided into seven chapters. The first three serve as extended introductions setting up the theological question of divine corporeality and presenting the methodological background of Wagner’s view of anthropomorphic language in the OT and ANE. The majority of the volume (more than 100 pages) is committed to discussing the use and meaning of body imagery. Chapter 4 provides a well-illustrated primer in reading the language of body images, connecting ANE iconography and biblical texts. Chapter 5 focuses on the theological message of these graphic and verbal depictions. Wagner concludes, “The picture fostered by earlier generations of researchers, that OT anthropomorphism is ‘outdated’ and increasingly replaced by a transcendental concept of God, is not accurate” (p. 123). In contrast, he adopts the functional understanding of body language popularized by H. W. Wolff and O. Keel. This distinction comprises the idea that anthropomorphic pictorial and verbal images primarily encode functional meanings distinct from those of form and shape. The most common corporal images, specifically external body parts (hands, feet, arms, head, face, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, throat/neck), signify communication and action. That is to say, body forms communicate theological characteristics to corporal beings, and they function to demonstrate God’s immanent actions in the world. The final two chapters discuss briefly the issue of the imago Dei and provide a summary with some added reflections.Wagner focuses his discussion on anthropomorphism, the language of human bodies, as distinct from anthropragmatism, the language of human actions, to describe divine attributes. This metaphorical relationship of human and divine is equivalent, because he assumes “the concept of the body is the same for humans as it is for God” (p. 1). He further limits his analysis to the category of direct anthropomorphisms describing God’s body parts, which appears to be similar to E. Hamori’s figurative anthropomorphism and distinct from physical embodiment, such as in Gen 18 (“When Gods Were Men”: The Embodied God in Biblical and Near Eastern Literature, BZAW 384 [Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008]). Discarding the metaphor theory of G. Lakoff and M. Johnson (Metaphors We Live By [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980]) and other cognitive linguists who argue that metaphor is not merely a linguistic trope but is a way of mapping and understanding cognition, Wagner excludes “indirect” anthropomorphic comparisons, such as those that use comparative particles (e.g., the Hebrew preposition k-; pp. 7–8).Engaging the question of divine representation requires investigating how various cultures understand the human body differently. Wagner contends, “our modern understanding of the body hampers our understanding of Old Testament phenomena” (p. xi). With regard to the “iconic turn” at the end of the 20th century and the critical reflection on the modern and ancient concepts of the body, he is careful to designate both pictorial and linguistic depictions equally as historically and culturally inhabited concepts (pp. 3–7). This methodological sophistication is commendable. However, the interpretation of specific images at times fails his own interpretive rigor. “Material images reveal clearly how the external form was ‘seen’” (p. 2), but the corresponding linguistic signs are not always as clear. For instance, the English concept of encoded by hand and arm do not map one-to-one onto the Hebrew anatomic terms yād, ʾammâ, and zĕrōaʿ. But the simple equivocation of yād to hand and zĕrōaʿ to arm is proffered in God’s Body.While the translation quality is exceptional, some required decoding may hamper the book’s accessibility for a broad audience. For example, the regular use of the term Ancient Orient(al)—instead of ANE––seems prosaic in the 21st century. Additionally, the Hebrew transcriptions and transliterations employ idiosyncratic conventions and suffer from misrepresentation, inconsistent rendering, and/or typographic oversight. Some examples include: mistaken transliterations of reḥem (p. 2), loʾ (p. 11), and pe(h) (p. 21 and passim); an inadvertently undeleted editor’s notice: “(letter-spaced in the following)” (p. 14); “religixon” (p. 16); Kuntillet ʿAğrūd instead of the English rendering Kuntillet Ajrud (p. 24); Bet-Schean for Beit-/Bet-Shean (p. 49); “schalom” for shalom (p. 76);ʿajin for ʿayin (p. 78); Chirbet el-Qôm for Khirbet el-Qom (p. 83); inverted Hebrew nepeš (p. 115, nn. 29, 30). The positives of methodology and analysis, however, outweigh these various deficiencies.In short, God’s Body continues to be an important and timely volume even a decade after its first publication.