God’s Body presents an important introduction to the discussion of the body in the Bible and the ANE.
Reading Religion
Praise for the German Edition of this Book: In this eminently readable and engaging work, Wagner offers to a wide audience an informed overview of Israelite reflections on divine embodiment within the context of ancient Near ... Read more Eastern religions.
Review of Biblical Literature
Wagner presents an engaging and challenging description of YHWH's body and why it should be properly understood ... The multiple depictions of the art of Egypt, Syria-Palestine, Phoenicia, and Mesopotamia is a highlight of the book. He also mentions possible avenues for future research.
The Expository Times
This study book on the metaphors and language imagery of the Hebrew Bible, in comparison with the pictorial representations of the Ancient Near East, is to be [...] appreciated. One finds in this book valuable explanations of how gods were portrayed in the Ancient Near East, differentiated between Egypt and Mesopotamia, and how, in comparison, the body of God is linguistically described in the Hebrew Bible.
Christoph Auffarth, Angesagt! Buchempfehlungen Religion, Germany
Andreas Wagner advocates taking seriously the Old Testament ideas of the human form of God. But modern misunderstandings have to be dispelled. Ancient Oriental images are not visuals but visuals before the emergence of Greek pictorial tradition [...] This inspiring study concludes that, all in all, it is therefore a theologically most demanding achievement to maintain the (mental) image of the body of God, to think a prohibition of images in the sense of a cult image prohibition, and to carry out the whole in strict monotheism.
Ludger Schwienhorst-Schönberger, Christ in der Gegenwart, Germany
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