God: An Anatomy - As heard on Radio 4

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She dares to argue, textually, that Eve had sex with God. The verse in question is Genesis 4:1, in the Revised Standard Version, “Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, ‘I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord’.” At issue are the words Eve speaks. The Jewish Publication Society Tanakh translates them, “I have gained a male child with the help of the Lord.” Robert Alter translates, “I have got me a man with the Lord.” Note that Alter omits the word “help”, which, in fact, is absent from the Hebrew. Stavrakopoulou omits it too but goes a large step further: “I have procreated a man with Yahweh.” The Hebrew here is qnyty [I have gotten/gained/got me/procreated] ‘yš [man] ‘t [with] yhwh [Lord/Yahweh]. Critics have long noted a bit of wordplay in the verb Eve speaks inasmuch as qnyty is lexically linked to qyn (“Cain”) around the root notion “to forge.” So, then, there are two grounds for Stavrokopoulou’s move from the metaphorical to the literal: first, help is absent from the original; second, the verb hints that Eve did indeed do or perhaps “forge” something with Yahweh. Here I found myself thinking of the first verse in the Book of Jeremiah. In the King James Version, “Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee.” Stavrakopoulou’s “procreate” is a carefully chosen word, for Yahweh’s imagined procreative interaction with Eve, or any later pregnant woman, may be quite physical without necessarily entailing intercourse, and Stavrakopoulou never claims otherwise. Plus, if we are indeed taking Job literally, of course, Yahweh and the Satan have a bet. This isn't even sloughing off evil onto the Satan, contra Stavra, as Yahweh puts limits on what he can do. And, again, as we have it today, it's a bet, not Satan punishing evil. Although Stavrakopoulou is an atheist, she’s fascinated, even perturbed, by what Christians and Jews have done to God. In ancient times, she notes, God had a body, “a supersized, muscle-bound, good-looking” physique. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; In the image of his own body, male and female, created he them. … And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his own image, and called his name Seth. (Moses 6:8–10).

Witches, statues, God's body, the Ottomans, medieval church going and 17th-century England as a "devil land" are the topics explored in this year's shortlisted books. Rana Mitter interviews the authors ahead of the announcement of the winning book on June 22nd.

Discussions and talks from the Free Thinking Festival 2019

But towards the close of the first millennium bce, and into the early centuries of the Common Era, these erudite philosophical ideas would gradually come to shape the thinking of certain Jewish and Christian intellectuals, so that they began to re-imagine their deity in increasingly incorporeal, immaterial terms, drawing ever-sharper distinctions between the heavenly and the earthly, the divine and the human, and the spiritual and the bodily. It is the broadly Platonic notion of the otherness and unlikeness of the divine to anything in or beyond the universe that has shaped the more formal theological constructions of God in the Western religious imagination. And yet these constructions are built on a conceptual framework very much at odds with the Bible itself, for in these ancient texts, God is presented in startlingly anthropomorphic ways. This is a deity with a body. Before we get into discussing what you and your fellow Wolfson History Prize judges regard as the best history books of 2022, have you noticed among them any particular approach to history or way of dealing with the past that is particularly original or interesting? This is an extraordinary book. It’ll rewire your thinking, and it’s so readable you won’t notice till it’s too late.” — Tim Whitmarsh, author of Battling the Gods

Not a particular take. She just leaves us to decide what we think. So much depends on who the people are. But her view is that it doesn’t seem as if the people who are pulling these statues down really understand the historical milieu in which they were put up. Ottoman tentacles stretched everywhere, not just politically, but also commercially. They controlled major trade routes by land and sea. This book delves deep into primary and secondary historical sources, but it is written very clearly and accessibly and will be accessible to general readers as well as scholars and students.However, are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us. Stavrakopoulou’s relationship to her evidence shows her respectful and intrigued attitude. For example, she mentions walking barefoot around the footprints at the ‘Ain Dara temple. She draws readers, on multiple occasions, into a “narrative” about the evidence in hand — for example, about the clay ossuary from Pequ‘in — a beautiful way to contextualise or capture readers’ imaginations. The humour of the writing also makes it an entertaining read, and a welcome break from academic writing that is dry, stuffy, and pedantic. Music choices include Tallis, Beethoven, Elgar, and Handel’s portrayal of her favourite Biblical heroine, Athalia.

First up is The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars and Caliphs by Marc David Baer. Tell us why this one made the shortlist—what makes it one of the best history books of the year? In contrast to an archaic, religious sacralising of the perfect, glowing, muscular, dominant body, there is a central strand in Jewish and Christian imagination which insists that bodies marked by weakness, failure, the violence of others, disease or disability are not somehow shut out from a share in human – and divine – significance. They have value and meaning; they may judge us and call us to action. The biblical texts are certainly not short of the mythical glorifications of male power that Stavrakopoulou discusses; but they also repeatedly explore divine solidarity with vulnerable bodies, powerless bodies. Is this a less “real” dimension of the Bible? Even a reader with no theological commitments might pause before writing it off. If you are exploring topics connected to sexual ethics, particularly going beyond a focus on heterosexuality, the work of Dr Susanna Cornwell and Marcella Althaus-Reid are both eminently relevant. Gaskill has written several books on witchcraft, but this one is a little different. He focuses on one specific episode 370 years ago to teach broader lessons about superstition, mental illness and human cruelty. He examines the misery of the isolation endured by pioneers far from home, trapped in an alien and frightening environment. It's a book that should be taught in any school that have religion as a subject. And religious people should read it too. Maybe there be less religion, and the world would be a better place!Many of the texts in the Hebrew Bible problematically depict Israel as a woman, using sexualised metaphors — for example, equating idolatry with adultery, or worship of other gods with prostitution. Regularly, macho, hyper-masculine depiction of Yahweh, couched in sexualised language, occurs. Stavrakopoulou is right to point out that there are problems. Biblical scholars have a responsibility to steward, or curate, the biblical texts carefully, and to read ethically. The God we worship is a glorified Being in whom all power and perfection dwell, and he has created man in his own image and likeness (Gen. 1:26–27), with those characteristics and attributes which he himself possesses. And so our belief in the dignity and destiny of [humankind] is an essential part both of our theology and of our way of life. It is the very basis of our Lord’s teaching that “the first and great commandment” is: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind”; and that the second great commandment is: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Matt. 22:37–39). 18 Further Reading