Reddit mentions of The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel

1.) I think the wording of this title is hilarious.

2.) I just finished Benjamin Sommer's book The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel which examines the different theologies that Israelites had regarding the body and bodies of God, and related beliefs from other Near Eastern cultures. It was amazing. I could go into it, but it's better if you listen to Sommer himself. Here's parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 of lectures he gave. If you don't want to listen/read, you can still always ask me questions and I'll do my best to provide a general gist.

FWIW, Jew here.

The fact that there are concepts resembling the Trinity is no problem at all; clearly neither he, nor anyone else, believed in one God in three persons. There is a fluidity of divine personhood in some hellenic Jewish thinkers because that is what the jews believed. See: https://www.amazon.com/Bodies-God-World-Ancient-Israel/dp/1107422264 (haven't read but was recommended to me on this topic). Again, the fact that divine revelation goes along with thought and that some of it can be traced back historically, well, at the risk of sounding flippant, so what? The fullness of revelation came in Jesus Christ and if parts of the truth were revealed or learned naturally or anything in part does not denigrate the actual revelation, which you don't find anywhere, and the little parts you do find are not significant enough or central enough to be in any way problematic.

Hellenization is neutral; it isn't any more malicious than the bablyonianizing that came with beginning to use Aramaic instead of Hebrew. They were not at all successful, as far as I can tell, maybe just in reactionary de-hellenization, but certainly not in returning to the roots (I don't see rabbinic Jewish thought at all present in very ancient Judaism -- it isn't a return but an innovation).

It doesn't matter if the heavenly jerusalem "sounds" Greek or Hebrew or Platonic or anything else, it matters if it is true or not. The idea is just a divine habitation, a final and transfigured fullness of God in the world. You can find some Greek thought that relates to this idea, but the idea of man being fallen and God coming to His people is certainly Jewish, and the fact that we have further revelation through Christ and St. John about how to think about this being with God is insignificant (and significant at the same time of course). We know that the fullness of the knowledge of God was not revealed until Christ came (and even now isn't, until the age to come) so it is not surprising that some aspects of Christianity build on, elaborate, complement, or are new to Judaism. Pre-Christian Jews didn't know God Himself would be incarnate in the flesh, or that His dominion and ways are "not of this world", so if the idea of the heavenly Jerusalem were to be Jewish, were could it have been accommodated into Jewish belief anyways? Besides, Christ came to "explode" Judaism to the gentiles, so it is no surprise that some of the (more contingent) trappings of Christianity are gentilic/greek as opposed to Hebrew (I certainly wish we had Hebrew liturgies and theological terminology!)

In my mind it is like saying that Davidic or Mosaic Judaism isn't the same as Abrahamic Judaism: what's with the feasts and the tabernacles and the idea of a fixed city that has a divinely appointed king? What's with the ritual purity laws about menstruation, isn't that an egyptian or babylonian thing to think about ritual purity? Anyways, I just mean this as an imperfect analogy: it matters if it is true in essence, not how it looks.

You might enjoy this:

https://www.amazon.com/Bodies-God-World-Ancient-Israel/dp/1107422264

Monotheism expressed via divine plurality and fluidity - the foundation of Trinitarian theology is a coherent Ancient Near Eastern idea that does not equate to polytheism.

For those interested, there is a Cambridge University text The Bodies of God that expands on these passages and much more, also from the prophets, illustrating a corporeal conception of God.

Yes and no.

There are multiple gods in the bible. You might want to read Mark S. Smith's books:

https://www.amazon.com/Early-History-God-Biblical-Resource/dp/080283972X

I haven't gotten to read this one yet, but it looks interesting:

https://www.amazon.com/God-Translation-Cross-Cultural-Discourse-Biblical/dp/0802864333

Might also check this one out:

https://www.amazon.com/Bodies-God-World-Ancient-Israel/dp/1107422264

"Messianic Jewish" stuff? Really?

Orthodox Jew Daniel Boyarin and Conservative Jew Benjamin Sommer made more palatable references from the Rabbinic, Judaic side. Heck, there's this article by Yishai Kiel!

>The colloquial usage of semantics, is when someone is needlessly pedantic over words.

In any philosophical or theological discussion, "colloquial usage" is simply an unsuitable tool for the job at hand.

>Why do no Jewish scholars,

Because this is a Christian argument concerning the Trinity and its presence in the Old Testament. The theology of the Trinity is developed from numerous OT sources which, as I indicated in my OP, I'll not go into here. The reason for this is that I am describing one, specific test of a theory in which Unitarian statements have latent (i.e. non-obvious) Trinitarian semantics.

>not one

Clearly our disagreement over the meaning of "one" goes deeper than I thought. Here is one: Dr. Benjamin Sommer (professor of Bible and Ancient Semitic Languages at the Jewish Theological Seminary), in his book The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel comes to the conclusion that doctrine of the Trinity is compatible with monotheism and that it does not provide a theological basis for Jewish objection to Christianity (thought, obviously, he believes there are others). I've not yet read the book, but he gives a talk about it here. You'll want to skip to around the 34 minute mark to hear him on this subject.

> So then why does the Bible describe Yahweh as changing? Is it all anthropomorphic terminology? How do you know that?

How do I know it's anthropormphic terminology? Seriously? There have been entire academic books published on the thorough anthropomorphism of the OT, especially the Pentateuch. Here's a very prominent such academic book:

https://www.amazon.com/Bodies-God-World-Ancient-Israel/dp/1107422264

Here's another written just this year:

https://www.amazon.ca/Gods-Body-Anthropomorphic-God-Testament/dp/0567655989

There's so much literature on this topic that the only explanation for your lack of familiarity with it is that you don't read any scholarship on the meaning of the biblical texts yet comfortably feel yourself an authority to make declarative statements like "There is no justification for ... anthropomorphization [in the bible]" and "The only possible justification is [insert simplistic development model here]".

>Yahweh knew the outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah was great and their sin was grievous. Obviously he didn't know quite how grievous, which is why he came down to check it out.

Did he hear the outcry from heaven or something? Were they that loud? And how did he know it was "grievous sin"? Were the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah having extremely loud conversations about how particularly sinful they were that day that intruded on Yahweh's clouds?

>Furthermore, the whole of the Bible is an argument against Yahweh's omnipotence.

Matthew 19:26: Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

So the Bible says God is omnipotent. Revelation 19:6 calls God the "Almighty".

>It's the story of people defying his will again and again and again and again and again forever.

Yeah , and God letting it happen. That's the part you conveniently leave out.

>How can God be made Lord by God?

By the fact that God exists in multiple hypostasis and can exalt one back to full divinity after its subsequent descension into humanity.

> What is clear is that God gave Jesus His name when He exalted Jesus. You said only God’s name can save... Well here God gives His name to Jesus at a particular point in history...

Yeah so? This was fortold as far back as Daniel 7.