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lizshayne's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
I have absolutely no idea how to rate this book so I'm not going to. The perils of operating outside of my field.
Basically I thought this book was fascinating and interesting and just brings so much historical and archeological detail to bear on the topic of what god was like as distinct from our contemporary conception and its antecedents.
And, like, from both a critical and theological perspective, I absolutely appreciated it and really enjoyed it. And I am also always both taken and skeptical of works that are outside of my fields because I don't know what I don't know.
I have two major things and I think the objections come from both the critical and confessional perspective. The first is the thing Tikvah Frymer-Kensky complained about 30 years ago, which is that it's very easy to tell a story that sounds like monotheism invents misogyny and Stavrakopoulou implies that heavily (specifically in the section about nevi'im). And while I have absolutely no desire to defend the misogyny of Tanakh, monotheism did not invent misogyny and the relative freedom of the goddesses should not be taken as a reflection of how women as people were treated either in polytheistic or monotheistic societies. It still sucked to be a woman when and where Ishtar was worshipped. So I found that more than a little frustrating.
The second issue is, in the ire that Stavrakopoulou exhibits against medieval and post-medieval theologians, she ends up making some very odd claims about who has authority over god (or God). That is - at some point, she seems to close the canon of "things you can say about God" right around the geonic period. For centuries, you could adapt the stories of El and Ba'al and Tiamat in a way that leads eventually to the God of the Bible and the Leviathan and that's okay. But to take the next step and say "also God doesn't actually have a nose" is too far. And, like, I DO take her point that theologians of both Judaism and Christianity tend to say "and no one ever thought that in the first place" and that's pretty obviously not true and yet, in her argument against that position, she basically denies the last 1400 or so years of theological arguments that people of faith are making about their own God. From a critical perspective, that's a very odd place to suddenly say people no longer have agency to make observations about the nature of God. From a confessional perspective, it's even stranger because of what it asserts about the God that believers currently are in relationship with.
And it's not Stavrakopoulou's job to build the theological narrative that will make sense out of God's evolution, but I feel like she could have written this book without simply reversing the mistake of the medievalists.
Basically I thought this book was fascinating and interesting and just brings so much historical and archeological detail to bear on the topic of what god was like as distinct from our contemporary conception and its antecedents.
And, like, from both a critical and theological perspective, I absolutely appreciated it and really enjoyed it. And I am also always both taken and skeptical of works that are outside of my fields because I don't know what I don't know.
I have two major things and I think the objections come from both the critical and confessional perspective. The first is the thing Tikvah Frymer-Kensky complained about 30 years ago, which is that it's very easy to tell a story that sounds like monotheism invents misogyny and Stavrakopoulou implies that heavily (specifically in the section about nevi'im). And while I have absolutely no desire to defend the misogyny of Tanakh, monotheism did not invent misogyny and the relative freedom of the goddesses should not be taken as a reflection of how women as people were treated either in polytheistic or monotheistic societies. It still sucked to be a woman when and where Ishtar was worshipped. So I found that more than a little frustrating.
The second issue is, in the ire that Stavrakopoulou exhibits against medieval and post-medieval theologians, she ends up making some very odd claims about who has authority over god (or God). That is - at some point, she seems to close the canon of "things you can say about God" right around the geonic period. For centuries, you could adapt the stories of El and Ba'al and Tiamat in a way that leads eventually to the God of the Bible and the Leviathan and that's okay. But to take the next step and say "also God doesn't actually have a nose" is too far. And, like, I DO take her point that theologians of both Judaism and Christianity tend to say "and no one ever thought that in the first place" and that's pretty obviously not true and yet, in her argument against that position, she basically denies the last 1400 or so years of theological arguments that people of faith are making about their own God. From a critical perspective, that's a very odd place to suddenly say people no longer have agency to make observations about the nature of God. From a confessional perspective, it's even stranger because of what it asserts about the God that believers currently are in relationship with.
And it's not Stavrakopoulou's job to build the theological narrative that will make sense out of God's evolution, but I feel like she could have written this book without simply reversing the mistake of the medievalists.
blackrose22's review against another edition
Will come back to finish this! Just needed to return it to library & needed a break.