nathanschumer 's review for:

God: An Anatomy by Francesca Stavrakopoulou

4.0

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This is a really evocative history of Yahweh, drawing on the Bible, NE texts, and later Christian and Western depictions of the Bible, using the lens of the body. Stavrakopolou focuses on different body parts in each section, moving back and forth between the different bodies of evidence. I think the kind of general thesis--Yahweh was originally a Near Eastern god who was part of a pantheon and had a body--is obvious enough, but as someone semi-familiar with biblical texts, I found Stavrakopolou's readings persuasive and interesting; she has a knack for illuminating familiar texts in different ways and finding the hidden archaicisms of the Bible that lie behind the redactional layers, like the text on the birth of Abel, which clearly says Yahweh was his father, but has been read in a different manner for centuries. Sometimes, the texts stray a bit too far away from the NE, and I think that's kind of a weakness; as you get into medieval and later christianity, it's not so clear the degree to which those texts are part of the same conversation. But overall, it was good, persuasive, and accessible.