Saturday, September 7, 2019

1 Clement 33:3-4 and God Having a Body


Bart D. Ehrman provides the following translation of 1 Clement 33:3-4:

For he established the heavens by his all-superior power, and by his incomprehensible understanding he set them in order. And he separated the earth from the water that surrounded it, and established it upon the firm foundation of his own will. By his own decree he commanded the living creatures that roam about on it to come into being. Having prepared in advance the sea and all the living beings in it, he then enclosed them by his power. And with his holy and perfect hands he formed the one who was preeminent and superior in intelligence to all, the human, stamped with his own image. (Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament and Other Early Christian Writings: A Reader [2d ed.; New York: Oxford University Press, 2004], 311)

The phrase translated as “holy and perfect hands” is the Greek ταῖς ἱεραῖς καὶ ἀμώμοις χερσὶν (alt. “the holy and without blemish hands”). While “hands,” “eyes,” and other terms can and are used in Scripture and non-canonical literature as metaphors, this does not seem to be the case in this text, as the difference between God’s “hands” and the “hands” of mankind are due to the former’s being holy and without blemish, not that they are metaphorical in contrast to being real for the latter.


For more, see, for e.g.:

Lynn Wilder vs. Latter-day Saint (and Biblical) Theology on Divine Embodiment