Friday, November 17, 2023

Excerpts from "Bodies, Embodiment, and the Theology of the Hebrew Bible" (2010)

  

There are other contexts as well that mention human and divine beings “face to face.” Jacob wrestles with a divine “man” (Gen 32:30). And when he prevails in the morning and asks for a blessing, the being blesses him in Hebrew language that is ambiguous. The text can be read as either “you have striven with beings divine and human” or you have striven “with Gods and humans.” Jacob then names the place “Peniel” (פני אל, literally “face of God”) and says, “I have seen a divine being [or God] face to face (פנים אל פנים), yet my life has been preserved.” Here we seem to be dealing with what is portrayed as an actual face to face sighting, not a metaphor, although it still takes place in a literal dream. But this time we do not know if it is God or an angel. (Howard Schwartz, “Does God Have a Body? The Problem of Metaphor and Literal Language in Biblical Interpretation,” in Bodies, Embodiment, and the Theology of the Hebrew Bible, ed. S. Tamar Kamionkowski and Wonil Kim [Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 465; London: T&T Clark, 2010], 221)

 

One could argue as some interpreters so, that God simply take the form of a human body on this occasion but does not really have a form, an understanding that allows the interpreter to both preserve the conception of a formless being (in fact) but one that can take a human form (for various purpose). But that interpretation raises other problems. For if God only “takes” a human form, why could no one gaze on the divine face that God only took on temporality? If the purpose of assuming human form was to be visible to human sight, why would God need to turn the divine back, unless the visible form was in some sense divine too. (Howard Schwartz, “Does God Have a Body? The Problem of Metaphor and Literal Language in Biblical Interpretation,” in Bodies, Embodiment, and the Theology of the Hebrew Bible, ed. S. Tamar Kamionkowski and Wonil Kim [Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 465; London: T&T Clark, 2010], 225)

 

While noting that some anthropomorphic language in the Bible “can easily be describing divine activities in language that is drawn from human life and that makes sense in human terms,” Howard Schwartz then notes that:

 

And yet this language raises two interesting questions that intersect with our larger interpretive question. First, how do we know that all of this language is metaphoric or figurative? If there are conceptions of God in a human form in some parts of the Bible, might these allusions to a body of God be more than just figurative? Could they presuppose a King like God who sits on a throne, appears in clouds, whose image is seen by Moses and in whose image humans are made? Maybe the biblical God does have ears, hands, fingers and a mouth of some sort. Moreover, even if we decide these other passages are figurative language, as most translations presuppose, can we necessarily conclude that the biblical text envisions God without a form? As we know, metaphors drawn from the human body are used to describe human activity as well. Clearly, the use of similar metaphors to describe human activity does not imply that humans have no bodies. On the contrary, it is because humans have a body that images of ears, eyes, hearts all serve as metaphors for other conceptions such as “obeying,” “listening,” “paying attention” and so forth. The same is possible in the case of Bible’s conception of God, though most interpreters have not taken this view. The point, then, is that the use of bodily images to describe God does not solve our interpretive puzzle by itself. We can take the images metaphorically and still be left wondering whether the underlying conception of God is in a form that resembles the human one. The answer to that question has to rely on the other texts we have already reviewed and discussed, and the interpretive position that shapes how they are understood.

 

This ambiguity thus brings us to a second related issue having to do with the problem of translation itself. In passages describing God with bodily images, should such language be translated literally or metaphorically? In other words, is there a conceptual difference worth capturing between a more literal translation that “God inclined the divine ears to listen” and simply “God listened”? Or, to cite another example, is there a significant difference between “God getting incensed with Israel” and “God’s face getting hot with anger?” The answer depends in part on the purpose of translation. And yet, the favoring of idiomatic language seems already tied into the interpretive problem of whether God is imagined in human form. To put the question another way: Should a faithful translation use literal translation or figurative language? Indeed, can we even answer the translation question without already making a decision on the larger question of whether the Bible thinks of God in human form? Apparently not. (Howard Schwartz, “Does God Have a Body? The Problem of Metaphor and Literal Language in Biblical Interpretation,” in Bodies, Embodiment, and the Theology of the Hebrew Bible, ed. S. Tamar Kamionkowski and Wonil Kim [Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 465; London: T&T Clark, 2010], 234-35, emphasis in original)

 

Commenting on throne theophanies (e.g., Isa 6:1-5; Ezek 1:26-28) in the Old Testament, Amy C. Merrill Willis noted that:

 

It is one thing to conceptualize God’s relational activities by using ordinary human body parts as figures of speech, but it is quite another to claim to have seen that God has a human face and ears and body. (Amy C. Merrill Willis, “Heavenly Bodies: God and the Body in the Visions of Daniel,” in Bodies, Embodiment, and the Theology of the Hebrew Bible, ed. S. Tamar Kamionkowski and Wonil Kim [Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 465; London: T&T Clark, 2010], 15)

 

Further Reading:


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