Holly Cruise's Reviews > God: An Anatomy

Apparently it is possible to spend too much time over the dinner table reciting facts you have learned from this book about God's willy to your partner. That's me told.

Francesca Stavrakopoulou is an atheist on a mission to talk about God's body, or at least the things we know about it from the Bible, from other apocrypha and Jewish and Christian traditions, and what we know about the bodies of the other gods of south-west Asia at the time. How was Yahweh depicted and how does that fit in with his equivalents in other religions, as well as his relatives like El, Baal, Marduk, et al. Oh yeah, and why did the Bible write out his wife and non-Jesus kids?

Stavrakopoulou has written a book which has the readability of general interest history, and the research and analysis of a far more academic text. She doesn't dwell on the precise details of translation of passages (which I would be interested in but this is not the book for that) which some might find a bit blunt a manner of presenting her arguments.

But what she does have is loads and loads of examples, details, and the pleasing structure of a book divided into (body) parts. I read it all in one go, but it could easily be a book to dip in and out of.

The story is one of a journey from an old god from a pantheon who had physical form and would appear on Earth to literally stomp out his enemies, to the incorporeal god of the New Testament. I would perhaps have liked more information on *why* Yahweh lost his body: there is some stuff in here around that, but I think there's more explore.

I also learned Yahweh likes foot stools, so we have that in common. Amen.