The Bodies of God

This reflection is part of the ongoing Forest Hills Haftorah Series. The rest of the content can be found here: https://www.sefaria.org/groups/FHJC-Haftorah-Series .

The "yigdal" might be one of our most recognizable hymns, being sung in our synagogues every Friday night as services wrap up. We are not sure who wrote it, but it could very well go back to the 13th century!

It has thirteen lines, each line expressing one of Maimonide's "13 Principles of Faith."

Maimonides was a giant of scholarship, and what he accomplished with his Mishnah Torah, his all-encompassing code of Israelite and Jewish life, is outright mind-boggling.

With this, it is unsurprising that his 13 Principles have utterly dominated Jewish-philosophy and theology for nearly a thousand years!

It can therefore come as quite the shocker when someone picks up the TaNaKh and just starts reading; for many of his principles seem to be run counter to what it says in our most beloved of texts itself.

Let's look at just one; The Principle formulated by line number 3:

One does not have to read too far into the TaNaKh to realize that, at least according to our Israelite ancestors, the Almighty did, indeed, have a body!

Consider the following verses, all from the earliest accounts of creation, and humankind's first moments:

The Almighty starts out as a sculpter, and then performs mouth-to-mouth resucitation.

Requirements: Hands, mouth, and lungs.

The Almighty is now a farmer.

Requirements: Yet again, hands.

The Almighty is making noise as He wanders around the garden, seeking out the human-couple, as they hide themselves due to having disobeyed His one command and eaten of the forbidden fruit.

Requirements: Feet.

The Almighty seems to despair of His search, and calls out to the couple, asking them to show themselves.

Requirements: Vocal chords, mouth-parts

The Torah's depiction of God in a corporeal sense does not end with creation. Later on, Abraham is approached by what he thinks to be three men.

Consider how this chapter begins and ends:

What happens in-between is Abraham's inviting these three men into his tent and treating them to a luxurious meal. The Almighty fits in with humans so well that Abraham does not even realize, until one of them begins to speak prophetically, before Whom he might standing!

If you read Scripture with an attunement to this, you'll see that the TaNaKh is filled with wonderous, mysterious, and poetic descriptions of the body of God.

While Maimonides claims that there is no such thing, all of the prophets and narrators of the Bible seem to think differently.

However, there are some pretty major differences in conceptions of God's body throughout the TaNaKh. These differences include:

• The nature of God's body. (What is made up of? Physical stuff like what we have? Or something completely otherworldly?)
• Where His body is located. (In the Temple? In the heavens? Sometimes, here, sometimes there?)
• How much a human may approach God's body, and how much contact there can be before the person will be injured, forever changed, or even perish.

(which stories or passages can you think of that weigh in on these questions?)

From chapter to chapter within the Five Books of Moses alone there is lack of agreement; let alone factoring in the other 19 books of the TaNaKh!

Amongst contemporary Bible scholars, there is the opinion that there are primarily three, or maybe even four very different views as to these questions of God's body in the TaNaKh. One view is God's natural, "human" body, as portrayed in the verses from Genesis above.

Another one is also a "humanoid" body of sorts, but BIGGER, on a Super-human level. Some call this the "Liturgical Body."

One instance in Scripture where this can be seen is in what might one of the most cryptic, mystifying and evocative passages of all, occurring shortly after the giving of the 10 Commandments:

I get shivers when I read these verses; Every single time.

They saw the God of Israel.

(can you imagine???)

There's a wild theory that the Israelites were somehow looking upward through the Temple floor, which was a translucent sapphire.

One major finding which gave rise to this idea was the excavation of an ancient Syro-Hittite Temple (called the Ain Dara Temple) which stood between 1,300 BCE until 740 BCE, making it a contemporary of Solomon's Temple.

In their set-ups, there are many parallels, including floor plan, size, and decorations.

The most striking feature of all of the Ain Dara Temple are the remaining massive footprints of whatever god it once housed.

Take a look at these pictures:

Another one is less "humanoid" than the above two. But it is still arguably a body, nevertheless. The term that the Priestly sources use for this is kavod (כבוד).

In English, this is generally translated as Honor. But that's not quite the way some of the major authors in the TaNaKh use this term. Consider the following passages:

What do you think? Can this kavod, however we translate it, be yet another conception of the a body of God?

In the Haftorah which we'll read on Shavuot, Ezekiel chapter 1, we get yet a another Biblical conception of the body of God, which is undoubtedly the wildest of all:

The Cosmic

The Almighty is not seated in the heavens, but completely above and beyond them!

Mark Smith, a well-known contemporary scholar of Bible and ancient history, puts it thusly:

An allusion to this cosmic body is found in the rhetorical question posed by the anonymous prophet in Isa 40:12: "Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and gauged the heavens with a span?"

The answer is God; this is the divine hand that is so large that it can take in the cosmic waters and the heavens, and it suggests that God's body is larger than both.

---from Mark Smith's The Three Bodies of God in the Hebrew Bible (2015), page 482 .

So with that, let's take a look at Ezekial and see what his visions had in store for him:

Already, right from the start, we know we're in for a wild ride, being a far-cry from any Divine conception experienced previously. For Ezekiel, God doesn't "come down," but the heavens themselves "open right up."

The next 27 verses are an absolute EXPLOSION of sounds, colors, sights, and images; which is what one would probably expect given the introductory verse above.

Instead of including examples from the rest of the chapter, just take a look at these four attempts to portray exactly what Ezekiel tries to explain he is looking at:

Personally, I love the idea that the nature of God's body seems to be one of those unresolved, ongoing debates, spanning hundreds of generations.

For me, this speaks to the idea that God is so beyond anything our senses can ever fully grasp, or that we can conceive of. When He wants be, that is. Other times, He might be more, say, down-to-Earth and personable; Approachable, even.

Which of the above conceptions do you find the most compelling? Do you see God as more Grandiose and Transcendent? Or perhaps more immediate and familiar? Or does it even change for you, depending on the situation?