Table of Contents
MythVision follows Francesca Stavrakopoulou on the early career of the Bible’s god, from the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age toward the sixth century of the common era. She argues that this deity was understood to have a real body, human in outline and male, which teaching slowly removed until he matched the bodiless God of the modern West. The oldest poems place him in Edom’s red wilderness, now southern Jordan. She will not simply call him Midianite, though some colleagues prefer a route up from Arabia. Early worship, as she pictures it, used cult images and offerings a god could enjoy. After Jerusalem’s temple fell, in the sixth century before the common era and again in the year 70, communities unable to bring animals had to rethink both deity and gift. She sets him beside other gods of southwest Asia, clay-shapers among them, and beside texts of feet, walking, and shared meals. A sanctuary chest can be read as a seat. She finds the usual one-god label misleading. Not a racial ranking.
Key points
- Stavrakopoulou’s book is an anatomy of a god understood to have a male human body.
- The oldest poetry, in her view, locates him in Edom, now southern Jordan.
- She is wary of a simple Midianite label while noting that hypothesis.
- Sacrifice and cult images belong to his early worship, and the temple’s loss changes both.
- Biblical scenes of seeing, walking, and eating with him are read as evidence of a body.
- She prefers a reduced pantheon to the word monotheism, which she finds misleading.
Short quotes
I argue that this was the deity who was understood to have a corporeal form.
Francesca Stavrakopoulou, How Yahweh became God
Embodiment is the thesis of the book the film is built around. Watch at 4:06
the loss of the Jerusalem Temple was huge
Francesca Stavrakopoulou, How Yahweh became God
Without sacrifice, she says, scribes had to rethink how people approached the deity. Watch at 25:54
what's called Edom in the Hebrew Bible is now southern Jordan.
Francesca Stavrakopoulou, How Yahweh became God
This is her cautious placement of the god’s earliest poetic homeland. Watch at 57:37
the term monotheism is deeply problematic.
Francesca Stavrakopoulou, How Yahweh became God
She prefers to describe a drastic thinning of the pantheon rather than a clean modern label. Watch at 2:22:50
Video by MythVision TV. Watch on YouTube.