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The Jewish Conception of God - Material - Bodily Material

Research by Kerry A. Shirts

In reading Gershom Scholem's text "The Mystical Shape of the Godhead" I find that the Jewish elaboration on the Hebrew terms for God in the Old Testament show that God has a three dimensional physical shape. In fact Scholem notes that when the Bible says God Spoke, this is an anthropomorphism no less than God's hand.

Anthropomorphism, the idea that God has bodily shape in the Bible was well known anciently, and by the time Philo got hold of the scriptures, he didn't like the idea of such literalness so he literally took out all of the anthropomorphism of the Bible concerning God and spiritualized everything! (This reminds us of Nephi's statement, in the BofM, that they have taken away many plain and precious things out of the book of the Lamb of God). Alfred Edersheim notes (Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah) that Philo separated God from matter (p. 44), because philosophically then the scriptures would make sense. Philo is the one who is responsible for making God outside of space and time. Philo is responsible for saying that God has not human qualities and therefore is unknown and unrecognizable to man (p. 44).

But the Bible clearly says God has a shape, and that shape is human, as when God spoke to Moses face to face, or when God was unseen of Israel Moses did see God's backparts as God was moving away from Moses. Numbers 12:8, the "discussion of the divine form was not meaningless, even if later exegesis attempted to interpret it away." (Scholem, p. 17).

The likeness (dumuth) of God is the likeness of a man as the Old Testament clearly indicates. The word "tselem" indicates a three dimensional image, not some ethereal nothing or spirit floating out there in space.

Man is formed in "effiegiem moderantum cincta deorum" - in the image of the gods [note the plural!] the master of nature." (Scholem, p. 18). Scholem also notes with some exasperation that "the Old Testament constantly speaks with great naivete about God's form...God is thus conceived as a human being." (p. 18).

Remember what Philo said "the literal sense must be wholly set aside..." (Edersheim, p. 41). Philo, we are told, "would find an allegorical... interpretation" along with the rule he gave himself "which he claimed of freely altering the punctuation of sentences... a word which occurred in the LXX might be interpreted according to every shade of meaning which it bore in the Greek, and that even another meaning might be given it by slightly altering the letters." [!] (p. 42).

Well might we be astonished at this (though it fulfills the BofM prophecy of Nephi exactly), but Edersheim also lamented "If such violence might be done to the text, we need not wonder at interpretations based on a play upon words, or even parts of a word." (p. 42).

And what was the foundation and basis for Philo doing violence to the sacred scripture? He adapted Plato and the philosophers for his ideas and definitions of God, and threw out the literal Biblical definitions. (Edersheim, p. 40f).

Thus Mormonism claiming to have a God with a Body does not follow the apostate concepts of God from Philo, who added philosophy to his views of God, of which are *not* in the Bible. Mormonism has the true God, the God of the Bible, the God with a physical body (tselem).