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The Body and Voice of God in the Hebrew Bible |
23www.jrfm.eu
2016, 2/1, 23–33
Johanna Stiebert
The Body and Voice of God
in the Hebrew Bible
ABSTRACT
This article explores the role of the voice of God in the Hebrew Bible and in early Jew-
ish interpretations such as the Targumim. In contrast to the question as to whether
God has a body, which is enmeshed in theological debates concerning anthropomor-
phism and idolatry, the notion that God has a voice is less controversial but evidences
some diachronic development.
KEYWORDS
body of God, voice of God, Torah, Targumim, Talmud, anthropomorphic
BIOGRAPHY
Johanna Stiebert is a German New Zealander and Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible
at the University of Leeds. Her primary research interests with regard to the Hebrew
Bible are centred particularly on self-conscious emotions, family structures, gender
and sexuality.
In Judaism and Christianity, which both hold the Hebrew Bible canonical, the question
as to whether God has a body is more sensitive and more contested than the question
as to whether God has a voice.1 The theological consensus now tends to be that God
is incorporeal, and yet the most straightforward interpretation of numerous Hebrew
Bible passages is that God is conceived of in bodily, anthropomorphic terms – though
often there also exist attendant possibilities of ambiguity and ambivalence. The famil-
iar divine statement “let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness”
(betsalmēnû kidmûtēnû; Gen. 1:26), for example, seems to envisage – particularly in
1 A version of this paper was presented at “I Sing the Body Electric”, an interdisciplinary day confer-
ence held at the University of Hull, UK, on 3 June 2014 to explore body and voice from musicological,
technological, and religious studies perspectives. The envisaged readership is eclectic and not always
specialised in Biblical Studies. Hence, I transliterate and translate all biblical Hebrew. Unless otherwise
indicated, translations are my own. The primary purpose of this paper is to provide a general and dia-
chronic overview of the topic.
JRFM
Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 02/01
- Title
- JRFM
- Subtitle
- Journal Religion Film Media
- Volume
- 02/01
- Authors
- Christian Wessely
- Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati
- Editor
- Uni-Graz
- Publisher
- SchĂĽren Verlag GmbH
- Location
- Graz
- Date
- 2016
- Language
- English
- License
- CC BY-NC 4.0
- Size
- 14.8 x 21.0 cm
- Pages
- 132
- Categories
- Zeitschriften JRFM