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`And God, if Male, Must Have Had Genitals': Lifting the Veil From Divine. Sexuality
The image of a monotheistic male God has not been as obviously convenient for men as it is usually taken to be, at least according to Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, who explores the issue in "God's Phallus and Other Problems for Men and Monotheism." For Mr. Eilberg-Schwartz, the representation of God as a male created a standard of corporeal perfection that proved so problematic for biblical man that it became a prime reason for the prohibition on depicting God.
Mr. Eilberg-Schwartz is, surprisingly, one of the first scholars to explore the consequences of taking seriously the images of God in the Bible. The most significant innovation of "God's Phallus" is the refusal of a certain kind of apologetic discourse that dismisses the most expressive images of Israelite religion by asserting that they are only metaphors. This strategy was initiated by Maimonides (if not by Philo) and has served particular theological and defensive purposes but does not serve well the enterprise of a critical reading of ancient religion. Mr. Eilberg-Schwartz is absolutely correct to doubt the platitudinous statements about divinity in ancient Israel, such as the one he cites from Raphael Patai to the effect that "to say that God is either male or female is therefore completely impossible from the viewpoint of traditional Judaism," when, in fact, nearly no "traditional Jew" in any century has ever doubted for a moment that God is male.
And God, if male, must have had genitals. Why should he have had arms, legs, eyes, emotions -- and...