Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “God: An Anatomy” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

God: An Anatomy

Francesca Stavrakopoulou

4.27 · Rating details · 313 ratings · 58 reviews

An astonishing and revelatory history that re-presents God as he was originally envisioned by ancient worshippers--with a distinctly male body, and with superhuman powers, earthly passions, and a penchant for the fantastic and monstrous.

[A] rollicking journey through every aspect of Yahweh's body, from top to bottom (yes, that too) and from inside out ... Ms. Stavrakop ...more

Get A Copy

Hardcover, 608 pages

Published January 25th 2022 by Knopf Publishing Group (first published September 16th 2021)

More Details... Edit Details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about God, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

The Frontlines of Peace by Severine Autesserre

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders

Non-Fiction Published in Year: 2021

1,075 books — 210 voters

A Shot to Save the World by Gregory Zuckerman

The Power of Creative Destruction by Philippe Aghion

2021 The Economist Best of Books

40 books — 3 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

Showing 1-30

Average rating 4.27 ·

Rating details

· 313 ratings · 58 reviews

More filters

Sort order

Start your review of God: An Anatomy

Oct 29, 2021 Paul Clark rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: religion

I really loved this book. Francesca Stavrakopoulou is a professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Religion at a British university who occasionally makes programmes for TV.

In this book, she draws on her knowledge of Egyptian religion and other south-west Asian religions to help us understand the god of the Bible better. She also draws on her knowledge of Hebrew to show how Christian translators have modified the Hebrew Bible (a.k.a. Old Testament), airbrushing elements of the Biblical god that don’t I really loved this book. Francesca Stavrakopoulou is a professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Religion at a British university who occasionally makes programmes for TV.

In this book, she draws on her knowledge of Egyptian religion and other south-west Asian religions to help us understand the god of the Bible better. She also draws on her knowledge of Hebrew to show how Christian translators have modified the Hebrew Bible (a.k.a. Old Testament), airbrushing elements of the Biblical god that don’t fit in with their theology.

She makes two key points. The first is that Christianity and Judaism are not Biblical religions; they are post-Biblical religions. Most of the Hebrew Bible was written in and refers to very different times when the concept of God was very different to the monotheistic Christian and Jewish concepts of God.

The second is that Yahweh, the god of the Bible, started life as a fairly minor storm god in a larger pantheon of gods. The major god of this pantheon was El (whose name lives on in the word Israel). The Israelites prioritised Yahweh, who over time took on El’s attributes and even seems to have acquired his wife (renamed Ashera). In the centuries before the Babylonian exile, Yahweh retained many characteristics of a pagan god, and there is strong evidence that other gods were widely worshipped by the Israelites and Judeans.

It was only after the return from Babylon that those who worshipped only Yahweh were able to centralise religious practice around him and the Second Temple in Jerusalem. Only then could true monotheism develop. As it did so, Jewish, and later Christian, thinkers found that the idea of a single, transcendent God was incompatible with the very physical god described in the Bible. It became common to see Biblical passages as analogous and esoteric, something we should not take literally but should instead read for the deeper meaning buried within. Professor Stavrakopoulou disagrees. She thinks that when the Bible’s authors described Yahweh physically, they meant exactly what they said. The case she makes is compelling. ...more

flag 17 likes · Like · see review

Oct 23, 2021 Viggo Pedersen rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

Review from a none believer: A absolutely brilliant book! (I read it at the same time as I listened to the Professor herself read the book, so in one way I've read it twice.)
It starts with a quote from Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, maps, a list of illustrations, a prologue and an introduction. Then it's divided into 5 parts: Feet and Legs, Genitals, Torso, Arms and Hands & Head + an epilogue. 420+ pages of God: An Anatomy, and it ends with 150+ pages of glossary, notes, bibliography, acknow ...more

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

Nov 13, 2021 Richard Hakes rated it really liked it

A good book if a little long on a single subject. I have been interested in 'the' family history ever since singing some Christmas carols a few years ago and wondering what cherubs and seraphims were, non of my pals (or anyone since) seems to know much. I have been on the lookout for further enlightenment since. The book tracks big G's life story from when he first came out about 3000 years ago. Back then he was very much the family man with wife, kids maybe not a mortgage and job but very clos ...more

flag 6 likes · Like · see review

May 05, 2022 Socraticgadfly rated it really liked it

Shelves: archaeology-or-anthropology, religious-study-theology

This was a great book in many ways, but a nagging issue, an overemphasis on one talking point, and what I believe is an incorrect interpretation of the Book of Job in the last chapter ultimately cost it a star. I’d rate this 3 1/2 if you let me be precise. (Since we can't do half stars, and the average rating is even higher on Yellow Satan than here, it got 3 stars there, and I reserve the right to downgrade the 4-star here.)

With that, let’s dig in.

It’s easy to forget that the God of the Hebrew ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Jan 29, 2022 Alenka of Bohemia rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: christianity, non-fiction

I think it needs to be said that I am a Christian who came to believe in God pretty much on her own. With that out of the way one must say that this book stands for excellent scholarship and readable writing style. I would say it may only offend those who indeed take every word in the Bible as holy and precise, with one meaning only, rather than regard the Book as a testament of the existence of God AS WELL AS a reflection of the times when it was written. Which I would argue we should. The auth I think it needs to be said that I am a Christian who came to believe in God pretty much on her own. With that out of the way one must say that this book stands for excellent scholarship and readable writing style. I would say it may only offend those who indeed take every word in the Bible as holy and precise, with one meaning only, rather than regard the Book as a testament of the existence of God AS WELL AS a reflection of the times when it was written. Which I would argue we should. The author is a person who has never believed in any God but has always been fascinated by religion, which definitely gives her a unique position in which to present her research and interpretation. She clearly rejects most of the interpretations of the Bible and many translators on the basis that the words written in the Bible should be taken literally. She demonstrates that the way people imagined God in the ancient times was inevitably influenced by other common beliefs, sometimes drawing on even more ancient mythology. Her chief argument is that while today God tends to be viewed as an incorporeal being, He was understood in very corporeal way in the olden days. She makes a wonderful case for this! I learned a great deal about mentality of the people and society in the times during which the Bible was written and as such would heartily recommend this to anyone interested in the subject.

And yet, and yet... I dare say that the author´s insistence of taking every single word and line in the Bible literally cannot possibly be the correct approach, epecially when it comes to poems and songs. People have always relied on imagination, allegory and other means of creativity to make their point and there is no reason to believe that the ancient poets and writers did not do the same. While she clearly has a point that there are many passages in the Bible that have been "sanitized" in later centuries, she also completely refuses to entertain an idea that many of those passages CANNOT be taken literary.

This is a truly fascinating book which clears some of our blindspots. Ironically it has a few of its own. ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Dec 18, 2021 North Landesman rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

"The huge throne seats a diety so large his 'lower extremities' cram the santuary. Most anchient and modern translators assume it is god's robe that swamps the space. But Isaiah makes no mention of a robe."

Stavrakopoulou's book argued that most of how both Jewish and Christian society percieves god is wrong based on the writing in the bible. She useds scripture and evidence of similar gods in the area and historical record to argue god was an incredibly large, well-endowed, beautiful man with bl ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Mar 13, 2022 Scriptor Ignotus rated it really liked it

Shelves: christianity, middle-east, judaism, anthropology

It is axiomatic to each of the Abrahamic faiths that God has no body. Centuries of liturgical tradition, theological reflection, philosophical disputation, and historical disruption have polished away, as best they can, any trace of particularity or compositeness in the God of the Bible, bringing the divine patron of Israel into alignment with the immaterial and utterly transcendent Absolute conceptualized by Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Platonism. God can’t be a thing, s ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Sep 17, 2021 Asser Khattab rated it it was amazing

Thanks to Professor Francesca Stavrakopoulou, we finally we have a book that reveals the bare face (and several other organs!) of the God of the Bible before he became the Jewish God or the Christian God with whom we are familiar today, or think that we are. Excellent and highly recommended!

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

May 08, 2022 Holly Cruise rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: history

Apparently it is possible to spend too much time over the dinner table reciting facts you have learned from this book about God's willy to your partner. That's me told.

Francesca Stavrakopoulou is an atheist on a mission to talk about God's body, or at least the things we know about it from the Bible, from other apocrypha and Jewish and Christian traditions, and what we know about the bodies of the other gods of south-west Asia at the time. How was Yahweh depicted and how does that fit in with hi ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Dec 06, 2021 Odette Lattimer rated it it was amazing

Utterly fantastic

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

May 13, 2022 Matthew Lloyd rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, ebook, audiobook, atheism-non-fiction, masculinity, history, published-2021

In the middle of listening to Francesca Stavrakopoulou’s God: An Anatomy, I saw the comedian Nish Kumar perform at the Machynlleth Comedy Festival. Talking about the racist abuse he has received as a person of colour, Kumar joked: “I’m a bad Muslim – a Hindu.” He continued to point out that Christians are much better Muslims than Hindus, believing in only one god with similar attributes, stories, and rules.

Coming back to God after watching Kumar, I found myself reflecting anew on one of Stavrako In the middle of listening to Francesca Stavrakopoulou’s God: An Anatomy, I saw the comedian Nish Kumar perform at the Machynlleth Comedy Festival. Talking about the racist abuse he has received as a person of colour, Kumar joked: “I’m a bad Muslim – a Hindu.” He continued to point out that Christians are much better Muslims than Hindus, believing in only one god with similar attributes, stories, and rules.

Coming back to God after watching Kumar, I found myself reflecting anew on one of Stavrakopoulou’s repeated refrains: “… and the God of the Bible was no different.” Focusing mainly on the Bronze Age context in which the tales that made their way into the Hebrew Bible were formed, before being written down in the ongoing change of the Iron Age, Stavrakopoulou shows how the God of monotheists was, once upon a time, one of a pantheon with whom he had a lot in common. This long-term development of God as a cultural force has echoes today, both in how the Christian and Jewish religions are practiced as well as in the fruitless attempts of Christians to impose their one interpretation of a multi-layered, diachronically composed text onto other worshippers of ostensibly the same God. In a modern world in which Christian exceptionalism is rife, it is an excellent reminder that Christianity is just as culturally contingent as any other religion, and that its long history has seen it adapt and change to the religious, social, and cultural forces at play at any given moment in history.

It's a religious history that could, I suspect, only have been written by an atheist. Stavrakopoulou is not shy about the fact that she was raised an atheist; she shows, I think, as much respect to her religious subjects as to her historical ones. Indeed, I would argue that she shows that it is more interesting to view God as a cultural object that functioned across many different places and times than to try and rationalise him as a real being that created the universe any everything in it. There is the sense, at times, that as someone who was never expected to believe in something up above that no one touches or can see she doesn’t get religious people, but far less than is the case with other prominent atheists. Nevertheless, this does not distract from the rigorous quality of Stavrakopoulou’s historical account.

A popular claim of atheists is that God is a Bronze Age deity; a claim that I have previously been pretty uncomfortable with for a number of reasons. First of all, the Hebrew Bible is Iron Age, having largely been written down from the eighth century BCE; secondly, the invisible God of modern Christianity, especially in his intentionally boring post-Enlightenment Protestant incarnations, is very much a cultural product of the modern world. However, in focusing on the Bronze and Iron Ages, Stavrakopoulou shows how integral the early context of God’s development was to his later existence in the Iron Age and beyond, including into Early Christianity and the modern world. Many of the conflicts and contradictions of Christianity are rooted in the on-going rationalisation of texts written in a world with profoundly different concepts of what a deity could or should be, concepts that Stavrakopoulou elucidates clearly and in great detail. Bronze Age qualities have been fossilised in the God of the Bible, and modern Christians are trapped with them in their belief in the sacred truth of that delightfully inconsistent and internally contradictory text.

Stavrakopoulou focuses on God as a corporeal entity, so as the concept of an immaterial, invisible God that is prominent today took hold after a few decades of Christianity her account comes to an end. This is not an instantaneous process, and the idea of a bodily God persists well into the Common Era, but under Christianity it is increasingly focused on the question of Christ’s relationship to God, his resurrection, and the concept of the Trinity. The history of Christianity is a history of trying to make sense of inherited ideas and declaring Christians that disagree with you heretics or not-real Christians, and that is aptly illustrated here.

While an atheist account being reviewed here by an atheist, Stavrakopoulou does not follow the usual atheist challenges to Christian belief, which are, she argues, based more on the modern concepts of God that are derived from that post-Enlightenment, colonialist, disembodied God created to make Christianity work in a world where it is increasingly unnecessary as an explanatory structure. The Bronze Age deity is a much more human figure than we usually admit. In exploring the cultural contexts in which that god came to be, developed, and grew, Stavrakopoulou offers fascinating insights into the nature of belief and changes in religion that remain significant to this day. ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jan 01, 2022 Sorrento rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Fancesca Stavrakpoulou’s book is a brilliantly researched and presented book which has enriched my understanding of the God of the Bible and the other Gods which were worshipped in the middle east during biblical times.
Having been brought up in the Church of England I thought was quite familiar with this God of the Old Testament (Yahweh) and the idea of the Trinity however to my surprise, reading Stavrakopoulou’s book I realised how little I knew about Yahweh’s body and personality and how he wo ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jan 07, 2022 Flapper72 rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fact, belief-and-religion

Most people who are academics in biblical studies and religion tend to have a 'conflict of interests' and actually believe in a super power. The author is not one of these people - she doesn't have a faith and, thus, I find her works and reading really interesting the way that she presents the historical evidence and facts and, in this book, explains how god the person became a super power who's no longer a man. The parallels with previous religions and gods, nothing's really new, just re brande ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Apr 13, 2022 Lynn rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I wish I liked this better. Kind of a harsh, detached look at god without pleasantness but harshness. Not a very involving book.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Apr 29, 2022 Peter rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Exceptional

Well worth reading, others will do better reviews than me, I'm just posting twenty words to say I enjoyed it immensely and learned a lot
...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jan 14, 2022 Alex rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Thanks to Waterstones I was able to get this book and bring it back to the U.S. a couple months before it came out here.

The author was not wrong, they had written a dense and informative textbook that I wish I had while I was in undergrad. But now, I see it as a perfect resource for my graduate programs.

This is one of the first books where I could feel how delicately each word was selected for every sentence, as if every individual word had the weight of the entire theological understanding of ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Feb 05, 2022 Joao rated it it was amazing

The author's knowledge about the bible and ancient cultures and religions of the south west asia region is truly breathtaking, and armed with this knowledge she managed to convince me that everything that I once knew about the god mentioned in The Bible is completely different from what its original authors intended.
She discusses what is said in The Bible and opposes that to what is usually accepted and what knowledge we have been accumulating about other religions at the same region and at abou ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Feb 23, 2022 DC Palter rated it it was amazing

This is an impressive book describing exactly what God has looked like to his worshippers. If you're expecting an old guy with a long beard floating in the clouds, that's a modern invention. This book describes what He looked like millennia ago when Yahweh was the local storm god of Judah and Israel. The author starts at the feet when they used to be grounded in the temple, and moves up to the legs, genitals, torso, hands, and head.

If you're religious and think the Bible was written by God rathe ...more

flag Like · see review

Mar 31, 2022 K L rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, read-in-2022, on-my-shelves

4.5*

Let me start my thoughts on this fascinating book by explaining what angle I am coming at this book from. I am neither Christian, Jewish or Muslim. I am an agnostic with an interest in religion and the idea of religion. It is not up to me to tell others what they should or should not believe. You do you and I do me. I wanted to say that, because I imagine this book could be quite polarizing for those who hold a particular faith.

To me, this was a fascinating read. I listened to it on audio bo ...more

flag Like · see review

Jun 13, 2022 Ionarr rated it it was amazing

This book is great. It's a very accessible but not dumbed-down look at the physical presence of the Christian/Jewish God and how he came to the incorporeal state currently assumed. Even if you know nothing about Stavrakolopoulou her expert knowledge and passion for the subject shines through, as does her wicked sense of humour. I was pleasantly surprised how much of the book linked religious traditions right back to Assyrian/Babylonian and contemporaneous religion, as I'm very interested in this ...more

flag Like · see review

May 17, 2022 John rated it really liked it

A fascinating book that succeeds in bringing the reader back into the world of ancient Israel and its neighbors. Along the way, we learn that the God of Christianity--the God who is incorporeal, immaterial, spirit and such--is not the God of the Old or New Testaments. That God had feet and arms, a heart and face, and we were created to literally look like him. We are said to be this God's image bearers. Stavrakopoulou painstakingly details the grittiness of the ancient Hebrew's ideas and concept ...more

flag Like · see review

Jun 27, 2022 Darwin Ross rated it really liked it

Very detailed in displaying the shift from pagan gods to the Judeo-Christian God. As for how far the literalness of God's body actually persists and should persist in late Judaism and early Christianity, to the undermining of each, is another matter. The evolution from early Middle Eastern gods to the later Yahweh does not automatically discount his relevance.

The evolution might be purposeful and intended. For example, "progressive creation" or "theistic (macro-) evolution" advocates see a plac ...more

flag Like · see review

Apr 19, 2022 Akanksha Dutta (Athena Book Briefs) rated it it was amazing

This is a lovely although lengthy book, I thoroughly enjoyed listening to it, especially as the author narrates it themself. The book discusses the specific beliefs and mythology surrounding the Judeo-Christian God and his cultural predecessors from the Levant. This is done through a discussion of the anatomy of the gods, how various parts from their hands, feet, hair, heart etc have different stories attached. It was quite a revelation to see how drastically the traits and conception of God has ...more

flag Like · see review

Jul 03, 2022 Chris rated it it was amazing

Shelves: contemp-nonfiction, writ-by-women, favorites, history

Really wonderful! Stavrakopoulou’s thesis is elegantly summarized at the very end of her book:

...the distance between God and humanity is light years from the image of God in the Bible. The Christian construct of God as a transcendent, invisible and incorporeal being is a distorted refraction, not a reflection, of the Biblical image of God. The real god of the Bible was an ancient Levantine deity whose footsteps shook the earth, whose voice thundered through the skies and whose beauty and radian

...more

flag Like · see review

Mar 19, 2022 Geof Sage rated it really liked it

Shelves: 53-want

Armed with a PhD from a different (but related) department at the university of which the author teaches, and the topic being near and dear to me with my UG focus on 1) bodies and 2) the Hebrew Bible, I can't decide how I feel about this. 60% is something I wish I wrote, 20% needed a tighter editor (we get told the Hebrew name of Ecclesiastes twice and the same story about Moses a couple of times), and 20% woefully underexplored and too explicatory, especially regarding the layers of bodily pres ...more

flag Like · see review

Apr 21, 2022 Rachel rated it it was amazing

What is the true nature of God? That’s a question that has been explored and debated over the centuries. There seems to be no satisfactory answer for everyone, even among believers, atheists and agnostics. Two recent books discuss this issue in very different ways: Francesca Stavrakopoulou’s fascinating “God: An Anatomy” (Alfred A. Knopf) offers a close look at God as the deity was originally portrayed in the Bible, while Rabbi Toba Spitzer’s excellent “God is Here: Reimagining the Divine” (St. ...more

flag Like · see review

Jan 23, 2022 Cat rated it it was amazing

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

flag Like · see review

Feb 01, 2022 Jamie Charles rated it it was amazing

February 2022 | 4.5/5
Professor Stavrakopoulou examines how the Western idea of God came to be using her knowledge of ancient religions and deep examination of the Hebrew bible.

She shows how the ancient God had a human shaped body, walked and talked with his followers, laughed, cried, and loved his people.

A male god with bulging muscles, long hair, a well kept mustache and a luxurious beard, a long thick member with heavy testicles, reddish tinged skin, thonged sandles on feet, and perfumes on hi ...more

flag Like · see review

Jan 03, 2022 Delson Roche rated it really liked it

A book densely packed with history of the God of Levant. Each chapter is dedicated to one organ of god and explains where and how things changed as time progressed.
The book starts with the foot and ends up on the head. I found the chapter on the genitals of god the most entertaining and it answered my childhood question of why Yahweh needed a penis (else why would he be called a he).
The book gets 4 stars because I missed a chronological development in the stories. The stories jump across times, ...more

flag Like · see review

May 24, 2022 Miriam rated it it was amazing

Shelves: religion

This is a tour de force, but not for those who prefer to remain complacent in their theology. Stavrakopoulou, an avowed atheist and expert in the Jewish Bible, has written a book that truly takes the text literally. References to God's body and breath are accepted at face value and then placed within the context of the region's myths and pantheons. The result traces the transition of Judaism and Christianity's understanding of the divine from henotheism to platonic idealism, from a dynamic if de ...more

flag Like · see review

« previous 1 2 next »