God

An Anatomy - As heard on Radio 4

By: Francesca Stavrakopoulou

Narrated by: Francesca Stavrakopoulou

Winner of The PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize 2022

Shortlisted for The Wolfson History Prize 2022

One of The Times Books of the Year 2022

Three thousand years ago, in the Southwest Asian lands we now call Israel and Palestine, a group of people worshipped a complex pantheon of deities, led by a father god called El. El had 70 children, who were gods in their own right. One of them was a minor storm deity, known as Yahweh. Yahweh had a body, a wife, offspring and colleagues. He fought monsters and mortals. He gorged on food and wine, wrote books and took walks and naps. But he would become something far larger and far more abstract: the God of the great monotheistic religions.

But as Professor Francesca Stavrakopoulou reveals, God’s cultural DNA stretches back centuries before the Bible was written, and persists in the tics and twitches of our own society, whether we are believers or not. The Bible has shaped our ideas about God and religion, but also our cultural preferences about human existence and experience; our concept of life and death; our attitude to sex and gender; our habits of eating and drinking; our understanding of history. Examining God’s body, from his head to his hands, feet and genitals, she shows how the Western idea of God developed. She explores the places and artefacts that shaped our view of this singular God and the ancient religions and societies of the biblical world. And in doing so, she analyses not only the origins of our oldest monotheistic religions but also the origins of Western culture.

Beautifully written, passionately argued and frequently controversial, God: An Anatomy is cultural history on a grand scale.

©2021 Francesca Stavrakopoulou (P)2021 Macmillan Publishers International Limited

Critic reviews

"Rivetingly fresh and stunning." (Sunday Times)

"A tour de force, a triumph." (Catholic Herald)

"One of the most remarkable historians and communicators working today." (Dan Snow)

informative

This book helps with understanding the bible. The true bible meanings are very far from today's chirstianity and this has been quite shocking for me, even if I considered myself 'detransitioned' from christianity. I recommend this book for open minded individuals

Eye-opening stuff

This will get you thinking and provide you with answers to your age-long questions.

Enlightening!

I really enjoyed this. Well written and packed full of information that most Christians wouldn't know.

It's sad that I probably couldn't get my mom to read this as think it will make the cognitive dissonance far too uncomfortable to bear.

There is no overt attack on Christianity or any religion in here, but the simple portrayal of how gods were made by us is is impossible to ignore. Well done 😁

Read this book if you want to know where it all came from. My only regret is not being able to see some of the pictures that would be in the physical book.

I wish more people read this

Fascinating description of what a lot of people take for granted they know, but apparently do not know at all.

A different view

A fresh perspective on the way Jewish and Christian people imagined God throughout history. It focuses on the human aspect, which seems strange from our Modern Era perspective, but which probably was and still is as important as the transcendental aspect of God in shaping human minds.
For the most part the book just presents the texts and historical contexts, so it should be interesting & accessible for readers of any belief system (including Christians, Atheists and pluralists).