Jewish Roots of Christian Man-God Theology

In the Second Temple Period Jewish, Rabbinic literature, the God portrayed was thoroughly anthropomorphic, corporeal, and embodied who often shared divine agency with other divine and human beings. These beings were described using divine language and carried out divine functions. This complex view challenges the notion of a single God over Israel, as it suggests that multiple divine entities coexisted. This concept of ancient monotheism, where the main God shares divinity with lesser divine beings, is a significant aspect of ancient Jewish beliefs about the divine and categorically differs from the modern concept of monotheism.

Even the philosophically oriented Philo of Alexandria (20 BCE – 50 CE) who is often considered the father of transcendental theology had a unique perspective on the oneness of God, as he believed that it could include various lesser divine beings without compromising God's divinity or greatness. He saw these lesser divine beings as integral to God's identity while also being subordinate and independent, performing roles that the one creator God could not. This hierarchy included divine powers, lesser created beings like stars and humans, all of which Philo considered "divine," making his belief in one God complex. However, he distinguished the highest divinity as the sole uncreated entity from which everything else originated. This perspective differs significantly from modern monotheism which rejects the existence of any divine being besides One and Only God.

Additionally, in the context of Jewish antiquity, the understanding of divine corporeality (body), when viewed synchronically, encompassed the notion of incarnation.

In the early centuries of Common Era Jewish beliefs, there was a notion that created humans, particularly the High Priest, (Son of God) could possess divinity. Some Jewish authors likened the High Priest to the Greco-Roman emperor, seeing them as a visible representation of God on Earth. This belief suggested that the uncreated God could manifest in created corporeal (bodily) form.

Furthermore, the concept of the Divine Logos was explored, sometimes viewed as a part of Israel's supreme God and other times personified or even embodied in the created world. This duality in the perception of the Divine Logos added complexity to Jewish conceptions of divinity.

In ancient Judaism, apart from the Jesus movement, there were various ways in which God could be believed to be embodied in human form. This could be through specific figures like Moses or the Jewish high priest, or through attributes of Israel's supreme God, such as Sophia and the Logos. These alternative visions of divine embodiment were seen as valid means for humans to connect with God in their time.

While the idea that God had become incarnate in the specific person of Jesus, as expressed in the Gospel of John, didn't have a direct parallel in Second Temple or Rabbinic Judaism, contemporaneous Jewish authors did provide evidence that there were instances within the emerging Jewish tradition where God or a part of God became embodied on Earth for human salvation or achieving a state of apotheosis.

Contrary to past assumptions, the concept of divine embodiment was not antithetical to Jewish understandings of God but rather a genuine part of the tradition. The medieval Muslim advances compelled Jewish rationalists to contemplate strategies for reducing or addressing anthropomorphisms and corporealism found in biblical and Talmudic texts due to their problematic nature.

The great Midrash scholar Arthur Marmorstein, on the other hand, does not consider anthropomorphism to be a problem at all. He claims anthropomorphism to be a higher level of religious understanding: “Paganism was far removed from anthropomorphism, it cherished the lower stage of theriomorphism... The religion of Israel was from the very beginning free from this false doctrine... Without anthropomorphism the ordinary man with his narrow vision and limited intelligence would not have been able to grasp the belief in God, in His omnipotence and eternity, His universal knowledge and presence.”

He further argues that: “In this respect the teachers of the Haggadah stand not much below the prophets; they attain in many respects the height of the prophetic conception of God. The treatment of the anthropomorphism in the Bible had from of old been a subject of dispute between opposing schools. The history of this spiritual conflict goes back very far. If this is borne in mind the contradictions between the scholars in Haggadah become much more intelligible. One has only to think of the attitude of R. Akiba and of R. Ishmael to this problem. No harm is done to religion if one designates it as anthropomorphic. All higher religious systems are of this nature.”

Marmorstein attempts to solve all the problems posed by rabbinic anthropomorphism by asserting a hypothesis that states that since ancient times two schools existed among the rabbis, the allegorists and the literalists. By qualifying anthropomorphisms by various qualifiers, the rabbis, according to Marmorstein, allegorized and hence overcame anthropomorphisms. On the other hand, the literalists took these anthropomorphisms literally, enlarging them and adding to their vitality. He then explains away some of the anthropomorphic passages as a reaction and endeavors to respond to the polemics directed against Israel in the rabbinic period.

Schechter contends that arguments in favor of rabbinic anthropomorphisms and their allegorical interpretations are as shallow as Marmorstein. The problem of anthropomorphic depictions of God is pandemic in Rabbinic literature.

Max Kadushin strongly rejects any such hypothesis of two schools among Rabbinic authorities and argues that: “The whole hypothesis, indeed, falls to the ground as soon as we examine its central thesis – the division into two schools. In the attempt to maintain this division, Marmorstein is forced, in a number of instances, to change around the proponents of opinion, often solely on the basis of his thesis.”

Biblical writers and rabbinic thinkers did not view anthropomorphic descriptions of the Deity as a problem, and a great majority did not consider it wrong to ascribe to God characteristics and qualities altogether human and mortal. Kadushin rightly argues that: “To ascribe to the Rabbis any sort of stand on anthropomorphism is to do violence, therefore, to rabbinic thought. Indeed, this entire discussion only shows that when we employ the terms of classical philosophy even in an attempt to clarify rabbinic ideas, we are no longer within the rabbinic universe of discourse.”

He further asserts that “Whatever the Rabbis do, they do not really qualify or mitigate either biblical anthropomorphisms or their own. The very problem of anthropomorphism did not exist for them.” This is probably why most rabbinic writings seem not to worry much about gross anthropomorphisms.

Moreover, the problem, as noted in previous posts, is not really one of the minor or mild anthropomorphisms such as seeing, watching, loving, etc. for these are essential for the communication between God and man. The difficulty occurs when we come to concrete anthropomorphisms that go beyond the purpose of modality and depict God as a human-like figure.

In the Genesis Rabbah, ca. 400–450, it is reported that R. Hoshaiah said: “When the Holy One, blessed be he, came to create the first man, the ministering angels mistook him [for God, since man was in God’s image,] and wanted to say before him, ‘Holy’, [holy is the Lord of hosts].” According to Said R. Hiyya the Elder, God had appeared to the Israelites through every manner of deed and condition: “he appeared to them at the sea as a heroic soldier, carrying out battles in behalf of Israel... he had appeared to them at Sinai in the form of a teacher who was teaching Torah and standing in awe... he had appeared to them in the time of Daniel as an elder, teaching Torah, for it is appropriate for Torah to go forth from the mouth of sages... he had appeared to them in the time of Solomon as a youth, in accord with the practices of that generation...”

Jacob Nuesner observes that “Both passages constitute allusions to God’s corporeality and refer to God’s capacity to take on human traits of mind, and soul and spirit as well as of outward form.” Daniel J. Silver notes that: “Midrash necessarily emphasized the immanence, even the humanness, of God... God is not an idea, but an intimate. Midrash often depicts God as one of the folk. God participates in the exile, cries over Israel’s anguish, bends down to hear prayer, rejoices with a bride at her wedding, puts on tefillin and joins in public prayer. The Midrash innocently and happily speaks of God as father, friend, shepherd, lover, and avenger. One episode may picture God as guardian protecting Israel, another as sage teaching Torah, still another as shepherd shielding his flock...”

In explaining Exodus 15:3 which states, “The Lord is a man of war; the Lord is his name”, the Talmud has no hesitation in portraying God as a real man. “The word ‘man’ signifies none other than the Holy One, blessed be He, as it is said: The Lord is a man of war.” At another place, the Talmud reports: “R. Johanan said: What is meant by, I saw by night, and beheld a man riding upon a red horse, and he stood among the myrtle trees that were in the bottom, etc.? What means, ‘I saw by night’? — The Holy One, blessed be He, wished to turn the whole world into night, ‘but behold, A man riding’. ‘Man’ can refer to none but the Holy One, blessed be He, as it is written, The Lord is a man of war: the Lord is his name; ‘upon a red horse’ — the Holy One, blessed be He, wished to turn the whole world to blood; but as soon as he looked upon Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah his anger was appeased, for it is written, and he stood among [hadasim] the myrtle trees that were in the deep. Now ‘hadasim’ refers but to the righteous, as it is written, And he brought up Hadassah; and ‘deep’ refers to Babylon, as it is said, that sayeth to the deep, Be dry, and I will dry up thy rivers. Straightway He who was filled with wrath was partially calmed, and then completely pacified.”

Given the graphic nature of many Talmudic passages such as these, even the otherwise cautious Schechter is forced to point out that there is an awareness by rabbis of the danger of losing God ‘in the world’: “Eager, however, as the Rabbis were to establish this communication between God and the world, they were always on their guard not to permit him to be lost in the world, or to be confused with man. Hence the marked tendency, both in the Targumim and in the Agadah, to explain away or to mitigate certain expressions in the Bible, investing the deity with corporeal qualities.”

How deep does this awareness go? The same Schechter also observes that the God of the rabbis: “acts as best man at the wedding of Adam and Eve; he mourns over the world like a father over the death of his son when the sins of ten generations make its destruction by the deluge imminent; he visits Abraham on his sick-bed; he condoles with Isaac after the death of Abraham; he “himself in his glory” is occupied in doing the last honors to Moses, who would otherwise have remained unburied, as no man knew his grave; he teaches Torah to Israel, and to this very day he keeps school in heaven for those who died in their infancy... Like man he also feels, so to speak, embarrassed in the presence of the conceited and overbearing, and says, I and the proud cannot dwell in the same place. Nay, it would seem that the Rabbis felt an actual delight in heaping human qualities upon God whenever opportunity is offered by Scripture.”

Jacob Nuesner divides biblical and Rabbinic God talk into four categories culminating in corporeal and material traits. Nuesner writes: “God figures in the canon of the Judaism of the dual Torah as premise, presence, person, and, at the end, personality. God is represented not solely in abstract terms of attributes (e.g., merciful, loving) but in concrete terms of relationships with the world, humanity, and Israel. The theological discourse of the dual Torah may be classified in four parts: first comes discourse which presupposes God as premise; second is the recognition of God as a presence; third, God appears as a person; and fourth, God personally participates in the here and now of everyday discourse.”

He concludes that “out of the material of the final stage of the canon of the Judaism of the dual Torah, we can compose something very like a gospel of God incarnate on earth.” This to Nuesner is “divinity in the form of humanity, however the relations between the one and the other are sorted out. And that is what, in a narrowly descriptive framework, incarnation, as a species of the genus anthropomorphism, means.”

Elliot R. Wolfson, Yair Loberbaum, Esther J. Hamori, Benjamin D. Sommer, Rachel Neis, Anne K. Knafl, Mark S. Smith, Deborah Forger, and many other modern biblical scholars agree with the anthropomorphic, corporeal and embodied nature of first-century Rabbinic concept of God and its possible connection to the Christian incarnational theology of Jesus Christ’s divinity. Forger notes that “In the early centuries of the Common Era, members of the Jesus movement were not the only Jews who articulated a means by which Israel’s God could become embodied on earth. Indeed, Philo’s notion of a divinely-inspired soul also provides a manner by which Israel’s God could become embodied… Far from there being one monolithic way that ancient Jews imagined that God could become embodied, what my analysis reveals is that there were likely multiple ways that Jews in the first few centuries of the Common Era envisioned that God, or a part of God, could become united with bodily, or material, form.” She concludes that “Philo of Alexandria’s articulation of divine embodiment reveals that the incarnational language which emerges among members of the Jesus movement is not as innovative as has previously been assumed. The notion of divine embodiment, as expressed in places like John 1:14, was not the only manner by which ancient Jews, in the early Roman period, conceived that God, or a part of God, could become united with bodily form.”

On the other hand, apologetics like Silver, Schechter and Kaufmann try to explain away rabbinic anthropomorphism and corporealism as simply efforts to maintain and stress the immanence of God, contending that the problem of anthropomorphism and corporealism was foreign to indigenous Judaism. There are two key problems here, the first is that they forget to consider, and as we have already seen, God’s immanence does not necessarily require expression in concrete anthropomorphisms and corporealism. That is, God does not have to literally weep or cry or repent to emphasize His mercy and love. Neither does immanence require Him in any way, shape or form to have a fixed schedule of study, undertake sport, or be the best man at anything.

Secondly, anthropomorphism and to some extent corporealism, have historically very much existed alongside almost all stages of ancient Judaic thought with very few exceptions. Therefore, it would appear that it is perhaps the concept of immanence, in the strict sense of the term, and not anthropomorphism that seems foreign to indigenous Judaism.

Kadushin observes that “the very idea of immanence is foreign to rabbinic thought.” G. F. Moore argues that the Palestinian masters were innocent of an abstract, transcendent God. To him, imputation to the rabbis of the concept of transcendence is an abuse of philosophical terminology. Kadushin rightly points out that: “The problem of anthropomorphism is indeed foreign to indigenous Judaism, but foreign in a far more radical manner than Kaufmann conceives it to be. Such problems are not in any sense within the rabbinic universe of discourse, not even by implication, and are not to be injected there even for the purpose of analysis.”

Their interpretations and stories are, argues Kadushin, “thoroughly and completely anthropomorphic, and they tell of actions done by God and emotions felt by Him in terms entirely human.”

The same trend continued in the later generations. Suffrin observes that: “A more hideous form of anthropomorphism meets us in the period of the Gaonim (7th-10th cent.)... The most monstrous book of this period was the Shi’ur Koma, ‘Estimation of the Height,’ of which we possess only two fragments – a greater one in the book of Raziel, and a lesser in the Alphabet of R. ‘Akiba. In it, the Deity is described as a huge being in human shape and out of all proportion. The measurement of each member, such as the neck, the beard, the right and left eyes, the upper and lower lips, the ankles, etc. is given in parasangs. Only ‘those parasangs are not like ours, for a heavenly parasang measures a million cubits, each cubit four spans, and each span reaches from one end of the world to the other.’ ‘And,’ says the book of Raziel, ‘blessed is he who knows these measurements, for he has a share in the world to come.’”

Here is the text itself: “Rabbi Ishmael said: Metatron, the great prince of the testimony, said to me: I bear witness about YHWH, the God of Israel, the living and permanent God, our Lord and Master. From the place of the seat of His glory [that is, the throne] upward there are 118 myriads, and from the place of the seat of His glory downward there are 118 myriads. His height is 236 myriad thousand leagues. From His right arm to His left arm there are 77 myriads. From the right eyeball to the left eyeball there are 30 myriads. His cranium is three and one third myriads. The crowns on His head are sixty myriads, corresponding to the sixty myriads of the heads of Israel.”

Such daring corporealism was not a mystical outburst or esoteric exception. This was intrinsic to the mainstream Rabbinic mindset.

“An important conclusion of our discussion is not merely the fact of the existence of such images as that of a shape of God in ancient Jewish esoterism, but also the fact that we are not dealing here with the ideas of "heretical" groups on the periphery of rabbinic Judaism. On the contrary: The close link between these ideas and Merkavah mysticism can leave no doubt that the bearers of these speculations were at the very center of rabbinic Judaism in tannaitic and talmudic times. We must revise forward many of the assumptions of earlier scholars who, finding this notion unacceptable a priori, attempted to relegate the Shi‘ur Komah to the fringes of Judaism. The gnosis we are dealing with here is a strictly orthodox Jewish one.”

Benjamin Sommer of Jewish Theological Seminary in his book “The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel” notes that “Some Jews regard Christianity’s claim to be a monotheistic religion with grave suspicion, both because of the doctrine of the trinity (how can three equal one?) and because of Christianity’s core belief that God took bodily form. What I have attempted to point out here is that biblical Israel knew very similar doctrines, and these doctrines did not disappear from Judaism after the biblical period…. No Jew sensitive to Judaism’s own classical sources, however, can fault the theological model Christianity employs when it avows belief in a God who has an earthly body as well as a Holy Spirit and a heavenly manifestation, for that model, we have seen, is a perfectly Jewish one.”

The Christian Trinitarian, incarnational, and man-God theology clearly has its origins in Jewish traditions. However, it was the medieval Muslim challenges that compelled the Jewish community to address their anthropomorphic and corporeal beliefs about God, leading them to articulate God in more advanced, transcendental, and majestic ways and concepts. The Medieval Jewish rationalists such as Moses Maimonides’ strict anti-anthropomorphic approach was mostly influenced by the Muslim onslaught.  

See details in my book "Concept of God in the Judeo-Christian and Islamic Traditions", chapter 2