Virtual Event: Francesca Stavrakopoulou

Harvard Book Store’s virtual event series welcomes FRANCESCA STAVRAKOPOULOU—Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Religions at the University of Exeter—for a discussion of her book God: An Anatomy.

About God: An Anatomy

The scholarship of theology and religion teaches us that the God of the Bible was without a body, only revealing himself in the Old Testament in words mysteriously uttered through his prophets, and in the New Testament in the body of Christ. The portrayal of God as corporeal and masculine is seen as merely metaphorical, figurative, or poetic. But, in this revelatory study, Francesca Stavrakopoulou presents a vividly corporeal image of God: a human-shaped deity who walks and talks and weeps and laughs, who eats, sleeps, feels, and breathes, and who is undeniably male.

Here is a portrait—arrived at through the author’s close examination of and research into the Bible—of a god in ancient myths and rituals who was a product of a particular society, at a particular time, made in the image of the people who lived then, shaped by their own circumstances and experience of the world. From head to toe—and every part of the body in between—this is a god of stunning surprise and complexity, one we have never encountered before.

Praise for God: An Anatomy

“Good Lord, Stavrakopoulou touches that sweet spot that is scholarly, funny, visceral and heavenly. A revelation.” —Adam Rutherford, author of A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived

“One of the most remarkable historians and communicators working today.” —Dan Snow, author of On This Day in History

“In Stavrakopoulou’s stunning dissection of historical religious texts, the real back-story and context of the God of Judaism and Christianity is revealed . . . Where pious theologians have abstracted him into emptiness, Stavrakopolou gives him back his substance, and he’s so much more interesting in this bodily form! Both scholarly and accessible, and full of fascinating stories—I guarantee you’ll never think of this God the same way again.” —Alice Roberts, author of Ancestors