Shortlisted for The Wolfson History Prize 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.

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

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.

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.

Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou is Chaired Professor of Hebrew Bible & Ancient Religion at the University of Exeter. She is an internationally renowned scholar and award-winning writer. She holds a B.A. in Theology, and a M.A. and a Ph.D in Old Testement from Oxford.