The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel (Book Review‪)‬

By Benjamin D. Sommer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. xv + 334. $85. Traditional Jewish belief expressed in liturgy and philosophical writing posits that God has no form or body. God is incorporeal and any anthropomorphic depiction is metaphorical. In this new book, Benjamin Sommer disputes this belief, claiming that from the Bible until the present most Israelites, Judeans, and Jews have believed that God has a body and denial of such is a minority view (cf. Maimonides). Furthermore, most sources reflecting Israelite religious intuition assume God has more than one body. But all God's bodies are essentially a single body, for God's body is fluid and when He is embodied in one place He remains embodied in other places simultaneously without one body diminishing the other.