A Body Unlike Bodies: Transcendent Anthropomorphism in Ancient Semitic Tradition and Early Islam

• Published in: Journal of the American Oriental Society 2009-01, Vol.129 (1), p.19-44
• Main Author: Williams, Wesley
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Analysis; Anthropomorphism; Attributes; Bible; Brain; Children; Christianity; Deities; Divine attributes; Divinity; God; Islam; Judaism; Muslims; Nonfiction; Otherness; Religion; Religious literature; Semitic languages; Social aspects; Sunni; Theology; Tradition (Theology); Transcendence of God
• ISSN: 0003-0279; 2169-2289

Islam is often viewed as the religion par excellence of divine transcendence.4 God is khiläf al-cälam - "the absolute divergence from the world" - and this characteristically Islamic doctrine of mukhälafa, "(divine) otherness," precludes divine corporeality and anthropomorphism.5 But such a model of divine transcendence is Hellenistic, not Semitic.6 The very notion of "immateriality," as well argued by Robert Renehan, seems to have been the brain-child of Plato.7 The Semitic, and the ancient Near Eastern (ANE) models in general, embraced both "otherness" and corporeality/anthropomorphism: the gods were "transcendently anthropomorphic," to use Ronald Hendel' s term.8 That is to say, while the gods possessed an anthropoid or human-like form, this form was also in a fundamental way unlike that of humans in that it was transcendent, either in size, beauty, the substance of which it was composed, or all three.9 Ancient Israel stood in linguistic, cultural, and religious continuity with her neighbors in the Levant. 10 Morton Smith suggested in a classic article that Israel participated in "the common theology of the ancient Near East." u However ill-defined this concept of an ANE "common theology," it is clear that the god(s) of Israel and the gods of the ANE actually differed less than has been supposed. 12 Like the gods of the ANE, the god(s) of Israel and biblical tradition were transcendently anthropomorphic. 13 This ancient Near Eastern/Semitic transcendent anthropomorphism stands in stark contrast to normative Islamic notions of divine transcendence. 14 This later theological development included the appropriation of Hellenistic concepts and terms in order to interpret the Qur'än and the Sunna, particularly the statements about God. 15 Early Islam was, among other things, clearly a formulation of ancient Near Eastern mythological tradition. 16 It is specifically the oriental monotheism, to use John Wansbrough's characterization of the ancient Near Eastern biblical tradition, to which Islam and the Qur'an are heir, 17 a point the latter concedes. 18 This disparity between ANE/Semitic and Islamic notions of divine transcendence becomes more acute when one considers the insistence, by Islamic tradition and Western scholarship, that the deity is the same in the three monotheistic traditions: The monotheists not only worship one God; he is the same god for all.