“But mortals suppose that gods are born, wear their own clothes and have a voice and body. But if horses or oxen or lions had hands or could draw with their hands and accomplish such works as men, horses would draw the figures of the gods as similar to horses, and the oxen as similar to oxen.”[1]
The Greek Philosopher Xenophanes said this around 500 B.C.E. to illustrate the lack of revelation that goes into humanity’s gods—an indicator of their made-up-ness. Notice that the gods of any territory in any era always resemble something (or a combination of things) visible there. Even the strangest gods of Egypt were designed after beings already visible in that time and place (Ammit, the lion-crocodile-hippo god, e.g.). Xenophanes goes on to complain that “Ethiopians say that their gods are snub–nosed and black, Thracians that theirs are blue-eyed and red-haired.” These specific-to-circumstance descriptions serve as a dead-giveaway that these cultures’ gods were not inspired by supernatural revelation, but by natural experience.
Forbidden Images: a God Immune to Change
For this reason, forbidding images of their god was arguably the most successful decision the Jews ever made (Exodus 20:3-5). The Jews were able to carry their god with them throughout history, altering their idea of him as necessary to fit their changing environment. An imageless god is so effective that Yahweh infiltrated two more major religions—Christianity and Islam. Since an undrawn and unsculptured god can look like anything, he is whatever his adherents imagine of him.
The ancient Jews and Christians definitely had some consistent ideas of what their god looked like, however. They expressed their thoughts about his appearance in their literature. Perhaps another convenient feature for Judaism (and its Common Era offspring) was the reign of illiteracy through most of history. Of course, many anthropomorphic expressions of God were metaphorical; the Jews expressed their feelings about many theological and philosophical concepts by describing them with human-like features. Take Old Testament poetry, for example. However, the Old Testament narratives collectively illustrate God as a divinity with the appearance of a male human—much like many Canaanite gods. In OT narrative literature, God is pictured walking with audible footsteps (Gen 3:8), smelling animal sacrifices (Gen 8:21), hearing physical sounds (Gen 21:17), having a human-like hand, face and back (Exodus 33:23), etc. God has an obviously human form, but his human form is vague enough to where he can be carried by any ethnic group and culture, changing as necessary to become a divine male representation of each people group. His success among religions was due to his adaptability—his imagelessness. Anything more specific (a drawing or statue) would have been a dead giveaway to later cultures that he was fictional. An imageless god is immune to changing ethnicities, cultures, and art styles.
Imageless, but No Different
To the nonpartisan viewer, the Jewish god’s humanness should seem like unimaginative fiction invented by Ancient Near Eastern nomads. In his basic essence, God is no different from the gods of their neighbors and predecessors. In early Judaism, he doesn’t even deny the existence of other gods (he merely warns that he is jealous). He demands animal sacrifice in exchange for rain and fertility (Exodus 23:24-32). He requires a temple complete with priests and treasures. He has the form of a human, he has a gender, and he exhibits human emotions (anger, jealousy, pity, regret). Perhaps the author of Genesis 1 recognizes how much it seems that man made godkind in his own image. So he gives the system an alibi by rewriting anthropology and history backwards: “So God created mankind in his own image” (Genesis 1:27).
The authors of the Torah felt confident about making these bold claims without a shred evidence to back them up. Why? Because they lived in a world in which people didn’t question religious ideas. The Ancient Near East was not accustomed to asking questions like, “On what basis do you say that?” or “What evidence is there?” In the terrifying conditions of the Ancient Near East, people were desperate enough for answers that they were willing to forgo logical reasoning. In times of famine, people wanted to know which god they should implore for rain more than why they should choose that god. This is likely why the unimaginative nature of a god in man’s image did not raise a red flag to anyone (and why the structure in reverse so easily acquitted the religion of its suspiciously fictitious design). In the Ancient Near East, nearly any supernatural claim had a chance no matter how extraordinary or poorly-evidenced.
My point is this: if the Jews had truly received divine revelation from the creator of the cosmos, wouldn’t you expect more from it than the same basic things that other cultures had already invented for millennia? Since the Old Testament doesn’t offer more, what exactly makes the god of the Old Testament more convincing than his Ancient Near Eastern counterparts? When viewed in context, Old Testament Judaism appears as just another Ancient Near Eastern religion with little theological deviation from its neighboring religions. Its unprecedented success is largely due not to its unique ideas, but to its prohibition of depictions of its god, which allowed this god to be carried and worshiped throughout history and around the world.
[1] Lesher, J.H. Xenophanes of Colophon. 1992. University of Toronto Press, Toronto Buffalo London. P. 25.
