Divine Embodiment in Philo of Alexandria

Because later polemics established Jews and Christians as binary opposites, distinguished largely by their views on God’s body, scholars have not sufficiently explored how other Jews in the early Roman period, who stood outside the Jesus movement, conceived of how the divine could become embodied on...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal for the study of Judaism
Main Author: Forger, Deborah Louise (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Brill 2018
In: Journal for the study of Judaism
Further subjects:B divine embodiment Philo of Alexandria Moses God Incarnate human materiality
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Parallel Edition:Non-electronic
Description
Summary:Because later polemics established Jews and Christians as binary opposites, distinguished largely by their views on God’s body, scholars have not sufficiently explored how other Jews in the early Roman period, who stood outside the Jesus movement, conceived of how the divine could become embodied on earth. The first-century Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria often operates as the quintessential representative of a Jew who stressed God’s absolute incorporeality. Here I demonstrate how Philo also presents a means by which a part of Israel’s God could become united with human materiality, showing how the patriarchs and Moses function as his paradigms. This evidence suggests that scholarship on divine embodiment has been limited by knowledge of later developments in Christian theology. Incarnational formulas, like that found in John 1:14 were not the only way that Jews in the first and second century CE understood that God could become united with human form.
ISSN:1570-0631
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal for the study of Judaism
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/15700631-12491160