Within this world, the feet of the gods were as tactile and as sensory as those of their worshippers. Just as human bodies experienced the visceral carnage of warfare, the dry rustle of the threshing floor, or the squelch of the wine press, so too did the bodies of the gods. Mythic texts abound with…

Underlying these myths was the widespread notion that the back of the foot was a point of particular vulnerability and weakness in the body – as Achilles is said to have discovered during the fabled battle of Troy. Accordingly, the back of the foot was the place at which hierarchies of power might be disrupted.…

In Genesis, Adam and Eve hear Yahweh’s footsteps approaching as he walks in the Garden of Eden; later in the same book, Abraham sees Yahweh standing with two other divine beings beneath a group of sacred trees, and subsequently goes for a walk with him. Soon after, Abraham’s grandson, Jacob, encounters Yahweh standing next to…

As one of many deities in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age Levant, Yahweh was originally a god rooted within a polytheistic world – and remained comfortably so for much of his early career. Beneath him were ranked a younger generation of gods, each charged with a particular portfolio in the management of the…

And so the high god makes the very first human: ‘God created the human in his image, in the image of God he created him’. The new creature – adam, meaning ‘man’ or ‘human’ – bears a bodily resemblance to his divine creator, and is swiftly paired with a female version: ‘male and female he…

This is basically arguing over the Midianite/Kenite hypothesis. Tropper’s article on the Tetragrammaton is phenomenal. I’d highly recommend that book, although the origins of YHWH are something we can really only speculate about. I’m writing a portion of my dissertation right now on the origin of deity concepts in Israel, including YHWH, and there’s really…

The God of Israel is referred to by a number of names in the Old Testament. The two most significant are “El” (with its variants) and “Yahweh”. Thanks in large part to the religious libraries uncovered among the ruins of Ugarit, a Bronze Age city-state to the north of Israel, we now know a great…

In early Christianity we see a shift from a stance of soteriological inclusivism or universalism to exclusivism. In the second and third centuries some Christian theologians, such as Clement of Alexandria (150– 215) and Origen (184–253), as well as select Gnostics (the authors of the Secret Book of John and the Tripartite Tractate) adopted, in…

In addition to rejecting creation from nothing, Ibn Taymiyyah is also a Universalist and rejects the eternity of the torment of hell: Of course, he probably wouldn’t call himself a universalist, but this is the necessary conclusion from his arguments. See: https://www.academia.edu/49229114/_Response_to_Those_Who_Say_that_Heaven_and_Hell_Will_Pass_Away_by_Ibn_Taymiyyah?source=swp_share

Origen: Augustine: “[According to Origen] Each soul will ultimately attain salvation because God loves all of his creations and wants them all to be saved. Each soul, because God’s love cannot be hindered. Thus, even Satan will repent and be saved. Origen’s God does not cast anyone aside.” Augustine complains to Jerome that he has…