Hi Peter, you make some good points, and I'll try to be more diligent in my characterizations in the future.I was also referring to the mainstream in ancient Judaism, or perhaps more accurately mainstream Israelite religion, as represented by the biblical authors. I would be interested to see examples of biblical authors attributing body parts to God which cannot be understood as metaphor. This might end up as a more illuminating discussion than the one about qualifications.
== I think you would have to work hard to support your thesis that anyone, at least in the theological mainstream which condemned idolatry, believed that Yahweh had literal body parts, that the language about his body parts is to be understood as anything other than metaphorical.
Anyone in "current" theological mainstream, or are we talking about the mainstream in Ancient Judaism? It is the latter to which I refer. The argument of metaphor works in some verses, but certainly not all of them.
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