God: An Anatomy, by Francesca Stavrakopoulou

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God: An Anatomy by Francesca Stavrakopoulou: Desiring the Divine

In the Beginning

Desiring the Divine

God: An Anatomy by Francesca Stavrakopoulou

BBC Radio 4 - God: An Anatomy by Francesca Stavrakopoulou, Desiring the Divine

Professor Francesca Stavrakopolou explores the anatomy of the God of the Bible.

Professor Francesca Stavrakopolou reads her surprising and often controversial examination of God, in all his bodily, uncensored, scandalous forms.

Professor Francesca Stavrakopolou reads God: An Anatomy, her surprising and often controversial examination of God, in all his bodily, uncensored, scandalous forms.

In this final episode, she explores the staggering beauty of the God of the Bible. 

“God’s aesthetic qualities are more usually veiled in translation by the mistaken assumption that no one believed God had a body to be seen. His magnetic good looks are recast instead as immaterial moral virtues, so that, in most Bibles today, God is described not as ‘good-looking’, but ‘good’; he is not ‘lovely looking’, but ‘gracious’. And yet the Hebrew terms used in these psalms – tob and na‘im – carry with them a strong sense of the aesthetic, and they are often used to describe attractive people, pretty places and wondrous sights, rather than abstract qualities.  God may well have embodied praiseworthy values, but he was also staggeringly beautiful…”

Professor Francesca Stavrakopoulou studied theology at Oxford and is currently Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Religion at the University of Exeter. The author of a number of academic works, she also presented the BBC2 documentary series The Bible’s Buried Secrets. She regularly appears on BBC1’s The Big Questions and Sunday Morning Live, and writes for the Guardian, the Mail on Sunday and the Times Literary Supplement. 

Abridged and produced by Elizabeth Burke. 
A Loftus Media Ltd production for BBC Radio 4

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