1 Benjamin D. Sommer, The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Bodies, Embodiment, and Theology of the Hebrew Bible (ed. S. Tamar Kamionkowski and Wonil Kim; New York: T&T Clark, 2010); Anne K. Knafl, Forming God: Divine Anthropomorphism in the Pentateuch (Siphrut; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2014); Mark S. Smith, Where the Gods Are: Spatial Dimensions of Anthropomorphism in the Biblical World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016); Andreas Wagner, God’s Body: The Anthropomorphic God in the Old Testament (trans. Marion Salzmann; London: T&T Clark, 2019; trans. of Gottes Körper. Zur alttestamentlichen Vorstellung des Menschengestaltigkeit Gottes [Gütersloh: Gütersloher, 2010]); Tyson L. Putthoff, Gods and Humans in the Ancient Near East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020); Charles Halton, A Human-Shaped God: Theology of an Embodied God (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2021); Silviu Nicolae Bunta, The Lord God of Gods: Divinity and Deification in Early Judaism (PHSC 35; Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2021); Brittany E. Wilson, The Embodied God: Seeing the Divine in Luke-Acts and the Early Church (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021); Francesca Stavrakopoulou, God: An Anatomy (New York: Knopf, 2022); Deborah Forger, The Knowing Body: God’s Form in Jewish Antiquity, forthcoming. Of course, Sommer was not the first biblical scholar to take up this question. See, for example, the following important monographs: Ulrich Mauser, Gottesbild und Menschwerdung: Eine Untersuchung zur Einheit des Alten und Neuen Testaments (BHT 43; Tübingen: Mohr, 1971); Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, God’s Phallus and Other Problems for Men and Monotheism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994); Stephen D. Moore, God’s Gym: Divine Male Bodies of the Bible (New York: Routledge, 1996); Esther J. Hamori, “When Gods Were Men”: The Embodied God in Biblical and Near Eastern Literature (BZAW 384; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008). See also Christoph Markschies’s important work on this topic in late antiquity in God’s Body: Jewish, Christian, and Pagan Images of God (trans. Alexander Johannes Edmonds; Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2019; trans. of Gottes Körper [München: C. H. Beck, 2016]).

2 Stavrakopoulou’s discussion of God’s body comes the closest to this position.

3 For an overview of classical theism and its key thinkers, see the essays in Models of God and Alternative Ultimate Realities (ed. Jeanine Diller and Asa Kasher; New York: Springer, 2012), esp. 95–193. On neo-classical theism and how it understands God with respect to these divine attributes, see 197–259.

4 On how the Enlightenment and the rise of modern science signified a shift away from a focus on the immaterial to the material to the point where immateriality became “a gulf that separates modern from ancient and medieval thinkers,” see Stephen H. Webb, Jesus Christ, Eternal God: Heavenly Flesh and the Metaphysics of Matter (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012) esp. 32–33.

5 Scholars such as Hamori, Sommer, Smith, Markschies, and Halton discuss God’s relationship to materiality in a variety of ways, but it is not the primary aim of their respective works. See, however, Daniel O. McClellan’s discussion of God’s “presencing media,” or the material mediation of the divine presence, in the Hebrew Bible in YHWH’s Divine Images: A Cognitive Approach (ANEM 29; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2022).

6 For an overview of new materialism and materialist approaches, see Christopher N. Gamble, Joshua S. Hanan, and Thomas Nail, “What is New Materialism?,” Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 24 (2019) 111–34. Note, though, that not all scholars who exemplify materialist approaches identify with the label “new materialism.” Among biblical scholars who work on God’s body, Halton frequently reflects a materialist approach, even though he does not explicitly engage new materialism.

7 Sommer, Bodies of God, 2, definition originally in italics.

8 Halton, A Human-Shaped God, 57.

9 Smith, Where the Gods Are, 14.

10 Ibid.; Knafl, Forming God, 72. Smith also cites the American Heritage Dictionary, which defines a body as “the entire material structure and substance of an organism, especially of a human being or an animal” (Where the Gods Are, 14). See also Eilberg-Schwartz, God’s Phallus, 60; Wagner, God’s Body, xv–xvi, 1–7. Cf. Putthoff, Gods and Humans, 3–7; McClellan, YHWH’s Divine Images, 21–73, esp. 26–27.

11 Wilson, The Embodied God, 14–18, here 14; Chris Shilling, The Body and Social Theory (3rd ed.; Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2012) xii. See also Markschies’s brief survey of “body history” in God’s Body, 13–18.

12 Sommer, Bodies of God, 44–57.

13 Smith, Where the Gods Are; Knafl, Forming God (note the subtitle of Knafl’s book: Divine Anthropomorphism in the Pentateuch). See also Smith’s more popular-level book, How Human is God? Seven Questions about God and Humanity in the Bible (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2014). Halton likewise focuses on God’s “human shape,” though not exclusively (A Human-Shaped God).

14 Smith, Where the Gods Are, esp. 13–14, 54–57.

15 Wilson, The Embodied God, 14–18, esp. 16–18.

16 For ancient philosophical understandings of what constituted a body, see Richard Sorabji, Matter, Space, and Motion (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988) 3–122. For depictions of the cosmos as a living being with a spherical body, see, e.g., Diogenes Laertius, Vit. 7.139–140 and of the cosmos with a body and soul, see, e.g., Plato, Tim. 28B; 30B–D; 32C–34B.

17 Sommer, for instance, notes that God’s “Glory” is anthropomorphic but not necessarily material: “In modern terms, we might tentatively suggest that this body was made of energy rather than matter … [B]ecause the divine body according to this conception is not necessarily made of the same sort of matter as a human body, it might be appropriate to term this belief a nonmaterial conception of God” (Bodies of God, 2; cf. 71). See also, however, the conversation below regarding light and God’s body of “Glory.”

18 Smith, Where the Gods Are, 13–30. This chapter draws from his article “The Three Bodies of God in the Hebrew Bible,” JBL 134 (2015) 471–88.

19 Wilson, Embodied God, 17.

20 Ibid. On how corporeality does not always equate to a material body in the ancient world, see Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995) 6–15. On the range of ancient philosophical views regarding the body and its relationship with matter, see Sorabji, Matter, Space, and Motion, 3–122.

21 James Barr makes this point in his landmark essay, “Theophany and Anthropomorphism in the Old Testament,” in Congress Volume: Oxford 1959 (VTSup 7; Leiden: Brill, 1960) 31–38.

22 Hamori provides the most in-depth discussion of these theophanies. See “When Gods Were Men,” esp. 1–25, 65–128. See also, e.g., Gen 3:8–21; Exod 33:21–23.

23 On how one of the “three men” is God in Gen 18 and how “the man” is God in Gen 32, despite attempts to argue otherwise in the history of interpretation (cf. Hos 12:3–4), see Hamori, “When Gods Were Men,” 1–25.

24 For a helpful critique of this traditional move, see Halton, A Human-Shaped God, 39–51. However, for a nuanced understanding of how to understand these passages as literal embodiments (discursively speaking) that can still be read in a metaphorical (or an analogical) manner (and thus in a way that still coincides with classical theistic sensibilities), see Hamori, “When Gods Were Men,” 53–64.

25 See Mark Sheridan, Language for God in Patristic Tradition: Wrestling with Biblical Anthropomorphism (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015) 65–77. Philo, for example, underscores that God does not need a mouth, tongue, or windpipe (Decal. 32) nor require any body parts whatsoever (Post. 3–4). Note that other Jewish interpreters, such as Aristobulus (2nd cent. BCE), also argue that divine anthropomorphisms should not be taken literally (OTP, 2:837–41; Sheridan, Language for God, 61–65).

26 See, for example, Philo, Mos. 1.65–70; Mut. 1–9; Post. 13–16, 167–69; Jaeda C. Calaway, The Christian Moses: Vision, Authority, and the Limits of Humanity in the New Testament and Early Christianity (Studies in Christianity and Judaism 2; Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019) 34–44.

27 See, e.g., Origen, Princ. 2.4.3; Justin Martyr, Apol. 1.62–63; Dial. 56–60; 126–129; Irenaeus, Epid. 44–47; Haer. 4.20.4–9; Robin Margaret Jensen, Face to Face: Portraits of the Divine in Early Christianity (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2005) 71–77, 94–99; Calaway, The Christian Moses, esp. 86–104, 111–31, 169–90. On how Christians tended to associate theophanies with “the Son” during the 2nd to 4th cents. and how this interpretation started to shift to more noetic, figural, and trinitarian readings, see Angela Russell Christman, “‘What Did Ezekiel See?’ Patristic Exegesis of Ezekiel 1 and Debates about God’s Incomprehensibility,” ProEccl 8 (1999) 338–63; Kari Kloos, “Seeing the Invisible God: Augustine’s Reconfiguration of Theophany Narrative Exegesis,” AugStud 36 (2005) 397–420; eadem, Christ, Creation, and the Vision of God: Augustine’s Transformation of Early Christian Theophany Interpretation (Bible in Ancient Christianity 7; Leiden: Brill, 2011); Bogdan Bucur, Scripture Re-Envisioned: Christophanic Exegesis and the Making of a Christian Bible (Bible in Ancient Christianity 13; Leiden: Brill, 2019). See also Nathan Chambers, “Reading Joshua with Augustine and Sommer: Two Frameworks for Interpreting Theophany Narratives,” JSOT 43 (2019) 273–83.

28 Space prohibits a discussion of all the various interpretations of theophanies throughout their reception history. For an overview of interpretative themes that emerge in readings of theophanies among Christians from the 2nd to 5th cents., see Christman, “ ‘What Did Ezekiel See?’ ”; Kloos, “Seeing the Invisible God”; Calaway, The Christian Moses.

29 Jensen, Face to Face, esp. 71–83.

30 E.g., Putthoff, Gods and Humans; Stavrakopoulou, God; McClellan, YHWH’s Divine Images.

31 Smith, Where the Gods Are, 48; Wilson, The Embodied God, 75–76; Brittany E. Wilson, “God’s ‘Form’ in John’s Gospel and Paul’s Letter to the Philippians,” forthcoming. Temunah occurs in Num 12:8; Job 4:16; Ps 17:15; eidos occurs in John 5:37; morphē in Phil 2:6. However, note that the LXX of Ps 17:15 does not retain the language of “form”; it instead has “glory” (doxa) (Ps 16:15 LXX). The LXX of Num 12:8 includes the language of “form” or “appearance” (perhaps better translated as “clearly” here) (en eidei) but says that Moses “saw the Lord’s glory [doxan].” In the case of Job 4:16, moreover, the Greek translator changes the sentence to say that Eliphaz (or the recipient of the epiphany) did not see a form, as opposed to the Hebrew, which says that “a form [temunah] was before my face” (Job 4:16). It is also not entirely clear whether God is the subject of the epiphany in Job 4:16. (But for an argument that Eliphaz at least claims he has seen a full-blown theophany, see John Burnight, “Is Eliphaz a False Prophet? The Vision in Job 4.12–21,” JSOT 46 [2021] 96–116, here 103–105.) Nevertheless, see the following LXX references to God’s visible “form” (eidos): Gen 32:31; Exod 24:17–18; Judg 13:6 [B], 22; Ezek 1:26. Note too that in Deut 4:12 the text says that the Israelites did not see God’s form, not that God lacks a form (“you could see no form [temunah; cf. homoiōma LXX]—only a voice”; cf. Deut 4:15).

32 On how the language of God’s form in John 5:37 and Phil 2:6 can suggest a visible form, see Markus Bockmuehl, “‘The Form of God’ (Phil. 2:6): Variations on a Theme of Jewish Mysticism,” JTS 48 (1997) 1–23; Wilson, “God’s ‘Form’ in John’s Gospel and Paul’s Letter to the Philippians.”

33 Temunah often refers to material images being made in the “form” or “likeness” of something (Exod 20:4; Deut 4:16, 23, 25; 5:8; cf. Deut 4:12, 15), and in Ps 17:15, seeing God’s “form” (temunah) parallels seeing God’s “face.” In the LXX, the meanings of eidos and morphē range from the abstract to the concrete. The more concrete connotations of eidos include references to a person’s fine figure or beautiful appearance (or lack thereof) (e.g., Gen 29:17; 39:6; Deut 21:11; 1 Kgdms 16:18; 25:3; 2 Kgdms 11:2; 13:1; Isa 52:14; 53:2, 3; 1 Esd 4:18; Esth 2:2, 3, 7; Jdt 8:7; 11:23; Sus 7/8 ; 31 θ). Note too that eidos appears in conjunction with terms that explicitly convey materiality, such as “flesh” (sarx) (Gen 41:2, 3, 18, 19) and skin and bones (Lam 4:8). On the whole, morphē typically refers to someone’s external, visual appearance in the LXX (e.g., Judg 8:18 A; Isa 44:13; Dan 3:19; 4:36 θ; 5:6, 9, 10 θ; 7:28 θ; Tob 1:13; Wis 18:1; 4 Macc 15:4). Note that many of these references likewise occur in relation to human bodies. In Daniel, for example, morphē refers to the face, or countenance, of King Nebuchadnezzar, King Belshazzar, and Daniel, and in 4 Maccabees, the narrator refers to how children resemble their parents in both “soul and form [morphēs]” (4 Macc 15:4). On the various valences of eidos and morphē in the New Testament and the Greco-Roman world, see Wilson, “God’s ‘Form’ in John’s Gospel and Paul’s Letter to the Philippians.”

34 See Wilson, The Embodied God, 28.

35 On the claim that no one has seen God, see John 1:18; 5:37; 6:46; 1 John 4:12, 20; 1 Tim 6:16; Wilson, The Embodied God, 72–77; Brittany E. Wilson, “Seeing Jesus, Seeing God: Theophany and Divine Visibility in the Gospel of John,” in Early High Christology: John among the New Testament Writers (ed. Chris Blumhofer, Diane Chen, and Joel B. Green; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2024) 53–62; Luke Irwin, Jesus and the Visibility of God: Sight and Belief in the Fourth Gospel (SNTSMS; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

36 See Martin, Corinthian Body, 13–14, 104–36; Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Cosmology and Self in the Apostle Paul: The Material Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

37 On light as a body and physical phenomenon, as well as other views of light in the ancient world, see Sorabji, Matter, Space, and Motion, 98–99, 106–19; cf. David Park, The Fire Within the Eye: A Historical Essay on the Nature and Meaning of Light (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997) 4–10. On the cosmic elements (including fire) as material principles, physical bodies, and the source of all that exists in the ancient world, see David Macauley, Elemental Philosophy: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water as Environmental Ideas (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2010) 69–72.

38 See Wilson, The Embodied God, 73–74. 1 Timothy 6:16 comes the closest to suggesting God’s “ontological” invisibility when it says that no one is able to see God.

39 On Num 23:19 and 1 Sam 15:29 in particular and the issue of God changing God’s mind, see Halton, A Human-Shaped God, 118–20.

40 In my estimation, the closest we get to a “category” distinction between God and humans is in Isa 31:3, when the prophet says that the Egyptians are human and not God and that their horses are flesh and not spirit.

41 Note that what I am calling “new materialism” and “the material turn” includes a range of different movements that do not always agree with one another. See New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency and Politics (ed. Diana Coole and Samantha Frost; Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010); Rick Dolphijn and Iris van der Tuin, New Materialism: Interviews and Cartographies (New Metaphysics; Ann Arbor, MI: Open Humanities Press, 2012); Gamble, Hanan, and Nail, “What is New Materialism?”

42 New materialism’s impact on theology is evident in myriad ways. For an explicit theological engagement with new materialism, see, e.g., Entangled Worlds: Religion, Science, and New Materialisms (ed. Catherine Keller and Mary-Jane Rubenstein; New York: Fordham University Press, 2017). See also, e.g., Manuel A. Vásquez, More than Belief: A Materialist Theory of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Sonia Hazard, “The Material Turn in the Study of Religion,” Religion and Society 4 (2013) 58–78.

43 E.g., The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism (ed. Levi Bryant, Nick Srnicek, and Graham Harman; Anamnesis; Victoria, Australia: re.press [Open Access], 2011); Vicki Kirby, “Matter out of Place: ‘New Materialism’ in Review,” in What if Culture was Nature All Along? (ed. Vicki Kirby; Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017) 1–25, esp. 8; Ashley Barnwell, “Method Matters: The Ethics of Exclusion,” in What if Culture was Nature All Along?, 26–47, esp. 29.

44 New materialist Vicki Kirby, for example, argues that culture is not in fact the opposite of nature (or biology/physis) since “nature” and “culture” intersect in multifaceted ways, and she maintains that a narrow focus on “culture” has even led to a “somatophobia” in some circles (e.g., “Corporeal Habits: Addressing Essentialism Differently,” Hypatia 6 [1991] 4–24; “Foreword,” in What if Culture was Nature All Along?, x, and “Matter out of Place,” 1–25. See also Vásquez, More than Belief, 149–71; Philippe Descola, Beyond Nature and Culture (trans. Janet Lloyd; Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2013).

45 Plato was likely the first Greek philosopher to coin the term “incorporeality” (asōmatos). On the development of the terms “incorporeality” and “immateriality” and their Platonic roots, see Robert Renehan, “On the Greek Origins of the Concepts Incorporeality and Immateriality,” GRBS 21 (1980) 105–38.

46 See, e.g., Robert M. Berchman, From Philo to Origen: Middle Platonism in Transition (BJS 69; Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1984).

47 Of course, not all philosophical movements during this time period promulgated the idea of divine immateriality. Stoicism and Epicureanism, for example, were famously materialist schools of thought. Furthermore, it is also important to note that some New Testament texts, such as those that call God “invisible,” lend themselves to Platonic interpretations and arguably evince Platonic views of the divine.

48 See, e.g., Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007); Karen Barad, “Posthuman Performativity: Towards an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter,” in Material Feminisms (ed. Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman; Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008) 120–54.

49 Of course, there is scholarship before the material turn that also recognizes the importance of bodies and materiality. Such a recognition by no means begins with the 21st cent. nor is it foreign to the world of religion and theology. The body has always been crucial within both Judaism and Christianity, as well as Islam, even if the body as such has remained relatively uninterrogated as a site of critical theological inquiry until more recently. All the same, new materialist approaches exemplify a number of shared concerns that distinguish them from earlier approaches to the body, as the remainder of the section will make clear.

50 Markschies, God’s Body.

51 For influential works on process theology and pantheism in the late 20th and early-21st cents., see, e.g., John B. Cobb Jr. and David Ray Griffin, Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976); Grace M. Jantzen, God’s World, God’s Body (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984); Sallie McFague, The Body of God: An Ecological Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1993); Catherine Keller, Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming (London: Routledge, 2003). For the other Jewish and Christian theologians listed above, see, e.g., Michael Wyschogrod, The Body of Faith: Judaism as Corporeal Election (New York: Seabury, 1983); Yochanan Muffs, The Personhood of God: Biblical Theology, Human Faith and the Divine Image (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2005); Jürgen Moltmann, God in Creation: An Ecological Doctrine of Creation: The Gifford Lectures, 1984–1985 (trans. Margaret Kohl; London: SCM Press, 1985); Robert W. Jenson, The Triune God, vol. 1 of Systematic Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Webb, Jesus Christ, Eternal God. See also Webb’s discussion of Jenson and Karl Barth (Jesus Christ, Eternal God, 97–101, 138–39, 209–42, 287–92), as well as his discussion of God’s body in Mormon theology (or the theology of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) (Jesus Christ, Eternal God, 243–70). Note, though, that some of these thinkers (such as Barth and Wyschogrod) do not go so far as to argue that God has a physical or material body, even though they talk at length about God’s embodiment and anthropomorphic character.

52 See in particular Grace M. Jantzen’s discussion in Becoming Divine: Toward a Feminist Philosophy of Religion (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999) esp. 128–55. She writes: “It is the disembodied nature of the … divine which has served as the linchpin of the western masculinist symbolic” (Becoming Divine, 269). On this point, see also Mayra Rivera, Poetics of the Flesh (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015) esp. 6; Mary-Jane Rubenstein, “The Matter with Pantheism: On Shepherds and Goat-Gods and Mountains and Monsters,” in Entangled Worlds: Religion, Science, and New Materialisms (ed. Catherine Keller and Mary-Jane Rubenstein; New York: Fordham University Press, 2017) 157–81, esp. 161.

53 While the examples are countless, see the following helpful discussions of this interpretative trend: Sommer, Bodies of God, 4–10; Halton, A Human-Shaped God, esp. 28–34, 115–20, 143–53.

54 This delayed engagement with new materialism is especially the case within New Testament studies, although there are some exceptions. Stephen Moore, for example, is in the vanguard as usual. See, e.g., Gospel Jesuses and Other Nonhumans: Biblical Criticism Post-poststructuralism (ed. Stephen D. Moore; SemeiaSt 89; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2017); Divinanimality: Animal Theory, Creaturely Theology (ed. Stephen D. Moore and Laurel Kearns; New York: Fordham University Press, 2014). See also George Aichele, Tales of Posthumanity: The Bible and Contemporary Popular Culture (MBW 65; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2014); Jennifer L. Koosed, The Bible and Posthumanism (SemeiaSt 74; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2014); Maia Kotrosits, How Things Feel: Biblical Studies, Affect Theory, and the (Im)personal (Leiden: Brill, 2016); Reading with Feeling: Affect Theory and the Bible (ed. Fiona C. Black and Jennifer L. Koosed; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2019); Maia Kotrosits, Lives of Objects: Material Culture, Experience, and the Real in the History of Early Christianity (Class 200; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020); M. David Litwa, Posthuman Transformation in Ancient Mediterranean Thought: Becoming Angels and Demons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021); Anne Elvey, Reading with Earth: Contributions of the New Materialism to an Ecological Feminist Hermeneutics (Explorations in Theology, Gender, and Ecology; London: T&T Clark, 2022); Dong Hyeon Jeong, Embracing the Nonhuman in the Gospel of Mark (SemeiaSt 102; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2023). For a recent engagement with the material turn in literature more broadly, see, e.g., How Literature Comes to Matter: Post-Anthropocentric Approaches to Fiction (ed. Sten Pultz Moslund, Marlene Karlsson Marcussen, and Martin Karlsson Pedersen; New Materialisms; Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021).

55 For an engagement with these materialist impulses, see in particular Halton’s book, A Human-Shaped God.

56 See, e.g., Vásquez, More than Belief, esp. 123–71.

57 Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009). See also, e.g., Vicki Kirby, Quantum Anthropologies: Life at Large (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011).

58 Note, however, that some distinguish between posthumanism and the nonhuman turn, arguing that posthumanism implies a teleological progression from the human to the posthuman (or an entity that is “beyond” human), whereas the nonhuman turn insists that the human has always overlapped with the nonhuman. For an overview of posthumanism, see Cary Wolfe, What is Posthumanism? (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2010). For an overview of the nonhuman turn, see Richard Grusin, “Introduction,” in The Nonhuman Turn (ed. Richard Grusin; Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2015) i–x; Jon Roffe and Hannah Stark, “Introduction: Deleuze and the Non/Human,” in Deleuze and the Non/Human (ed. Jon Roffe and Hannah Stark; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) 1–16.

59 See Moore, Gospel Jesuses, 3–9.

60 On the connection between ecocriticism and the material turn, see Dana Phillips and Heather I. Sullivan, eds., Material Ecocriticism, Spec. issue of ISLE 19 (2012); Material Ecocriticism (ed. Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014); Elemental Ecocriticism: Thinking with Earth, Air, Water, and Fire (ed. Jeffrey Cohen and Lowell Duckert; Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2015); Elvey, Reading with Earth.

61 Grusin, “Introduction,” ix–x; Moore, Gospel Jesuses, 5.

62 Affect theory analyzes the relationship between emotions, cognition, perceptions, sensations, “pre-cognitive” bodily responses, and the molecular flows of matter and force. For key works in affect theory, see esp. Brian Massumi, “The Autonomy of Affect,” Cultural Critique 31 (1995) 83–109; idem, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002); Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003); The Affect Theory Reader (ed. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth; Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010). For why affect theory should be associated with the wider nonhuman turn, see Grusin, “Introduction,” i–x, esp. xvi–xviii; Moore, Gospel Jesuses, 5–7.

63 On the distribution of agency throughout networks, or actor-network theory, see in particular Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). See also Material Agency: Towards a Non-Anthropocentric Approach (ed. Carl Knappett and Lambros Malafouris; Berlin: Springer, 2008), especially Tim Ingold’s contribution on 209–15: “When ANT Meets SPIDER: Social Theory for Anthropods” (repr. in Tim Ingold, Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description [London: Routledge, 2011] 89–94).

64 In this respect, the doctrine of creation ex nihilo distinguishes between God and materiality even more so than a Platonist would, for Platonists held that matter was eternal. Middle Platonists, like the Greek writer Plutarch, largely based their notion of matter’s eternality on their reading of Plato’s Timaeus, arguing that God created the world by fashioning pre-existing cosmic elements (see, e.g., Plutarch, An procr. 1014B–C). For why scholars today widely recognize that the classic scriptural prooftexts for creation ex nihilo (2 Macc 7:28; Rom 4:17; Heb 11:3) are too ambiguous in their respective narrative contexts to support the position of the absolute nonexistence of matter prior to creation, see Gerhard May’s influential book, Creatio Ex Nihilo: The Doctrine of Creation Out of Nothing in Early Christian Thought (trans. A. S. Worrall; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994).

65 Because of this localized specificity, Sommer argues that biblical traditions which depict God in this manner are not like pantheism, for God is not equally present in all things and all places. Instead, these “traditions maintain that God is literally located in some objects and not others: God is here, in this rock that has been anointed, but not there, in that one” (Bodies of God, 141).

66 Ibid., 44–57. See also Putthoff (God and Humans, 142–46), Halton (A Human-Shaped God, 66–72), and McClellan (YHWH’s Divine Images, esp. 51–73, 133–46), as well as Matthew Thiessen (“ ‘The Rock Was Christ’: The Fluidity of Christ’s Body in 1 Corinthians 10.4,” JSNT 36 [2013] 103–26), who argues that Paul takes up this tradition of God’s “rock body” in 1 Corinthians 10 and interprets it christologically.

67 On this point, see Halton, A Human-Shaped God, 79–80, who in turn cites Mark I. Wallace, When God Was a Bird: Christianity, Animism, and the Re-Enchantment of the World (New York: Fordham University Press, 2019). Wallace discusses all of the biblical passages cited above on 149–52.

68 Mari Joerstad, The Hebrew Bible and Environmental Ethics: Humans, Non-Humans, and the Living Landscape (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019). Joerstad calls biblical passages that depict nonhuman nature in this manner “personalistic nature texts,” and she mainly discusses these texts in relation to the field of new animism. Nonetheless, Joerstad’s work has many points of overlap with what I am calling “new materialism.”

69 Ibid., esp. 65–66, 122–39, 145–54.

70 See, e.g., Matt 6:26–30 (// Luke 12:24–28); 17:20 (// Luke 17:6); Mark 4:41 (// Matt 8:27; Luke 8:25); 11:12–14, 20–24 (// Matt 21:18–22); Luke 19:40; 23:30; Rom 8:19–23; Rev 12:12, 16; 20:11, 13. See also Michal Beth Dinkler, “The Wild Edges of Character: Creation Care in the Gospel of Luke,” in Creation Concepts and Creation Care: Perspectives from Early Judaism, Early Christianity, and Beyond (ed. Zacharias Shoukry, Mirjam Jekel, and Ruben Zimmermann; WUNT I; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck), forthcoming.

71 Joerstad does not deny that these accounts can be metaphorical, but she stresses that they still situate nonanimal nature in personalistic terms and that the metaphors themselves point to the relationality between the human and nonhuman (Hebrew Bible and Environmental Ethics, 37–45).

72 See McClellan (YHWH’s Divine Images) for other instances of how God’s presence becomes manifest in material, nonhuman media such as the ark of the covenant and the biblical text itself.

73 Smith, Where the Gods Are, 54–68.

74 Ibid., 55, 58–68. See also Joel M. LeMon, Yahweh’s Winged Form in the Psalms: Exploring Congruent Iconography and Texts (OBO 242; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2010); Evelyne Martin, “Theriomorphismus im Alten Testament und im Alten Orient: Eine Einführung,” in Tiergestaltigkeit der Göttinnen und Götter zwischen Metapher und Symbol (ed. Evelyne Martin and Michael Herles; BibS[N] 129; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2012) 1–36.

75 Smith, Where the Gods Are, 54–57.

76 Ibid., 57.

77 See Matt 3:16; Mark 1:10; Luke 3:22; John 1:32, as well as Gos. Eb. 4. On the Spirit as a manifestation of God, especially from the exilic period onward, see Nathan MacDonald, “The Spirit of YHWH: An Overlooked Conceptualization of Divine Presence in the Persian Period,” in Divine Presence and Absence in Exilic and Post-Exilic Judaism (ed. Nathan MacDonald and Izaak J. de Hulster; FAT 2/61; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013) 95–120; Wilson, The Embodied God, 82–83, 111–12. Note that Matt 3:16 specifically refers to the Spirit as “the Spirit of God.”

78 Wallace, When God Was a Bird, 30. On how Luke specifically depicts the Spirit’s dovelike form and not dovelike movement, see Wilson, The Embodied God, 81–82.

79 On the depiction of God as a bird or one who offers protection under wings in Israel’s scriptures, see, e.g., Exod 19:4; Deut 32:11–12; Ruth 2:12; Pss 17:8; 36:7; 57:1; 61:4; 63:7; 91:4; Isa 31:5; LeMon, Yahweh’s Winged Form. See also Wallace’s discussion in When God Was a Bird, 25–31.

80 Sommer, Bodies of God, e.g., 40–44. On the development of God’s angelomorphic forms in Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity, see Charles A. Gieschen, Angelomorphic Christology: Antecedents and Early Evidence (Leiden: Brill, 1998).

81 Sommer, Bodies of God, e.g., 41–42.

82 On the difficulty, however, in always being able to discern the difference between angels and humans ontologically, see Wilson, The Embodied God, 115–20, 135–36. See also Litwa, Posthuman Transformation.

83 For both ancient and new materialist views of light and fire, see Sorabji, Matter, Space, and Motion, 98–99; Macauley, Elemental Philosophy, esp. 36–42, 69–72. Sommer’s identification of the kabod (or “Glory”) as a divine body, therefore, is not too far off, especially if one views this kabod as having a “substance” of some kind (Bodies of God, 60; cf. Bodies of God, 2; Smith, Where the Gods Are, 14, 121–22; Stavrakopoulou, God, 172–83). On the difficulty in determining whether light is a substance (particle) or an accidental quality (wave) in modern discussions of light, see Park, Fire Within the Eye, esp. 332–34.

84 See Joerstad’s discussion of Gen 1 in Hebrew Bible and Environmental Ethics, 48–58, here esp. 49.

85 Ibid., 50, here citing Michael Welker, Creation and Reality (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1999) 13.

86 Some interpreters may further want to classify the passive verbs “were opened” (ēneōchthēsan) and “were released” (anethē) in Acts 16:26 as “divine passives” and thus identify God as the (implied) subject of the release. In this case, however, I follow scholars who question the notion that agentless passives necessarily always point to God as the implied agent (e.g., Beniamin Pascut, “The So-Called Passivum Divinum in Mark’s Gospel,” NovT 54 [2012] 313–333; Peter-Ben Smit with Toon Renssen, “The passivum divinum: The Rise and Future Fall of an Imaginary Linguistic Phenomenon,” Filología Neotestamentaria 27 [2014] 3–24). Instead, agentless passives may, among other things, emphasize the action, not the actor. In the case of Acts 16:26, then, the passives may emphasize the action that occurs as the “result” (hōste) of the “great” (megas) earthquake. Regardless, it is striking that Luke forefronts the earthquake, and not God, in terms of Paul and Silas’s physical release.

87 Although one manuscript (P¹²⁷) does not frame the sentence as a result clause, it is difficult to ascertain the manuscript’s actual reading, and insofar as we can ascertain its reading, the sentence still has the foundations being shaken after the occurrence of the earthquake.

88 See Joerstad, The Hebrew Bible and Environmental Ethics, for examples from the Hebrew Bible. I thank Luke Bretherton for this example from Acts.

89 To be clear, I am arguing for a new materialist reading of biblical texts, not that a new materialist must believe in a divinely metaphysical being. At the same time, since new materialism challenges the poststructuralist binary between “textual representation” and “reality,” a new materialist would not necessarily be as adverse to engaging the metaphysical question of God’s existence (and how a text may reflect the “reality” of that existence) as a traditional biblical scholar might be.

90 See, e.g., Sommer, Bodies of God, 2, 50.

91 On Origen’s wider tendency to use allegory to argue that Scripture portrays God as incorporeal (even though Scripture never explicitly says this), see Karen Jo Torjesen, “The Enscripturation of Philosophy: The Incorporeality of God in Origen’s Exegesis,” in Biblical Interpretation: History, Context, and Reality (ed. Christine Helmer; SBLSym 26; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2005) 73–84.

92 On how the development of the doctrine of Christ’s “two natures” during the 2nd to 5th cents. also contributed to the gulf between immaterial divinity and material humanity, see Webb, Jesus Christ, Eternal God, 31–32. On this point, see also Laurel C. Schneider, Beyond Monotheism: A Theology of Multiplicity (London: Routledge, 2008) 164–81.