Dr. Wesley Williams

Sapphiric God:

Esoteric Speculation on the Divine Body

in Post-Biblical Jewish Tradition

 

(Forthcoming in the Harvard Theological Review) 

 

A sapphiric-bodied deity, that is to say a deity (often a creator-deity) with an anthropomorphic body the color and substance of the mythologically significant semiprecious stone sapphire/lapis lazuli was a common ancient Near Eastern motif. As participant in the shared ANE mythological tradition could Israel envision her god similarly? We suggest that Israel could. By examining a number of post-biblical Jewish literatures we seek to demonstrate the existence in (at least) post-biblical Judaism(s) of a probably esoteric tradition of a sapphiric-bodied Yahweh. We also make an attempt to understand the mythological significance of a ‘sapphiric Yahweh’ in the context of the ancient Near Eastern tradition.  While a much more comprehensive study is required in order to determine whether this Jewish ‘Sapphiric God’ tradition is indeginous or the result of some later syncretism, the former seems more likely. If so, this tradition further demonstrates that the god of Israel and the gods of the ancient Near East differed less than has been traditionally supposed.  

 

 

A Body Unlike Bodies:

 

Transcendent Anthropomorphism in Ancient Semitic Tradition and Early Islam

 

(Journal of the American Oriental Society 129 [2009]: 19-44) 

 

Normative Islamic notions of God’s transcendence preclude divine corporeality and anthropomorphism. This tradition of incorporeal transcendence is in radical discontinuity with the Semitic/biblical and ancient Near Eastern tradition of transcendent anthropomorphism, according to which the deity has a body human of shape but transcendent in substance, manner of being, and effect. This profound disparity between Islamic and biblical/ancient Near Eastern articulations of divine transcendence raises questions regarding Islam’s place among the Semitic religions. This paper argues that such a tradition of transcendent anthropomorphism existed in early Islam as well, and not only on the margins. A sufficient number of Arabic sources for the 3^rd/9^th – 6^th/12^th centuries suggests that such notions were important to the Sunnism of this period, particularly traditionalist Sunnism. The detail with which these sources speculated on the divine body effectively challenges the view of scholars, such as W.M. Watt and Binyamin Abrahamov, who minimize the role played by notions of divine corporeality and anthropomorphism in the development of Islamic thought. This study argues that this tradition of transcendent anthropomorphism, which seems presupposed even in the Qur’an, places Islam squarely within the tradition of Semitic monotheism, which itself is anchored in the ancient Near Eastern mythic tradition.  

 

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“Black Muslim Theology and the Classical Islamic Tradition: Possibilities of a Rapprochement”

 

American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, 25:4 (2008): 61-89

 

Elijah Muhammad declared unapologetically that “God is a man.” This anthropomorphist doctrine does violence to modern normative Islamic articulations of Tawheed, ‘monotheism,’ which articulations involve God’s ‘otherness’ from the created world. The Nation of Islam (NOI) has thus been the target of polemics from Muslim leaders from within and without the United States declaring its irredeemable heterodoxy. But in premodern Islam heresy was in the eye of the beholder and ‘orthodoxy’ was a precarious and shifting paradigm. This paper attempts to, in the words of Zafar Ishaq Ansari, “examine how the ‘Nation of Islam’ fits into the framework of Islamic heresiology.” Given the polyphonous nature of Classical Islamic theological discourse, and given also the wide spectrum of doctrines which acquired the community’s assent at various times during the developing articulation of Sunnism, does Elijah Muhammad’s anthropomorphist doctrine have any precedents in Islam’s Classical period and if so, what does this say about the premodern boundaries of theological tolerance? How might this, or should this inform the modern discussion of the NOI’s place within or without these boundaries? And lastly how might the discovery of Classical precedents to central aspects of Black Muslim theology contribute to the enterprise of the “Third Resurrection,” Professor Sherman Jackson’s vision of a period characterized by Blackamerican Muslims’ mastery and appropriation of the Classical Sunni tradition in such a way allowing them to emerge as self-authenticating subjects rather than dependent objects of and in this tradition?  This paper will attempt to offer some answers to these questions.

 

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Aspects of the Creed of Imam Ahmad b. Hanbal: A Study of Anthropomorphism in 9^th-10^th Century Islamic Discourse

 

(International Journal of Middle East Studies, 34 [2002]: 441-463)

 

Today the religion of Islam is most distinctly characterized by the emphasis it places on the transcendence of God.  God’s otherness (mukhalafa), it is said, is presupposed in Islamic thinking from the Qur'an. A review of the history of dogmatic development in Islam reveals, however, that during the formative period divine transcendence was only one alternative among several models attempting to explain God’s unity.  Indeed, it co-existed along side its antithesis “assimilation (tashbih)” or, as we term it, anthropomorphism.  Muslim and Western scholars agree that, while the anthropomorphist model certainly existed-the various heresiographies attest to it-it existed on the margins of Islam, the extravagant fancies of a few deviant doctors. As such, anthropomorphist ideas were only marginally relevant, if at all, to Islam’s attempt at theological self-definition.   Such is at least the current scholarly consensus.  But how accurate is this reading of Islam’s theological history? Has the “main body” always rejected such notions?

Source material for the 9^th-10^th centuries argue against this conclusion.  A closer reading of the dogmatic literature, as well as a fuller elucidation of the doctrinal positions of certain popular and influential personalities suggest amendments to the usual view of theological development in Islam.  It seems that in an early period anthropomorphist conceptions enjoyed wide currency among the main body of Muslims.  The ninth century saw the beginning of the consolidation of Sunnite doctrine under the leadership of Ahmad b. Hanbal (d. 855).  An analysis of his views on these matters will therefore go a long way in advancing our understanding of early Sunni doctrine.   It will be argued that after Ahmad b. Hanbal assumed leadership of the traditionalist camp during and immediately following the Inquisition (Mihna) inaugurated by the caliph al-Ma"mun (833-850), anthropomorphism achieved ‘orthodox’ recognition.