Abstract
The God of the Hebrew Bible is, by and large, a corporeal God. Implicit in Gen. 1.26-27, moreover, is the notion that God's body resembles a human body. It is only in later midrashic and mystical texts, however—pre—eminently the Shi'ur Qomah- that speculation about Yahweh's body blooms, and Yahweh is conceived as pos sessing a massive male physique. These texts in turn can be illuminated by the liter ature of modem bodybuilding. These various intertexts, ancient and modem, are here used to fashion a critical midrash on the hypermasculinity of the biblical Yahweh.
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