(Exodus 6:3, Acts 17:21-31).
These series were inspired by the questions my Sister Wambui from Kenya asked about how God is presented in the Bible. Our position on the matter of contention of whether the God of the Old Testament is the New Testament God of love and forgiveness is affirmative. He is the same God who has been misrepresented through the limitedness (something we still suffer to-date) of their knowledge and experiences.
We do not pose as the Alpha and Omega of this discussion but install our stage of revelation as a relevant step on the ladder of what is known as ‘the progressive revelation’ of this incomprehensible God. We, therefore, affirm that the God presented in the Bible (Both OT and NT) means, intends and does otherwise from how He is perceived and presented to have done or been. The major problem we would like to address is the Biblical branding of the revelatory exercise between man and his God at the initial stages of Belief.
Anthropomorphism
What am trying to simplify in these series is an animal known as ‘Anthropomorphism’ and this animal surfaces when someone tries to present the unpresentable. Have you ever understood something and you know you know it but you cannot explain it clearly to another person? When you start invoking and presenting it through known items, display of emotions (anthropopathic) and all sorts of gymnastics then what you are doing is close to what is known as ‘Anthropomorphism’.
In teaching, it takes the form of anecdotal, parabolic (Jesus’ teaching style), analogy, etc. style, just to make sure that your audience gets a glimpse of what you really mean. You attribute human or known characteristics, emotions, and behaviours to animals or other non-human things (including objects, plants, and supernatural beings like gods/God) to what is not human and natural but to ensure that what is natural understands the supernatural and what is human understands what is spiritual.
The word Anthropomorphism is a combination of two Greek words; Anthropo= Man, and Morphe= Form. To translate Morphe as ‘Form’ however, is just an attempt on the Greek word Morphe, which has no English equivalent. In the New Testament, it can be best understood within context and its grammatical syntax. Morphe unlike “form” in English, Morphe does not mean “shape.”
It is a philosophical term that means “the outward expression of an inner essence.” For those who like football, I can derive an illustration from there: when they say that Christian Ronaldo is on form, they mean that he is both physically and mentally fit. With Morphe, however, that is not all, it also means that Christian Ronaldo is also, in essence, fit as a football player for a particular role on the field.
Anthropomorphism was birthed in the exercise between Man and God/gods known as ‘REVELATION’. Revelation is a divine initiative that capitalizes on human instinctive inquisitiveness. The Christian God, unlike other gods, is the God who created the Universe, and Genesis 1:1 simply tells us that before anything seen and seen was, God was and therefore God does not dwell in heavens for he was before the Heavens were created.
In other words, the entire Universe (all Galaxies, Planets, Heavens and space) has its dependence, foundation on God as the first cause. Genesis 1:1 communicates that God is not IN the Universe but the Universe is IN God. The explanation of this God is best captured in a prophetic discourse in Isaiah 40:12-31 (Please read). It is this God who is bigger than the universe who initiates a revelation, not something at least as big as the universe but to a speck in that universe known as a human being.
You can imagine the struggle in perception that man has to go through and that is not to count the struggle that such a God has to go through to make Himself known to this speck (human being) in the universe. For instance, when the Bible says that the man Jesus of Nazareth is the ultimate revelation of the essence of this bigger-than the Universe God (Hebrews 1:1-4, Revelation 1:1-2) it is talking about the divine act of Incarnation. Incarnation is when such a God condenses Himself into a creature to access creatures (John 1:1-3, 14).
It is when the divine takes on Human Form (Philippians 2:5-6, Hebrews 2:14). But when such a God became man, man could not perceive this in its essentiality and man preferred to address this vulnerable God in flesh as a son of God (second in command). When he died in the cross, it protected man’s conscience from the horror of the death of an immutable God and man was anthropomorphically comforted by the initial perception that it was the Son who died but not God.
Even when this God while in flesh continued to assert that he was the very immutable God (John 1:1-3,14; 8:19, 22-24, 57-58; 10:30, 33; 13:18-19; 14:7-11, 20; 17:1-5, 20-21). After this God resurrected and His Bodily ascension, he confirmed that he had not left us but still with us (John 14:1, Mathew 18:20, Acts 2; 19; 2Corinthians 13:5; Romans 8:10; Galatians 2:20; Ephesians 3:17; Colossians 1:27), however, that presence man decided to term as the Holy Spirit for man could not comprehend this new kind of presence. In essence, the trinity (a word not found in the Bible and doctrine doesn’t fit in the comprehensive Biblical theology) is anthropomorphic.
As you can see, such a God is unpresentable, unexplainable and indemonstrable, yet he has to reveal Himself to a perceptively limited man, be communicated, taught and known; the only channel that remains at man’s disposal is Anthropomorphism. While this God created man in his image, when he attempted to reveal himself to man, man created the same God in his (man) own image that is Anthropomorphism for you.
Now let us turn to other events in which God is misrepresented
The Passover
In the Exodus story YAHWEH (understood as the god of war) is a SNAKE and at the same time a SAVIOR (Numbers 21:6-9). He kills the Egyptians to save the Israelites. He stiffens Pharaoh’s heart to beat him to nuts, He destroys a nation to build a nation, and this clearly demonstrates how God is misunderstood in the initial stages of Yahwism. What happens in Egypt where our Passover event is drawn from, is a contest of the gods.
Particular gods served by the magicians of Egypt had subdued the Israelite god and held hostage the people of this god for over 400 years. This dominance of the gods of Egypt over the supposed god of Israel who gets lost in the minds of his people through these years reinvents himself and dares these Egyptian gods and the prize is the slaves. It is a fight of the gods and all-gods are fighting for slaves to serve them.
The first 9 plagues attributed to Yahweh against the Egyptians do not seem to effect any change of position to the gods of Egypt. They are not willing to let go of the Israelites slaves and therefore, the Egyptian gods are still in the lead. It is on the Tenth Plague, however, that the Egyptian pharaoh system gives up. But what was so special about the 10th Plague? It is stated that Yahweh passed a national warning of the death of all country firstborns.
And only those who followed his SOPs (like those of COVID-19) were to survive. Death and survival were under the charge of Yahweh. The question, therefore, to ask here is not whether God killed the firstborn of everything in Egypt because death was all-over in Egypt; the question is what did the firstborn stand for in Egyptian mythology? The legal and spiritual right of the family, its gods, property and people belonged to the firstborn male child in the Ancient Near East cultures.
He was the Primogeniture of the entire clan. The death of such in any family was the death not just of the entire family but the death of the gods as well since he was the host of all of them (Exodus 4:22; Psalm 88:28; 2Chronicles 21:3). The victory of Yahweh over the gods of Egypt was demonstrated in the death of their firstborns for even the Hebrews venerated the firstborns in that respect (Exodus 13:2, 11-15; 22:28-29 ;).
Later, we are told in the New Testament that Jesus Christ is the firstborn in which we are redeemed (Colossians 1:15, 17-18; Revelation 1:5) just as the 12 tribes of Israel were redeemed through the Levite tribe acknowledged as the firstborn to God (Numbers 3:11-13). The Passover event, therefore, is not communicating Yahweh killing the firstborns of Egypt but instead the idea of the firstborn in the Old Testament and the New Testament and its significance in man’s salvation.
The Passover event doesn’t communicate the killer, but who died and what that death meant. This is not a matter of drawing lessons and what preferred lesson but a business of identifying anthropomorphic literature in meaning construction.
God bless you, I invoke Truth, Wisdom and Faith
Priest M.I.T White
iTiS Well of Worship Fellowship (John 4:24)
Questioning to Believe, Believing to Live
iTiS Well of Worship Fellowship (John 4:24) 
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