Jennie Grillo, Caitlin Joy Hubler
5 min
This study investigates how the Hebrew Bible conceptualizes the relationship between humanity and the divine, specifically looking for early patterns of thought that anticipate later theological concepts of deification or theosis. Because Biblical Hebrew lacks a technical vocabulary for deification, the authors analyze how biblical writers used existing categories—such as the image of God, kingship ideology, and the presence of God in Israel—to describe human participation in divine reality. The authors test the traditional scholarly view, championed by Yehezkel Kaufmann, that the Bible maintains an absolute, unbridgeable gap between God and humanity.
The authors identify several ways in which the biblical text suggests a porous boundary between the human and the divine:
This research bridges the gap between Old Testament studies and historical theology. By demonstrating that the seeds of deification are present within the Hebrew Bible’s own categories, the authors challenge the notion that theosis is a purely Hellenistic or later Christian innovation. It highlights that the biblical writers were already grappling with the sophisticated, often paradoxical, question of how the human can relate to, represent, and participate in the life of the Creator.
Abstract Biblical Hebrew has no terms for deification or theosis: instead, this chapter investigates the biblical writers’ own categories of language and thought where they offer suggestive comparisons for the later terminology. First among these categories is humanity described as made in the image of God. This is examined against the related phenomena of cult statuary and anthropomorphic theophany. Next, biblical kingship ideology is considered against the Ancient Near Eastern background of divine kingship: while stopping short of asserting the divinity of the king as God’s son, the Old Testament preserves around its kings the aura of godlikeness from their Egyptian and Canaanite predecessors. Finally, Israel is examined as the locus of God’s personal presence on Earth; and Moses and Jacob are considered as individual examples of something like deification.
Sam: So the gap isn't a wall — it's more like a threshold that humans approach but don't cross.
Alex: That's a good way to put it. And the paper identifies the concept of "flesh" as the mechanism that maintains that threshold. In biblical Hebrew, "flesh" isn't just a word for the body — it's a category that marks out everything that is mortal, limited, and dependent. God is eternal; flesh is not. So even when a figure like Moses radiates divine light, the text reminds the reader that he is still flesh — still bound by physical limits and death.
Sam: So "flesh" is the built-in counterweight. It keeps the human from being mistaken for the eternal God, even when they're acting with divine authority.
Alex: Exactly. The authors describe it as a productive tension — between the high calling of bearing God's image and the humbling reality of being mortal. That tension isn't a problem the Bible is trying to solve. It's actually the point.
Sam: What happens when someone tries to dissolve that tension — when they reach for the divine side and ignore the mortal side?
Alex: The paper points to the Tower of Babel as the clearest example. The people there aren't just building a tall structure — they're attempting to close the gap on their own terms, to seize divine status rather than receive it. And the story presents that as a fundamental error. The distinction between creator and creature isn't an obstacle to be overcome; it's the structure within which human dignity actually makes sense.
Sam: So the "image" is something to be held and exercised, not a ladder to climb.
Alex: That's the paper's central insight. The biblical writers weren't describing a universe where God and humans are separated by an impenetrable wall. They were describing a relationship — one where humans are genuinely elevated, genuinely entrusted with divine authority, but always as representatives rather than rivals. The gap is real, but it's also the space where something meaningful happens.
Sam: It reframes a lot of how people read these texts. Instead of a story about human limitation, it becomes a story about human vocation.
Alex: And that distinction matters, because it changes what the stories are actually asking of the reader. Not just humility in the face of the divine, but responsibility — the responsibility of being the place where the divine meets the world. Thanks for listening to ResearchPod.