God’s Body

Judaism and Christianity are often contrasted as an opposition between “ritualistic” and “nonritualistic” systems. Howard Eilberg-Schwartz (The Savage in Judaism, 140) argues that this is a mistake. The real difference is a difference of “root metaphor.”

This is partly a difference between the pastoral/agricultural setting of Israel’s imaginative universe and the urban setting of early Christianity (139). More deeply, it is a difference between animal and human metaphor: Since Christians believe God has a human body, “social relations can be expressed directly in theological propositions” (139).

As Israel’s practices reflected their root husbandry metaphors, so Christianity’s rituals reflect the root metaphor of the body of Christ: “By drinking the cup of wine and eating the bread, one consumed Christ’s blood and flesh and literally became a member of Christ’s body” (139). Israel’s signs get reinterpreted. In a nice contrast, Eilberg-Schwartz notes that “In Israelite religion, the sacrifice of an animal was a substitute for the death of humans, while in early Christianity, the crucifixion of Christ was a substitute for sacrificing animals” (140). The New Testament is precisely correct that the cross was the foundation of a new system and a stumbling block for Jews: “Israelite thought rejected the notion of God having a fully conceptualized or functioning body. This was the metaphor upon which early Christianity was founded” (140).

This leads him into a suggestion about the nature of religious change in general: “If the displacement of one root metaphor by another plays such a crucial role in creating a new community, it is evident why the transition from one religious system to the next is so often obscure. The next system is not created until the new metaphor has taken hold. But it does not take root until it has established itself in practice and crowded out practices founded on other metaphors. By that time . . . everything has changed and people are already living in a different world” (140).