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Overview
In this strikingly original work, Stephen Moore considers God's male bodies--the body of Yahweh in the Hebrew Bible, and the Father of Jesus Christ, and Jesus himself in the New Testament--and our obsessive earthly quest for a perfect human form. God's Gym is about divinity, physical pain, and the visions of male perfectability.Weaving together his obsession with human anatomy and dissection, an interest in the technologies of torture, the cult of physical culture, and an expert knowledge of biblical criticism, Moore explains the male narcissism at the heart of the biblical God. God's Gym is an intensely personal book, brimming with our culture's phobias and fascinations about male perfectability.
Synopsis
In this strikingly original work, Stephen Moore considers God's male bodies--the body of Yahweh in the Hebrew Bible, and the Father of Jesus Christ, and Jesus himself in the New Testament--and our obsessive earthly quest for a perfect human form. God's Gym is about divinity, physical pain, and the visions of male perfectability.
Weaving together his obsession with human anatomy and dissection, an interest in the technologies of torture, the cult of physical culture, and an expert knowledge of biblical criticism, Moore explains the male narcissism at the heart of the biblical God. God's Gym is an intensely personal book, brimming with our culture's phobias and fascinations about male perfectability.
Society of Biblical Literature \ \ \ - Dale B. Martin
Stephen Moore may well be the most brilliant NT scholar publishing today. He is certainly one of the most creative and exciting. And God's Gym is his best book so far.....This little book brims with fascinating readings, packaged in exquisite prose, and informed by sophisticated literary theory and cultural studies.....God's Gym insists that we recognize the violent hypermasculinity of much of the biblical narrative....It is in that challenge that Moore's remarkably playful book is deadly serious.
Editorials
Dale B. Martin
Stephen Moore may well be the most brilliant NT scholar publishing today. He is certainly one of the most creative and exciting. And God's Gym is his best book so far.....This little book brims with fascinating readings, packaged in exquisite prose, and informed by sophisticated literary theory and cultural studies.....God's Gym insists that we recognize the violent hypermasculinity of much of the biblical narrative....It is in that challenge that Moore's remarkably playful book is deadly serious.— Society of Biblical Literature \ \ \
Library Journal
Moore (Poststructrualism and the New Testament, Fortress, 1995) explores torture, dissection, and male physique. Unlike Howard Eilberg-Schwartz in God's Phallus (LJ 8/94), which focused on the known and unknown features of God, Moore states, "You too can have a body like his, if only you are willing to pay the price." Moore begins by graphically examining torture and the transformation torture can produce. "Dissection," his second essay, looks at the anatomy of the Fourth Gospel and an autopsy of Jesus Christ, i.e., Bible study. The last essay looks at Jesus' bodybuilding career and his workout routine. What ties these essays together are the subjection and control found in the Bible. A scholarly work for larger collections.L. Kriz, West Des Moines Lib., Ia.Dale B. Martin
Stephen Moore may well be the most brilliant NT scholar publishing today. He is certainly one of the most creative and exciting. And God's Gym is his best book so far.....This little book brims with fascinating readings, packaged in exquisite prose, and informed by sophisticated literary theory and cultural studies.....God's Gym insists that we recognize the violent hypermasculinity of much of the biblical narrative....It is in that challenge that Moore's remarkably playful book is deadly serious.— Society of Biblical Literature