View source for Question: How would a statement that "God is a spirit" be interpreted in ancient Judasism?

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==Question: How would a statement that "God is a spirit" be interpreted in ancient Judaism?==
===The statement that "God is a spirit" does not mean that he has no body - it means that he is the source of life-giving power and energy===
Christopher Stead of the Cambridge Divinity School (another non-Mormon scholar) explains how a statement that God is spirit would have been interpreted within ancient Judaism:

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By saying that God is spiritual, we do not mean that he has no body … but rather that he is the source of a mysterious life-giving power and energy that animates the human body, and himself possesses this energy in the fullest measure. <ref>Christopher Stead, ''Philosophy in Christian Antiquity'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 98.</ref>
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It may be that Joseph Smith, by revelation, had something like this in mind when he wrote that the Father is "a personage of spirit."
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[[de:Frage: Wie wäre eine Aussage, dass "Gott ein Geist ist" im alten Judentum interpretiert werden?]]
[[pt:Pergunta: Como é que uma declaração de que "Deus é Espírito" ser interpretada no judaísmo antigo?]]
[[es:Pregunta: ¿Cómo se interpretaría una declaración de que "Dios es un espíritu" en el antiguo judaísmo?]]
[[Category:Questions]]