Guidance for teachers

Challenge rating

Medium

Video overview

Daniel Weiss discusses the ways in which the Hebrew Bible describes God, focussing on assumptions that God is male.

Curriculum links

Relevant to locally agreed syllabuses for religious education and some GCSE/ A level exam boards.

Suggested questions and activities

• What are the implications for how people live if we are ‘made in God’s image’?

• Genesis 1:27 is clear that human beings are made in the image of God, and yet there are no verses in the Hebrew Bible that say that God’s body has a gender. How does that influence how we might think about God?

• Why might there be no mention of gender in any of the descriptions of God’s body in the Bible?

• Christian works of art often influence our understanding of God. How do pictures like Michaelangelo’s Sistine Chapel painting or this William Blake print, found in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, affect our understanding of gender roles in the Bible? Does it matter that they differ from the actual text in the Bible?

• Students could work together to consider the explanations for why the Hebrew Bible describes God in the ways discussed in the video. Why do some explanations sound less persuasive and others more persuasive?