"does the bible ever explicitly say that God is male?" - Uncle Ken
I don't think it says that in so many words but, in the Bible, God is always spoken of with masculine pronouns. To find female deities you would have to look outside of the Judeo/Christian tradition. I am not aware of any monotheistic female Goddess, either. Anyplace you find a goddess, you will find her paired with a god. The male god is not always the dominant one of the pair, sometimes his only purpose is to impregnate the goddess so that she can bring forth life, after which he either dies or goes dormant until the following spring. In some traditions, the goddess starts out being the dominant one but is ultimately subdued by her consort.
"Well could God, the Abrahamic god, be a woman? Since He has no reproductive parts or chromosomes how do we determine His sex?"
It is not entirely clear that God does not have a material body. The Mormons believe that the Father and the Son have material bodies, and the Holy Spirit does not, but I don't think they got that from the Bible. While it's true that God usually speaks to people indirectly, speaking to Job from the whirlwind and Moses from the burning bush, it is written that Moses also spoke with God "face to face". It is also written that God physically hung out with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, but I don't remember Him doing anything like that after the Fall. Artists have occasionally depicted God as a grey bearded old man, but I don't think they got that from the Bible either.
I seem to remember that, during an internet version of bar talk, somebody once advanced the theory that the Holy Spirit was female. I don't know from whence that idea came, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't from the Bible. The Holy Spirit is often depicted as a descending dove but, while all doves may be commonly thought of as female, this is certainly not true of doves in real life. Angels are also customarily thought of as female, but any individual angels that I remember reading about in the Bible had male names.
"Well could God, the Abrahamic god, be a woman? Since He has no reproductive parts or chromosomes how do we determine His sex?"
It is not entirely clear that God does not have a material body. The Mormons believe that the Father and the Son have material bodies, and the Holy Spirit does not, but I don't think they got that from the Bible. While it's true that God usually speaks to people indirectly, speaking to Job from the whirlwind and Moses from the burning bush, it is written that Moses also spoke with God "face to face". It is also written that God physically hung out with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, but I don't remember Him doing anything like that after the Fall. Artists have occasionally depicted God as a grey bearded old man, but I don't think they got that from the Bible either.
I seem to remember that, during an internet version of bar talk, somebody once advanced the theory that the Holy Spirit was female. I don't know from whence that idea came, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't from the Bible. The Holy Spirit is often depicted as a descending dove but, while all doves may be commonly thought of as female, this is certainly not true of doves in real life. Angels are also customarily thought of as female, but any individual angels that I remember reading about in the Bible had male names.
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