How about in the Garden?
Genesis 3:8
“Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?””
Do you think God walked physically in the Garden?
Do you think an omniscient being like God would have a hard time finding a couple people in the Garden?
How about Deuteronomy 4:34?
“Has any god ever tried to take for himself one nation out of another nation, by testings, by signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, or by great and awesome deeds, like all the things the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?”
Do you ever imagine God with a giant arm reaching down from low Earth orbit to save Jews in war?
How about Genesis 8:21?
“The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.”
I have to wonder what God’s nose looks like? I bet it’s a pretty big thing that floated over the Earth.
Now here’s the kicker in Numbers 23:19!
“God is not a man, so he does not lie. He is not human, so he does not change his mind. Has he ever spoken and failed to act? Has he ever promised and not carried it through?”
So we have what appear to be acts of God exerting physicality even though in the five books of Moses that it says He is non-corporeal. He lives in a realm beyond space and time that we can not really comprehend that when view by people like Isaiah can not even begin to explain that world in way we can really understand.
Will Jews ever deviate away from the teaching going all the way back to Moses that God isn’t physical? Where did Moses get all that light that shown from his face that scared his fellow Jews? Was it from a place in this universe or in a place that is beyond the physical?
Maybe the Torah has some mistakes in it? Maybe God decided to rewrite his “infallible” Word because it needed an upgrade to version 2.0 (aka the New Testament) because He didn’t quite get it right the first time and also to fit the times since man had evolved since the time the Torah was written.
Maybe the Koran was another upgrade and then finally the Book of Mormon as the final upgrade. Don’t you think man desires to create God the way he wants Him instead of the way He is and always will be?
Methinks you may have a hard time
allowing
ALMIGHTY GOD
TO BE ALMIGHTY GOD
and to
DO ALMIGHTY GOD
HOWEVER HE SEES FIT
including
AS AN OBSERVABLE, TANGIBLE PERSONAGE.
I have no need to explain away The Scriptures as they are written.
Some passages SEEM metaphorical. Some less so. And some not at all.
I doubt the finite can specify with much accuracy God’s perspective on any of that, much less all of it.
Perhaps Alamo-Girl or Betty Boop et al will give some of their anointed wisdom to the conjectures and pontifications.
Maybe the Koran was another upgrade and then finally the Book of Mormon as the final upgrade. Don’t you think man desires to create God the way he wants Him instead of the way He is and always will be?
So, you want to denigrate Jews and Christians and say that Muhammadism and Mormonism is an "upgrade"?
So, so you favor polygamy (hence the "upgrade" status you apply to Muhammadism and Mormonism)? What is your view of Heaven, do you think (as the Muhammadens do) that it's basically a brothel with an open bar?
I think you are assuming that something which is not itself physical cannot have a physical effect. There are some decent arguments that the “first cause” can not be physical.
I'm having a tough time following you because I see so many implications of some of your statements but I can't pick out which ones YOU mean to imply.
We Catholics don't think of the New Testament as an improvement over the Old Testament any more than we think the front wheel of a bicycle is an improvement over the rear wheel. (All responses suggesting the children of Israel went around on unicycles will be laughed at.)
It is a further revelation.
One of the things one has to wrestle with, I think, is the problem of talking about God. You can't say he's just without sooner or later having to say he's merciful. And then you have to come up with an explanation which allows mercy to be consistent with justice, when, certainly at first thought, mercy seems to contradict justice.
Certainly, for those who believe in a literal Eden, it's no great stretch to think that God "put on" human appearance, complete with the sound of footfalls, when he interacted with Adam and Eve. And, as certainly, he knows that roasting beef (or mutton) can smell good. The manner of his perception is not as important as the fact of it. But "smell" is the name we usually use for the perception of odor. So why not? Hebrew is not a philosophical language. No language is without work, which is why there are philosophical jargons.
When I used to play hide-and-seek with my daughter, I knew perfectly well where she was, as I also did on the rare occasions when she was in trouble. But even I, who am evil, know to give a miscreant child as many opportunities to do the right thing as possible. So I could see God knowing perfectly well where Adam and Eve were hiding and still asking them to reveal where they were.
I guess if I HAVE a point it's that these suggestions of the inadequacy of the Old Testament seem to me to be really more about the inadequacy of some ways of reading the Old Testament. So, and I don't mean to be offensive or that this was your intent, but to me they seem rather like straw men.