βριθοσύνῃ· δεινὴν γὰρ ἄγεν θεὸν, ἄνδρα τ’ ἄριστον.
This passage may be taken as a proof, since it applies to the most spiritual of the Homeric divinities, how far the Poet was from considering that they were endowed with the properties of pure spirit.
Parts of the body, how ascribed.
Of this he has given us farther proof by his free and constant reference, wherever occasion serves, to the parts and organs of the body as appertaining to the gods.
I think that references of this kind in Holy Scripture usually bear a mark, which yields decisive witness to the fact that their use is wholly relative and analogical: as, for example, the eye of God, namely, the instrument by which He watches us, the mouth of God, by which He instructs us, the hand and the arm of God, by which He sustains, or delivers, or corrects, or crushes us. It does not therefore appear that we could justly and fully draw our conclusions as to the corporeal constitution of an Olympic deity from the mere circumstance that we are told of the knees or lap of the gods, by which it might be figuratively expressed, that the disposal of human affairs rests with them[703]; or because of that gorgeous description, which the Poet has given us, of the head and nod, meaning the decree of Jupiter. For all these allusions are capable of explanation on the same principle with those of Holy Scripture, namely, as being relative and explanatory to man.
But he has a multitude of other references to parts of the body, which do not at all belong to the use of them as organs for communication with the imperfect apprehensions of mankind. Thus:
1. Thetis takes hold of the chin of Jupiter, Il. i. 501.
2. Diomed wounds Venus on the wrist, Il. v. 336.
3. And Mars in the abdomen, Il. v. 857; whom Minerva likewise overthrows by a blow on the neck, Il. xxi. 406.
4. Hercules wounds Juno in the right breast, Il. v. 393; and we have her hair, flesh, chest, and feet, in the toilette of Il. xiv. 170–86.