Postbiblical Jewish teachers sensed no incongruity in attributing to God qualities having strong human associations; the rabbis of the Talmud and the Midrash rely on the biblical attributes by which, as they remark, God is called in place of his name. This reliance on biblical attributes should not be taken anachronistically to mean that God is only called just, compassionate, and the like, but that, in reality, his true nature cannot be known, since this kind of distinction between essence and attributes did not surface in Judaism until the more philosophically oriented Middle Ages. God is called by his attributes because he is so described in scripture, which, as God's revealed word, informs humans how God is to be thought about and addressed.

The Hebrew word middah, used by the rabbis, corresponds roughly to the word attribute and means quality or measure. The medieval distinction between...