The Shi’ur Qomah (Hebrew: שיעור קומה) or Dimensions of the Body is a midrashic text that is part of the hekhalot literature.
It purports to record, in anthropomorphic terms, the secret names and precise measurements of God's corporeal limbs and parts.
[3] Maimonides also believed that the text was so heretical and contrary to proper Jewish belief that it should be burned.
[4][5] Saadia Gaon also expressed doubts about the origin of the text, and stated that “since it is not found in either Mishna or Talmud, and since we have no way of establishing whether or not it represents the words of Rabbi Ishmael; perhaps someone else pretended to speak in his name.” [6] Nonetheless, in the case that the text were somehow proven to be genuine, Saadia wrote that it would have to be understood in line with his “theory of 'created glory,'" which explains the prophetic theophanies as visions not of God Himself but of a luminous [created] substance.”[7] Moses Narboni also wrote a philosophic work about the text entitled Iggeret ʿal-Shiʿur Qomah (אגרת על שיעור קומה "Epistle on Shi’ur Qomah"), wherein he dismisses the blatant anthropomorphisms of Shi'ur Qomah as speaking strictly metaphorically.
Rabbi Narboni’s work in the Iggeret is a “meditation on God, Measure of all existing things.