IMAGE OF GOD (AT). Although the declaration of the creation of mankind in the image of God seems to have had less importance in the biblical tradition than it did in later theological discussion, this declaration clearly constitutes an important and positive statement about the place of mankind in the biblical order. created. Man and woman are said to have been created in the image/likeness of God in only three passages in the first chapters of Genesis (Genesis 1:26-28; 5:1-3; 9:6), all of which are assigned to the priestly source of the Pentateuch as proposed by most modern scholars. The positive nature of this description is clear from the contexts in which it occurs, but the contexts lack the kind of explicit clues that would remove ambiguity as to the exact meaning of the terms.
The etymology of the word ṣelem, “image”, is uncertain. Some have suggested that it is related to a verb ṣālam, “to cut”, which does not appear in the Hebrew Bible. Aside from the “image of God” passages, the word is used twelve times. In ten cases, the word refers to a physical representation of something (eg, golden images of mice and tumors in 1 Sam 6:5, 11; images of Baal in 2 Kings 11:18 and 2 Chronicles 23:17 ; cast images of Canaanite deities in Numbers 33:52; pagan images in Ezekiel 7:20, 16:17 and Amos 5:26; painted pictures of Babylonians in Ezekiel 23:14). Ṣelem has an abstract meaning in Ps 39:7 (-Eng 39:6), where it refers to the insubstantial nature of human life, and in Ps 73:20, where it refers to a dream image that a person retains upon awakening . Westermann (Genesis 1-11 BKAT, 146) is perhaps correct in suggesting that the basic meaning of ṣelem is -representation-, a meaning broad enough to include both the concrete and abstract aspects of the word. The word’s Akkadian cognate (ṣalmu) is the common Akkadian word for statue/image, and also includes an abstract aspect. The Aramaic cognate of ṣelem is a common word for image, and the word is used in the Aramaic portions of Daniel for the images/statues described in chapters 2 and 3. The word is also used for the attitude of the king (literally, – the appearance of his face -) Towards those who refused to bow down to the image he dedicated to them.
The second word used in these passages is dĕmût, an abstract noun from the verb dāmâ, meaning “to be like”. It is generally argued that this abstract term suggests an approximation and weakens or blurs the meaning of the earlier word ṣelem (Bird 1981: 139, n. 23), and this seems to be the effect of the term in Ezekiel’s visions (eg. , 1: 5, 26; 8: 1; 10: 1). The similarity indicated by dĕmût is not necessarily physical, as is apparent from its use in Isa 13:4 to describe “the sound of a tumult in the mountains like (dĕmût) many people”. Dĕmût clearly refers to a physical likeness in 2 Kings 16:10, where Ahaz sent a likeness (dĕmût) and a model of an altar from Damascus to Jerusalem so that he could have a similar altar built for the temple. In 2 Chronicles 4:3, the figures of oxen that held up the molten sea in front of the temple are called dĕmût bĕqārı̂m, “figures/images of oxen”. The Aramaic cognate of the word dĕmût is similarly used in a bilingual inscription on a statue from Tell Fekheriye (Millard and Bordreuil 1982:137-38), in which the Akkadian word ṣalmu, -image/statue-, is translated into Aramaic as ṣalma in lines 12 and 16 and as dĕmûta in lines 1 and 15. Thus, while the term dĕmût indicates that the human being is in some sense “like God”, the word seems to be virtually a synonym for the word ṣelem.
Genesis 1:26 presents the account of the creation of mankind with God’s declaration: -Let us make man in our image ( bĕṣalmēnû ) after our likeness ( kidmûtēnû ). -Gen 5:1 speaks of the creation of mankind- in the likeness of God -( bidmût ˒ĕlōhı̂m ), and this suggests that the prepositions used with the nouns – image and likeness – are interchangeable in meaning. Some have suggested that the preposition b is used as bet essentiae and that it indicates identity. Therefore, the meaning is that man and woman were not created -after- the image of God, but rather -as- the image of God. Many have denied that the preposition k ever has this meaning, although certain considerations suggest that this may be the meaning intended by the biblical author.
It is clear that a certain ambiguity is associated with the meaning of the terms -image and likeness of God- in these passages of Genesis. It is difficult to know whether the author of the material used expressions from the tradition that his audience would immediately understand in their cultural context, but which we, in a very different cultural setting, lack the contextual clues to accurately understand, or whether the author presented deliberately these ideas in a somewhat ambiguous way.
Because of this ambiguity, interpreters have had to look for clues in the context of these passages that could be decisive in determining the exact meaning of these descriptions of humanity. Unfortunately, commentators have been unable to agree on what the decisive clues are, and the interpretation of the image of God has often reflected the Zeitgeist and followed any current emphasis in psychology, philosophy, sociology, or theology.
The contexts in which the image/likeness of God occurs provide certain clear indications as to the meaning of these statements about humanity on which virtually all commentators agree.
The creation account in Genesis follows a clearly established literary pattern whose general outlines are quite evident. Each creative act begins with an announcement (“and God said”), followed by a command (“let it be…”), a report (“and it was so”), an evaluation (“God saw that it was good”), and time frame (“el nel dia -“). The account of the creation of mankind follows this general pattern, but also departs from the other accounts in significant ways: it is introduced with the words, “Let us make man,” and this This rather startling statement, whatever its exact meaning, immediately draws attention to the creation of mankind, presumably the climax of God’s creative activity. the other creative acts, the triple repetition (in 1:27) of the word bārā˒, “Create” (a word reserved in the Hebrew Bible for God’s creative activity), the fact that mankind is given dominion about the rest of the creation, and the “very good” evaluation that follows the creation of man and woman make it clear that humanity is the climax of God’s creative activity. It is said that only man and woman were created in the image of God (or like), and this seems to explain the pre-eminent position of humanity in the created order. The image of God distinguishes man and woman from everything else that God made.
This point is also affirmed in Genesis 9:6, which is part of the blessing given to Noah after the flood. Contrary to God’s instruction in 1:29-30, the human being is given permission to kill animals for food. In addition to certain restrictions on how the meat would be consumed, it is specified that only animals may be killed. The life of another human being is not to be taken because “in the image of God (bĕṣelem ˒ĕlōhı̂m) He made man”. Thus, the image of God in man and woman gives dignity and value to all people; distinguishes humanity from everything else that God made.
Genesis 5:1-2 makes it clear that both male and female are included under the designation ˒adam who was created in the image of God. Genesis 5:3 reports that Adam begat a son “in his likeness, after his image,” and the verse employs the same nouns used in Genesis 1:26-27, although the order of the nouns and prepositions used used with each are reversed compared to Gen 1:26. This suggests that the way a son resembles his father is in some sense analogous to the way the human is like God. Since this passage has pointed out that both male and female are in the image of God, it seems clear that the similarity, while not excluding the physical in the broadest sense, focuses on capacities such as personality, self-determination, and rational thought. . It is likely that it is the whole person that is in the image of God rather than some specific aspect of that person to the exclusion of others. and this focus on the human being as a whole is consistent with the way humanity is viewed throughout the Hebrew Bible. Even more fundamental than the resemblance between Adam and his son was the relationship between them, and some have suggested that the image of God implies that the human being was created with the ability to relate to God. It is also possible that the point of this analogy is that the son is the image of his father because he functions as his father and on behalf of his father.
Aside from the question of what information the various sources underlying the present biblical text may have known, the image of God passages, in their current canonical context, make it clear that humanity, even after the Fall, remains the image of God. .
The fact that man and woman were created in (or as) the image of God is clearly a positive statement affirming humanity’s pre-eminence over everything else that God created. In view of the strong condemnation of idolatry and the absolute prohibition of images in the Bible, this positive use of ṣelem is most unexpected, and although this word is not used in legislation that specifically condemns the use of images, it is almost certainly the same negative connotations are associated with the word. It seems that there is nothing in the biblical understanding of images that gives content to the meaning of the image of God beyond what the context of the passages suggests, and it seems that the basis for any further understanding of the image of God will have to it is outside the biblical material. This even raises the possibility that this is an idea that Israel borrowed from another culture.
Images were used in both Mesopotamia and Egypt, and the literature of those countries provides a basis for determining how images were understood by those people. Egyptian texts make it clear that the images were not intended to represent what a god was like, but rather represented attempts to describe certain qualities or attributes of the deity. However, the main purpose of the image was not to describe the god; rather, the image was one of the main places where the god…