Identity Theft (3)

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky . . .”  Genesis 1:26 NASB

Image – Culture determines the meaning of the word.  That’s the message in the bottle.  We learned that even theological dictionaries import alien categories of meaning into the text if they do not answer the question, “What would this mean to the audience that first heard it?”  In this crucial text, we need to know what “image” would mean to the ancient near-Eastern, ex-slave, Hebrew audience at Sinai.  These people came out of Egypt, out of an Egyptian worldview that influenced their Hebraic teaching (an obvious conclusion from the fact that they could not accommodate to God’s cultural mandates in 40 years), so we must turn to Egypt to grasp what “image” means.  Whatever it means, the meaning must come from the socio-politico-culture environment of the people who heard it.

John Walton’s book[1] provides insight into the meaning of the word in this culture.  First we must shift from universalized language to tribal consciousness.  Mythology of the ancient near-East supplies the community with its identity.  This tribal storehouse of shared memories gives members of the community common ancestry and common patterns of behavior.  These memories tell me who I am and what I must do.  In other words, they define what it means to be in the tribe.  They define responsibility, community and conscience through connection with the ancestors of the tribe, and ultimately with the deity or deities who formed the tribe.  Most importantly, ancient near-Eastern tribal stories focus attention on the purpose of the formation of tribal men and on the roles that tribal men play in the world.  Walton points out that most ancient near-Eastern creation accounts include some physical element of deity in the formation of human beings (e.g. blood, tears, semen).  But not the Hebrew account.  Dust of the ground shares no properties with God.  Furthermore, it has no moldable form in itself.  In Hebrew thought, Man does not originate from any substance that has prior purposeful connections.  It is God’s effort and God’s intention that originates the purpose of Man.  It is His purpose that governs the design of Man.

The word tselem would be recognized by the community at Sinai as a word describing an idol, a representation of a god.  Coming out of Egypt, the community had ample experience with Egyptian idols.  The crucial point is that the idol is not the god; it is merely an icon of the god.  Nevertheless, it retains all the power of the god so that in pagan thought it is appropriate to worship the idol as if it were the god.  Of course, the God of Israel demonstrated in word and deed that all other gods represented by idols were in fact not gods at all.  But the concept of representation still adheres to the word tselem.  This means that when the audience heard the story of God’s formation of Man, there was an immediate connection between the power of God and the representation of that power in the image of God in Man.  Man is the “idol” representation of God.  We must understand the “image of God” as a description of the role and action of God (His power), not as a summary of enduring attributes, as the Greek view would suggest.  In tribal language, a Man is a man when he acts as the representative of God’s power.  To be in God’s image is to act like God acts.

There are significant implications for this understanding of tselem.  First, to be formed as human beings does not mean to be biological entities called homo sapiens.  Just as an adult male can still be a “boy” if he remains unmarried, the definition of tselem describes what it means to be human within the culture.  In the Hebrew culture, what it means to be human is to act as the representative of the power of God.  This means that even if there are other creatures who appear human in biological form, they are not “human” in the tribal sense if they do not represent the power of God in their actions.  Since God’s power is displayed in bringing order to chaos, creating, perfecting, discriminating, organizing and nourishing life, behaviors that do not model these godly actions would be considered signs of non-human beings.

If you were standing at the foot of the mountain, if you had come from the polytheism of Egypt, if your God had just demonstrated His absolute sovereignty over all other supposed deities, how would you understand a story that describes the purpose of your existence?  Wouldn’t you recognize that your purpose is directly tied to God’s purpose, that you are not free to do whatever you wish and remain “in His image”?  Perhaps our tendency to read the Genesis account as a universal description of the creation of all biological “human” life is really the result of a paradigm; a paradigm that comes to us from the Greek idea of a common essence of humanity.  Perhaps Genesis is a story about the origins and purposes of the tribe of Abraham, and only the tribe of Abraham – and we are invited to join that tribe and share in its story.

What do you think?

Topical Index: tselem, image, tribe, Genesis 1:26, Man