Chapter 1
In the image of God: Being human in the biblical tradition
Nicholas Taylor
The canon of Christian scripture opens with the creation narrative in Genesis and closes with the vision of the new creation in Revelation. Between these biblical bookends are to be found a diversity of texts which express human responses to the experience of God and the world, to collective and to a much lesser extent individual life on earth. It would not be possible within the parameters of this chapter to treat all relevant texts in any detail, or to reconstruct at all comprehensively the development and coalescence of diverse traditions through the Hebrew scriptures and their reinterpretation in the Christian New Testament. Rather, attention will focus on what is arguably the most significant theme found both in the literature of ancient Israel and in that of the apostolic Church, that of humanity as created in God’s image, with some reflections offered on ways in which the traditions in Hebrew scripture have been reinterpreted in the light of Christian experience.
The human being will be viewed as an integral person, and not divided into corporeal and non-corporeal components. Any attempt to distinguish between supposedly physical and non-physical aspects of the person would be anachronistic. The human being, rather, must be understood as an integral living organism, variously understood in different cultural contexts to be able to transcend the limitations of terrestrial life through a spiritual force of divine origin.
Humanity in creation
It has, since the beginnings of critical study of the Old Testament, been recognized that the opening chapters of Genesis include two distinct creation narratives: that of the creation of the world out of primordial chaos in six days, traditionally ascribed to the post-exilic priestly source P, connected or in continuity with the reforming or reactionary movement associated with Ezra (Genesis 1:1–2:3); and the account of the creation of Adam and Eve, and the planting of the Garden of Eden, followed by the story commonly known as the “Fall”, attributed to the Yahwist or J tradition associated with the Davidic court (2:4–3:24). It is also recognized that both myths draw upon much more ancient traditions common to ancient Near Eastern polytheism, and in particular the Mesopotamian creation myths, attested in some diversity of surviving texts found over a broad geographical area and dating from a period of well over a millennium. In both Genesis accounts, however, conflict and intrigue in the pantheon are replaced by the word and action of a single creator God, whose polytheistic antecedents are, in the P myth, reflected in the plural form ’elohim (literally “gods”, rendered “God” in English translations) and in the hortatory form, “Let us . . . ” of the eighth creative word whereby humanity is brought into existence (Genesis 1:26–27; cf. Job 38:4–7).
While both creation stories have more ancient precursors in ancient Near Eastern mythology, the J account, in which the Garden of Eden represents the climax in God’s ordering of the world, is widely believed to have become established in Hebrew tradition at an earlier date. Though lacking the schematization of creation over six days that has become beloved of post-Darwinian fundamentalists, the story is not lacking in sophistication. Man, ’adam, is created from primordial earth, and invigorated with divine breath (Genesis 2:7), and the Garden of Eden planted and provided with waterways (Genesis 2:8). God’s creative action in forming the man is analogous to that of a potter, a frequent metaphor of God’s creative power. This myth is notable for the formation of the woman from the body of the man (Genesis 2:21–22), as a helper—after the animals created for that purpose had proved inadequate (Genesis 2:18–20). The subordination of woman to man is reinforced, but does not begin, in the story of the consumption of the forbidden fruit, the consequence of which is the expulsion from Eden, imposition of patriarchal social structures and attribution to women of sexual instincts considered dangerous, arduous labour in agriculture and childbirth, and mortality (Genesis 3:1–7,16,17–19). Gender differentiation and the vulnerability of women to male domination are emphasized. Unselfconscious nudity is replaced by clothing, not as a divinely imposed obligation so much as a human reaction to acquiring “knowledge of good and evil”. Expulsion from their idyllic existence in the garden, and separation from the tree of life, leads to a lifetime of arduous labour for survival, and mortality. The myth explains the human condition and prevailing social customs, a consequence of wilful loss of innocence. The male human being, formed from the earth, is the pinnacle of creation, for whom animal life, including the human female, is created. Nevertheless, whatever God’s intention may have been, the divine breath leaves the man, and he will be dissipated into the earth from which he has been formed. The question of continued existence beyond fragile mortality in the present world is not explored further in the creation myth, but was to become the subject of increased speculation during the Second Temple period.
The human being is a quite different figure in the P creation narrative with which Genesis, and the Hebrew canon, begins. Genesis 1:26–27 is, in the view of some interpreters, a later interpolation in the P tradition. Whereas the creation of the cosmos, and of what modern science would identify as botanical and zoological life forms, is effected by divine word (cf. Psalm 8), related in the third person imperative traditionally rendered in English by the “Let there be . . . and there was . . . ” formulary, the creation of humanity is effected by divine action, recounted in the first person plural hortatory form, traditionally rendered, “Let us make . . . ” This grammatical shift, reflected in the Greek as well as the Hebrew transmission of the text, reflects the language of the heavenly court in ancient Near Eastern mythology. It is an archaism, reflecting the origins of the myth in Mesopotamian polytheism, rather than any resurgent polytheism in the post-exilic Judaism in which this text was incorporated into the nascent Pentateuch. Neither the angelology of apocalypticism, nor the notion of divine emanations which later evolved in Hellenistic Judaism, still less later Christian trinitarianism, should be read into this text. Rather, the ancient Near Eastern conception of a heavenly court in which the deities gathered, deliberated, intrigued, fought, and formed the created world from each other’s dismembered body parts, should be understood, as depicted in the Babylonian creation myth Enuma Elish 6:1–8:
When Marduk heard the gods’ speech
He conceived a desire to accomplish clever things.
He opened his mouth addressing Ea,
He counsels that which he had pondered in his heart,
“I will bring together blood to form bone,
I will bring into being Lullû, whose name shall be “man”.
I will create Lullû—man
On whom the toil of the gods will be laid that they may rest.
I will skilfully alter the organization of the gods:
Though they are honoured as one, they shall be divided into two.”
Ea answered, as he addressed a word to him,
Expressing his comments on the resting of the gods,
“Let one brother of theirs be given up.
Let him perish that people may be fashioned.
Let the great gods assemble
And let the guilty one be given up that they may be confirmed.”
The P creation narrative is a development from this mythology, which does not imply direct dependence on this particular text. The story is retold in monotheistic and also transcendental terms: not only is creation the work of a single god, in whom are concentrated the attributes associated with all the deities of the ancient Near Eastern pant...
