In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

91 7 / The Image: Religious Anthropology in Judaism and Christianity 2000 When Jews think about Christianity, they are often struck by ideas and images fundamentally different from Jewish traditions. Icons, statues, incense, crucifixes, and even crosses create a physical environment radically different from Jewish worship; notions of trinity and incarnation form a mental universe equally bizarre to traditional Jewish concepts. It is with some degree of relief that Jews often turn to Christian ideas of humanity and society, finding common ground with Christianity precisely on the common ground of earth and human beings. The nature of human beings and of the human relationship with God affords at least a common theological language with which to think about the issues of human existence, the language of tselem elohim and imago dei: the image of God. THE “IMAGE” IN THE HEBREW BIBLE This language of the “image of God” has its source in the Hebrew Bible, in the first chapter of Genesis: “God created humanity in his own image; in the image of God he created him” (1:27). Genesis does not spell out the implications of the “image”; possibly there is a connection here with God’s blessing, with fertility, and with “dominion” over the earth. In Mesopotamia and Egypt, kings erected statues of themselves at the farthest reaches of their empires to represent their dominion. In Akkadian, the word for statue is tsalmu, the same as Hebrew tselem (image). Furthermore, Assyrian texts describe the king himself as tsalam ili, “image of the god,” the representative of God on earth. In the same 92 Comparative Culture II way, says Genesis, humans are to act for God on this earth, administrating and performing other acts of “dominion.” Genesis 5:1–3 develops the concept of “image” further as it begins the genealogies with a recapitulation that God created humanity in God’s likeness (demut elohim); the passage then specifies that “God created them male and female, blessed them and called them ‘Adam.’” The next verse makes the meaning of the term “likeness” clear, for Adam “begat in his image as his likeness” and called his name “Seth.” God created us to be like God, and even though God is beyond gender, it is the nexus of male and female that is the likeness and creates the likeness. As we create children, we take on the God-like role of creator. Moreover, we create children who look like us, and we, and they, look like God. The use of the word demut in these two sentences makes the physicality of our likeness to God apparent. A completely different aspect of the concept of “image of God” emerges in the more legally oriented passage of Genesis 9:1–8, the reinstitution of humanity after the flood. Here a fundamental difference between humanity and the animals is reinforced: human beings can kill and eat animals (with some restrictions), but no one, not even an animal, can kill a human. Whoever kills a human being forfeits his life, because “in the image of God He made humanity.” Here, the concept of “image” determines not how we should act, but how others should act toward us. Each human is to be treated as the representative of God. In this way, the concept of “image of God” creates a sense of the inviolability and sacredness of human life. These Genesis passages form the basis for a religious anthropology that concentrates on the divine aspects of human form and function. Both the New Testament and early Jewish sources found this concept of tselem very attractive, maybe because the Greco-Roman world knew images and statues, surrounded as it was by rules concerning the treatment of the statues of Roman emperors. In this cultural milieu, it was perhaps inevitable that the relationship of humanity and God, described already in the Hebrew Bible as one of image to source, should be explored in terms of the image of God. THE RABBINIC AND NEW TESTAMENT “IMAGE” The Rabbis of this period emphasize the connection between humanity and God. To them, our physical resemblance is a sign of a connection so deep that injury to a human being injures God. They understand .129.45.92] Project MUSE (2024-04-19 23:35 GMT) 7 / The Image 93 the deep paradox underlying Genesis 9, which proclaims the sanctity of human life even as it announces that this sanctity will be safeguarded by the death of a human being. Rabbi Meir tells a parable about...

Share