Genesis 1:26, 27: Imago Dei

At the very beginning of the Bible one encounters the description of Adam and Eve being made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26, 27). In Ellen White’s commentary on this Creation account, she writes that “man was to bear God’s image, both in outward resemblance and in character.” ^{5Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan, as Illustrated in the Lives of Patriarchs and Prophets (Oakland, Calif.: Pacific Press®, 1890), 45.} There has been much discussion regarding the imago Dei, or “image of God.” ^{6See Richard M. Davidson, “Biblical Anthropology in the Old Testament” (plenary session paper presented at the Third International Bible Conference, Jerusalem, Israel, June 16, 2012), 2-14; to be published under the title “The Nature of the Human Being From the Beginning: Genesis 1-11” (forthcoming from the BRICOM in the volume on Biblical Anthropology, ed. Clinton Wahlen).} Genesis 1:27 states the divine deliberation: “Let us make man in Our image, after Our likeness.”^{7Biblical citations are from the New King James Version, unless otherwise noted.} In my examination of the Hebrew text of Genesis 1:27, ^{8Davidson, “Biblical Anthropology,” 9-10.} I have found that the two words translated “image” (tselem) and “likeness” (demut), while overlapping in semantic range, tend to emphasize different aspects. A study of the use of these two terms in Scripture reveals that tselem, “image,” emphasizes the external, concrete form,^{9See Bruce K. Waltke, An Old Testament Theology: An Exegetical Canonical, and Thematic Approach (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007), 215: “Aside from its two possibly figurative usages, tselem always refers to a physical image, having a formed body.” Waltke (ibid.) suggests that the two figurative uses (Ps. 39:6; 73:20) may well come from another root, II tselem, meaning “silhouette, fleeting shadow.” John Goldingay draws the implication for the image of God: “An image is the visible representation of something, which suggests God's image lies in humanity's bodily nature. . . . The First Testament . . . systematically presupposes a correspondence between God and humanity in its bodily as well as its inner nature” (Old Testament Theology, Vol. 1: Israel's Gospel (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2003), 102, 103.} whereas demut, “likeness,” emphasizes the inward, abstract character qualities, ^{10See, e.g., Ilona N. Rashkow, Taboo or Not Taboo: Sexuality and Family in the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), 61, who summarizes regarding the term demut: “[demut] is generally used to signify the ‘appearance,’ ‘similarity,’ or ‘analogy’ of nonphysical traits . . .”} and when juxtaposed, as in Genesis 1:27, the two terms denote both external form and inward characteristics. ^{11Rashkow (ibid., 61) summarizes: “God says that his intention is to make Adam both in ‘in our image’ (that is, physically similar, whatever that may mean), and in ‘in our likeness’ (having the same abstract characteristics).”} Ellen White had no training in biblical Hebrew, and yet she was on the mark when she wrote that the image of God consisted of both “outward resemblance and character.” This reading of Ellen White is remarkable because in the nineteenth century biblical scholars were virtually unanimous in viewing God along the lines of Greek dualism as “timeless”—beyond space and time—and thus not having an outward form, and therefore any interpretation of the imago Dei that included “outward resemblance” was rejected out of hand. ^{12David Carr summarizes this common notion that is still generally held today by biblical scholars: “Genesis 1 must be talking about something else—anything else—than actual physical resemblance between God and humans” (The Erotic Word: Sexuality, Spirituality, and the Bible [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003], 18). Carr (ibid., 17-26) counters this notion with solid biblical data from throughout Scripture. See my discussion of this in Davidson, “Old Testament Anthropology,” 4, 5.}GOP 157.2