In the Image of God and Man

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Join us for a conversation with Tomer Perisco, author of In God's Image: How Western Civilization Was Shaped by a Revolutionary Idea whose premise is that that the idea that all human beings were created in God’s image was seminal to the creation of the modern West.
The book is not only a wonderful example of a history of an idea but also an amazing sourcebook for on the subject matter.
Much of the coverage of this wonderful book focus on the secularization of metaphor and how you connect a 3,000 year old idea to modernism and secular thought. But this deeply researched and thought provoking book also introduces many moments and insights along the way … and that’s where we will focus.

בראשית א׳:כ״ו-כ״ז

(כו) וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֱלֹקִ֔ים נַֽעֲשֶׂ֥ה אָדָ֛ם בְּצַלְמֵ֖נוּ כִּדְמוּתֵ֑נוּ וְיִרְדּוּ֩ בִדְגַ֨ת הַיָּ֜ם וּבְע֣וֹף הַשָּׁמַ֗יִם וּבַבְּהֵמָה֙ וּבְכׇל־הָאָ֔רֶץ וּבְכׇל־הָרֶ֖מֶשׂ הָֽרֹמֵ֥שׂ עַל־הָאָֽרֶץ׃ (כז) וַיִּבְרָ֨א אֱלֹקִ֤ים ׀ אֶת־הָֽאָדָם֙ בְּצַלְמ֔וֹ בְּצֶ֥לֶם אֱלֹקִ֖ים בָּרָ֣א אֹת֑וֹ זָכָ֥ר וּנְקֵבָ֖ה בָּרָ֥א אֹתָֽם׃

Genesis 1:26-27

(26) And God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness. They shall rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the cattle, the whole earth, and all the creeping things that creep on earth.” (27) And God created humankind in the divine image, creating it in the image of God— creating them male and female.

בראשית ה׳:א׳

(א) זֶ֣ה סֵ֔פֶר תּוֹלְדֹ֖ת אָדָ֑ם בְּי֗וֹם בְּרֹ֤א אֱלֹקִים֙ אָדָ֔ם בִּדְמ֥וּתאֱלֹהִ֖ים עָשָׂ֥ה אֹתֽוֹ׃

Genesis 5:1

(1) This is the record of Adam’s line.—When God created humankind, it was made in the likeness of God;

In the Image of God - Actually
Q1: Why is it so important to argue that man was literally created in the physical image of God?

But for the authors of the Hebrew Bible, and indeed for the ancient Israelites, it was obvious that God had a body. The evidence is manifold and unequivocal. As late-stage heirs of this tradition, monotheists in the modern world have learned to interpret every mention of God’s body as a metaphor, but without preconceptions that make us dismiss the literal meaning of the Hebrew Bible, we would have no reason not to understand the biblical God as corporeal. There is not a single verse in the whole Hebrew Bible that denies God’s corporeality, nor that he has a shape that can be grasped, and there are many verses that refer to God’s organs or events in which humans plainly saw him.

בראשית ט׳:ו׳

(ו) שֹׁפֵךְ֙ דַּ֣ם הָֽאָדָ֔ם בָּֽאָדָ֖ם דָּמ֣וֹ יִשָּׁפֵ֑ךְ כִּ֚י בְּצֶ֣לֶם אֱלֹקִ֔ים עָשָׂ֖ה אֶת־הָאָדָֽם׃

Genesis 9:6

(6) Whoever sheds human blood, By human [hands] shall that one’s blood be shed; For in the image of God Was humankind made.

דברים כ״א:כ״ג

(כג) לֹא־תָלִ֨ין נִבְלָת֜וֹ עַל־הָעֵ֗ץ כִּֽי־קָב֤וֹר תִּקְבְּרֶ֙נּוּ֙ בַּיּ֣וֹם הַה֔וּא כִּֽי־קִלְלַ֥ת אֱלֹקִ֖ים תָּל֑וּי וְלֹ֤א תְטַמֵּא֙ אֶת־אַדְמָ֣תְךָ֔ אֲשֶׁר֙ ה׳ אֱלֹקֶ֔יךָ נֹתֵ֥ן לְךָ֖ נַחֲלָֽה׃ {ס}

Deuteronomy 21:23

(23) you must not let the corpse remain on the stake overnight, but must bury it the same day. For an impaled body is an affront to God: you shall not defile the land that your God ה׳ is giving you to possess.

סנהדרין מ״ו ב:ה׳

תַּנְיָא, אוֹמֵר רַבִּי מֵאִיר: מָשְׁלוּ מָשָׁל, לְמָה הַדָּבָר דּוֹמֶה? לִשְׁנֵי אַחִים תְּאוֹמִים בְּעִיר אַחַת. אֶחָד מִינּוּהוּ מֶלֶךְ, וְאֶחָד יָצָא לְלִיסְטִיּוּת. צִוָּה הַמֶּלֶךְ וּתְלָאוּהוּ. כׇּל הָרוֹאֶה אוֹתוֹ אוֹמֵר: הַמֶּלֶךְ תָּלוּי. צִוָּה הַמֶּלֶךְ וְהוֹרִידוּהוּ.

Sanhedrin 46b:5

§ It is taught in a baraita that Rabbi Meir says: The Sages told a parable: To what is this matter comparable? It is comparable to two brothers who were twins and lived in the same city. One was appointed king, while the other went out to engage in banditry. The king commanded that his brother be punished, and they hanged his twin brother for his crimes. Anyone who saw the bandit hanging would say: The king was hanged. The king, therefore, commanded that his brother be taken down, and they took the bandit down. Similarly, people are created in God’s image, and therefore God is disgraced when a corpse is hung for a transgression that the person has committed.

it is clear that from the Sages’ perspective, humans’ resemblance to God is not a matter of spirit, intellect, or conscience, but of physicality. The “image of God” is therefore none other than God’s physical likeness. God gave humans his likeness when he created them in his image.

דברים רבה ד׳:ד׳

אָמַר רַבִּי יְהוֹשֻׁעַ בֶּן לֵוִי, אִיקוֹנְיָא מְהַלֶּכֶת לִפְנֵי הָאָדָם וְהַכָּרוֹזוֹת כּוֹרְזִין לְפָנָיו, וּמָה הֵן אוֹמְרִים, תְּנוּ מָקוֹם לָאִיקוּנִין שֶׁל הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא, רְאֵה כַּמָּה שׁוֹמְרִין מְשַׁמְּרִין אוֹתְךָ

Devarim Rabbah 4:4

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: An image goes before a person, and the heralds proclaim before him. What do they say? ‘Make room for the image of the Holy One blessed be He.’ See how many guards are protecting you.

Midrash Deuteronomy Rabbah quotes the third-century rabbi Joshua Ben Levi as saying that wherever a person goes, angels walk before him and announce his imminent arrival. “And what do they say? Make room for the icon of the Holy One, Blessed be He!” An icon (eikon in Greek) is of course an idol: an image. Humans were not made as a copy of the image of God, nor do they partake of the image in some way. The Israelites prohibited idols and molten gods because the most fundamental premise of their tradition was that humans were the image of God.

רש"י על בראשית א׳:כ״ז:א׳

(א)ויברא אלקים את האדם בצלמו. בִּדְפוּס הֶעָשׂוּי לוֹ, שֶׁהַכֹּל נִבְרָא בְּמַאֲמָר וְהוּא נִבְרָא בַּיָּדַיִם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר וַתָּשֶׁת עָלַי כַּפֶּכָה (תהילים קל"ט); נַעֲשָׂה בְחוֹתָם כְּמַטְבֵּעַ הָעֲשׂוּיָה עַל יְדֵי רֹשֶׁם שֶׁקּוֹרִין קוי"ן בלע"ז וְכֵן הוּא אוֹמֵר תִּתְהַפֵּךְ כְּחֹמֶר חוֹתָם (איוב ל"ח):

Rashi on Genesis 1:27:1

(1) ויברא אלקים את האדם בצלמו SO GOD CREATED THE MAN IN HIS IMAGE —in the type that was specially made for him, for everything else was created by a creative fiat, whilst he was brought into existence by a creative act (literally, by hand), as it is said (Psalms 139:5) “And Thou hast laid thy hand upon me.” He was made by a seal as a coin that is made by a die that is called in old French coin. It is similarly said, (Job 28:14) “it is changed as clay under the seal” (Sanhedrin 38a).

The Mishnah elucidates two points. First of all, the first man, Adam, was created alone in order to teach that individual humans are entire worlds unto themselves. Just as the first human was the crowning glory of Creation, a unique entity in the world, so too is every individual considered an exceptional, inimitable pinnacle of existence—an entire world.
Second, we are told that every person is unique: not only was every human being created in God’s image, but like God, humans are one-of-a-kind. When a person (a king) mints coins in his own image, the coins all come out the same, bearing the same image. But when the King of Kings created human beings, none of them came out looking the same. Each person, therefore, exists in their own right as a world unto themselves. Hence the dictum that whoever takes a single life, it is as if he has destroyed a whole world, and whoever saves a single life, it is as if he has saved a whole world.

Christianity ...
Q2 Much of the book documents how Christianity (spearheaded by Paul) took the idea of The Image of God and ran with it..... In a way that implicitly Judaism did not and in a way that explicitly effected Western Culture in a profound way. Did Judaism fumble the profundity of Tzelem Elokim and nonetheless is there a sense of Cultural Chauvinism and unintended consequences and the ripple effect of the Hebrew Bible? (cf Moses in Akiba's Academy)?

The notion that everyone was created in God’s image, that everyone—including women, foreigners, and slaves—possessed an equal and eternal soul, and that this soul would be judged by God and could achieve personal redemption and liberty, became widespread with the spread of Christianity.

Thus wrote Gregory of Nyssa:

God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness. If he is in the likeness of God, and rules the whole earth, and has been granted authority over everything on earth from God, who is his buyer, tell me? Who is his seller? To God alone belongs this power; or rather, not even to God himself. For his gracious gifts, it says, are irrevocable [Rom. 11:29]. . . . But has the scrap of paper, and the written contract, and the counting out of obols deceived you into thinking yourself the master of the image of God? What folly! . . . Your origin is from the same ancestors, your life is of the same kind. . . . Are not the two [slave and master] dust after death? Is there not one judgement for them? A common Kingdom, and a common Gehenna?

Gregory’s words are the first principled articulation completely invalidating the institution of slavery.

Religion as a Human Disposition
Q3 As Man's God-like quality was individualized and internalized a concept of Natural Religion emerged and along with it the realization that the disposition towards the transcendent was unique to humankind and might even be a category of the mind. Was this too a radical extension of The Image of God?

Another essential thinker in this process was Marsilio Ficino, a key figure in the Renaissance... For Ficino the word religio denoted piety, a virtue involving mental intention. Yet unlike Augustine, Ficino thought that this mental intention was a universal phenomenon, vividly present in the spiritual life of every person and manifested as different traditions... “Worshipping the divine is as natural to men almost as neighing to horses or barking to dogs,” he wrote.
Other philosophers presented similar arguments. Edward Herbert, the Baron of Cherbury (1583–1648), one of the most important early thinkers in the world of Deism, similarly understood religion as a “natural instinct” located in the human soul, although he preferred to define religion not as a sentiment but as a rational comprehension.

The process of the creation of “religion,” through the internalization of worship and derivation of the principles of tolerance from within it, reached its apogee with John Locke (1632–1704). As one of liberalism’s founding fathers, Locke gave religious tolerance its most rigorous underpinning through his articulation of the principle of the separation of church and state. It was no coincidence that Locke was the first of a series of thinkers to explicitly support equal rights for Jews. As we have seen with Roger Williams, religious tolerance, the separation of church and state, and the extension of civil rights to Jews were all based on the same interconnected principles: the definition of all ritual systems as “religious,” based on the internalization of religious meaning, which in turn was connected to the notion that all humans were inherently equal and at their core carried the same image of God (be it reason, conscience, volition, or attraction to the divine).
[and] This, of course, changed how the Jews saw themselves; indeed, it changed Judaism itself. Judaism, as Leora Batnitzky writes, became a religion.

Q4 Let's talk about the impact that a mind created in the image of God had on Science ....

שמות ל״ג:י״ח

(יח) וַיֹּאמַ֑ר הַרְאֵ֥נִי נָ֖א אֶת־כְּבֹדֶֽךָ׃

Exodus 33:18

(18) He said, “Oh, let me behold Your Presence!”

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate[a] the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. ((2 Corinthians 3:17–18).

In the twelfth century these same words were infused with new meaning. Our “unveiled face” became a clear mind capable of examining the world, and the promise of a renewal of the image came not from contemplation but from the acquisition of knowledge. This would take place in two ways: first, by knowing the world, the human mind would restore things to the original unity which they had possessed in the divine mind; second, by controlling and subduing the world, human beings would be restored to their original position as God’s viceroy on earth, and harmony would be restored between those creatures within theirconstituency. The restoration of a lost likeness to God was thus to take place through imitation of God: of his power, by manipulating the world; of his wisdom, through coming to know it. To know God, to become like God, to possess the knowledge of the mind of God, these were synonyms for the process of redemption. Redemption, in short, did not entail as it did for Augustine, flight from the material world, a mastery of the beasts within, and a mystical absorption into divine reality, but rather an ordered knowledge of the natural world.

Q5 Man in God's Image or God in Man's Image?

The universal religion, discovered simply, demanded the beliefs, or rather the rational comprehensions, of God as good, of his wish that we too be good, and of future rewards and punishments. Out went revelation, miracles, spirituality, sacred things and times, ritual and the church. From humanity’s imitation of God by venturing out to discover the world rationally, we have come to God’s imitation of rational humans.

בראשית ג׳:כ״ב

(כב)וַיֹּ֣אמֶר ׀ ה׳ אֱלֹקִ֗ים הֵ֤ן הָֽאָדָם֙ הָיָה֙ כְּאַחַ֣ד מִמֶּ֔נּוּ לָדַ֖עַת ט֣וֹב וָרָ֑ע וְעַתָּ֣ה ׀ פֶּן־יִשְׁלַ֣ח יָד֗וֹ וְלָקַח֙ גַּ֚ם מֵעֵ֣ץ הַֽחַיִּ֔ים וְאָכַ֖ל וָחַ֥י לְעֹלָֽם׃

Genesis 3:22

(22) And God ה׳ said, “Now that humankind has become like any of us, knowing good and bad, what if one should stretch out a hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever!”