I've been fighting an illness over the past few days, so did not have much time for blogging. However, to make up for it, I am reproducing a few interesting comments I encountered in my readings that may be of some interest:
Within the Judaism of the time, the possession of the holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, was regarded as the mark of prophecy: therefore, Jesus’ inspiration and equipping for ministry by the Spirit of God signifies that he was (and probably regarded himself as) a prophet. His claim to possess the Spirit is quite explicit if “the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” (Mark 3:29) is rightly interpreted as the denial of the divine source of the spirit power with which Jesus casts out demons.
David Hill, New Testament Prophecy (Atlanta:
John Knox, 1979), as cited by Stevan Davies, Spirit Possession and the
Origins of Christianity (Dublin: Bardic Press, 2014), 79.
Turning to the rest of the verse [Gen 1:26], we note two points of emphasis concerning the status and role of human beings in the created world: 1) status—humanity is to be made in the image of God, and 2) role—humanity is to exercise a dominant role in the governance of the earth. Concerning the first category, we note that humanity occupies a unique status in contrast with all of the other created beings on the earth: being made in the image and according to the likeness of God. The basic likeness is in physical appearance, as study of the etymology and usage of both terms show: selem and demut. These terms are used in cognate languages of statue representing gods and humans in contemporary inscriptions, and certainly the intention is to say that God and man share a common physical appearance. If or when God makes himself visible to human beings, they will recognise their own features and vice versa. The image is the same, and the basic features are comparable. While God is not human, and humans are not divine, they share a common appearance, or physique. Whenever God is described in the Hebrew Bible, he has features that human beings also have (cf. Ezekiel 1:26-28). The correspondence is by no means limited to body parts, but extends to the whole makeup of God and humans, including mind and spirit, thoughts and words. We must not press the resemblances too far, as there are constant admonitions that God is different in profound respects (cf. Isaiah 55:6-11), but these would hardly be necessary is not for the basic similarities. Only human beings, of all earthly creatures, share image and likeness with the deity.
David Noel Freedman, “The Status and Role of Humanity
in the Cosmos According to the Hebrew Bible,” in On Human Nature: The
Jerusalem Center Symposium, eds. Truman G. Madsen, David Noel Freedman, and
Pam Fox Kuhlken (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Pryor Pettengill Publishers, Inc: 2004),
9-25, here, pp. 16-17 (square bracket my own)
Today, when one speaks of adoption, he refers to the legal process whereby a stranger becomes a member of the family. In Paul’s time, however, adoptions referred to that legal process whereby a parent placed his own child in the legal position of an adult son, with all the privileges of inheritance. Someone may question why adoption was required when the child was already a son by birth. It must be remembered that in pagan Rome, a citizen often had many wives and many children. Some of the wives may have been concubines and slaves. The citizen may not have wanted the offspring of his slave wives to receive his titles, position in society, and inheritance. The legal procedure of adoption, therefore, provided a means whereby the citizen could designate those children which he wished to be considered his legal sons and heirs. Through receiving newness of life, believers become children of God. Through adoption, the children of God are declared to be His sons, who have all the privileges and inheritance of sonship.
Alva G. Huffer, Systematic Theology (Oregon,
Illin.: The Restitution Herald, 1960), 390.
