[Scholars
have followed this view] because in Gen. 1.26-28 the reference to humanity’s
ruling the animals and the earth follows shortly after the allusion to humanity’s
being made in the image of God. However—and this is very important—it is more natural
to suppose that humanity’s lordship over the animals and the earth is a
consequence of its having been made in God’s image, rather than what the image
itself denotes. This is made clear by v. 28, where God’s command to humanity to
rule over animals and the earth takes place only after God’s blessing of them
and commanding them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, whereas
humanity has already been made in God’s image in v. 27. This important point is
often overlooked by defenders of the functional interpretation.
The
conclusion that God’s image in humanity refers to something other than humanity’s
rule over the animals and the earth is also supported by a consideration of the
other Genesis passages which refer to the image of God. Thus, in Gen. 5.1-2, the
statement is repeated that ‘When God created humanity, he made them in the image
of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and called their
name humanity when they were created.’ Then v. 3 continues, ‘When Adam had
lived 130 years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, after his
image, and named him Seth.’ Note the same language is used of Seth’s
resemblance to Adam as is used of Adam’s resemblance to God. This resemblance clearly
includes a physical resemblance and cannot have anything to do with ruling over
animals and the earth. Again, in Gen. 9.6, we read, ‘Whoever sheds the blood of
a human, by a human shall their blood be shed; for God made humanity in his own
image’. These words are surely implying something about the inherent dignity
over the animals and the earth. (John Day, “’So God Created Humanity In His Own
Image’ (Genesis 1.27): What Does the Bible Mean and What Have People Thought it
Meant?,” in From Creation to Abraham: Further Studies in Genesis 1-11 [London:
T&T Clark, 2022], 25-26)
Against appeals to evidence from
Egypt and the rest of the Ancient Near East for the “functional” view:
There
are, however, some problems with this view. First, we have no evidence that the
Israelite kings themselves were ever spoken of as being in the image of a god.
The assumption has to be made that the Israelites borrowed the imagery either
from Egyptian or Assyrian kingship and then democratized it to refer to humanity.
But with regard to Assyria, it must be noted that the imagery is rare: only six
references are known, and of those four come from a single scribe about three
individuals in two letters from the time of Esar-haddon (681-669 BCE) and a fifth
comes from the reign of his successor of Ashurbanipal (668-c. 627 BCE),
while the other is from the time of Tukulti-Nunurta I (c. 1243-1207
BCE). It does not seem very likely, therefore, that P’s language was adopted
from the Assyrians. What then of ancient Egypt? It is true that there are far
more occurrences of the concept in Egypt, but although there are occasional
allusions down to Ptolemaic times, they are overwhelmingly from the eighteenth
dynasty (c. 1550-1290 BCE), about 800-1050 years prior to the time of
the Priestly writer. Incidentally, although the Priestly writer probably wrote
in the exilic or early post-exilic period, either during or not long after the
Babylonian exile, no references to the king as the image of a god are attested in
Babylonia at any period.
A
popular variant of the functional view maintains that it was the custom of
placing actual images of foreign kings in conquered territory as
representations of their authority in absence that lies behind the alleged
democratized representation of humans as images of the invisible God in
Genesis. However, as noted earlier, the fundamental objection to any functional
understanding of the image of God is that it does not fit any of the three
passages in Genesis very well. Even in Gen. 1.26-28 humanity’s rule over the
earth is more naturally a consequence of its being in the divine image, not
what the image itself is.
Finally,
those who adopt the functional view tend to argue that human beings are not said
to be made in (or after) the image and likeness of God but rather as an image
and likeness of God. This involves taking the preposition beth as
so-called beth essentiae, ‘as’, hence ‘as the image and likeness of God’,
not ‘in (i.e. after/according to) the image and likeness of God’. However, as J.
Maxwell Miller (J.M. Miller, ‘In the “Image” and “Likeness” of God’, JBL
91 [1972], pp. 289-304 [296]) apply pointed out, this is improbable since the
preposition beth is used here interchangeably with the preposition kaph,
‘after/according to’, but there is no kaph essentiae in biblical Hebrew.
We thus have to conclude that humans are said to be made in (i.e., according
to) the image of God (cf. Septuagint, kata, Vulgate ad), not
merely as an image of God. (Ibid., 27-28)
Further Reading:
Lynn Wilder vs. Latter-day Saint (and Biblical) Theology on Divine Embodiment