What is man(kind) that you are mindful of him?
We began with a very brief look at what is an idol from a biblical perspective rather than how we have changed it’s meaning. I stressed that God forbids idolatry. Next was a quick trip into 21st century image-saturation contrasting the ease with which we create images to the expense and difficulty that was required back in history.
From here we girded our loins and did a word study on the Hebrew words behind ‘likeness’ and ‘image’ in Genesis 1:26-28. Looking at a pile of references from the Old Testament we were able to draw some conclusions about what the Hebrew authors of Genesis were expressing by their use of ‘likeness and image’. Image and likeness are physical, visual, concrete terms. They refer to the whole person and not to just an aspect such as intelligence. The word for ‘image’ is used to refer to humanity in creation (and Adam and Eve’s first child) and (shockingly) almost exclusive to a pagan idols. Therefore we are left to conclude that in some senses we are God’s image-idol.
But what does that mean? It just sounds wrong. We will certainly unpack this in upcoming sessions. For now just to say – we are not God(s) and neither does God worship us. To be human is more wonderful than we realise it seems to me. As one of my lecturers put it:
To liken humanity to a statue of a god is either dangerously careless or deliberate and profound
Crispin Fletcher-Louis – Creation and Worship, Lecture notes
Here is the powerpoint
Origins 5 – What is man(kind) that you are mindful of him?
3 replies on “Origins – Session 3”
I’m a simple soul. Is it not that we are made in the image of God. Ancient religions idols were ‘images’ of what they thought God was. Use of the same word is therefore not surprising?
We are also used to the idea in English of words having two meanings e.g. watch being a time piece, an action and also an activity as in night watch.
A photo is a clear image. A daughter may be an image of her mother but less clear. A tracing is an outline image
Thought provoking sessions.
Liked the idea of Israel seeing human beings in a holistic way, as a whole.
My question: why the need to use the word “idol” to explain the way that God sees man/ woman because of His great love for us? Why not use other words such as… treasure or token? Seems that we humans are God’s treasure, His token of love?
Lots to think about! Feels like we have been taken out of our structured Beliefs Box just to explore other ways, new ways of understanding. Still it may come as a shock but we are all there with Edward because we want to know more. Thank you
Thanks both for your comments. Much could be said in response – but for now remember that one of our over-arching aims is to get into the minds of the writers of Genesis 1-3. Imagine being trust back into that culture – the ancient near east some 1000BCE. I’d be a fish out of water.
Why the word ‘idol’? Good question. I hope this will become clearer as we go on. Consider the status of humans in some of those early societies (and in ours too…) In Genesis we see being expressed a strong, vey strong, polemic against the polytheistic creations stories, with their multiple deities arguing and battling it out, and low view of humanity made as slaves. Our being God’s image/idol – to their way of seeing – would raise the status of the human in a deep, profoundly meaningful and mystical way.