Made in the Image vs. Made as the Image

Rob and I have been reading a book together by Henri Blocher called In the Beginning: The Opening Chapters of Genesis. Last night we read through a section on mankind being made in the image of God vs. being made as an image of God. It was an incredibly interesting bit of reading. Blocher argues that the article b^e, as opposed to k^e, would better be translated "as" than "in." (I don't know Hebrew and I couldn't find either preposition when I used BlueLetterBible. So I've got to trust him on this. The NIV and several other translations roll with "in".)

Blocher uses a verse from Paul's writing to support his argument (1 Corinthians 11:7), "man is the image and glory of God." Blocher says, "If man is the image, the emphasis falls on his situation." (emphasis his) And later, "Mankind is to be the created representation of his Creator, and here on earth, as it were, the images of the divine Glory, that Glory which mankind both reflects and beholds."

Rob and I talked quite a bit about the distinction between "in" and "as." The way I see it, it's similar to the difference between being an ambassador vs. being a photograph of an important person. A picture/icon is often elevated as if it, in it's own right, is important because of the image it bears. But an ambassador is considered important only because of the person being represented. The real value is in the person being represented, not in the person who is doing the representing. It's a subtle distinction brought out in only one little teeny word, but I think it's an important distinction to mark. We are not made in God's image in the sense that we are important because we are little gods. We are made as God's image and are important only because of who we represent, and it is he who bears the true importance.

Blocher continues on to say, "If mankind is the image, does not the prohibition of making images of God appear in a new light? God himself has placed his image in his cosmic sanctuary, and he wishes due homage to be paid to it by the service of mankind, the neighbour created in his image. And Christ joins the first and great commandment with the second which 'is like it' -- 'You shall love the Lord your God... you shall love your neighbour...'; surely the logic behind that is the likeness between God and his image."

And then Blocher blows my mind away with what follows, "We can go even further. There is perhaps a polemical thrust to the Genesis declaration, not only against idols of wood, stone or metal, but also against the limitation to certain men of the privilege of the image of God; it is all mankind and everyman, not the king, whom God has made in his image." Wow! Caesar thought he bore the image of a god. So did Pharoah. But the Hebrew God shatters the idea of only royalty bearing God's image. Every person on the planet does. Every person. That is completely revolutionary!

I think the reformation made common the idea of individuals being important. The Catholic Church, for whatever reason, liked the idea of a divine order. First there was God, then kings and the pope (or was it the pope and then kings? Can't decide. Why don't you fight about it and see who's left standing?), then the nobility, then the twerps at the bottom of the ladder. But God says that there is no divine order except this: God - people. That's it. Mankind was made to be the image of God. Each of us.

Let Us Make Man...

Isn't it interesting that God made man on the same day that he created animals? He didn't throw animals into the 5th day with the birds and fish. Instead he made animals first, then humans, on the same day. And he follows that first with a blessing (that looks like it's primarily aimed at the humans, though God had also blessed the birds and fish already on day 5) and then a gift that is to both the animals and the humans (every green plant for food).

The animals and humans have been grouped together. They're different from fish and birds and plants. But they're similar enough to be made on the same day. This definitely gives a sense of the close connection between people and animals.

Meat and Vegetables - Genesis 1

This is what's wrong with the King James version of the Bible:

"And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat." (Genesis 1:29)

I don't know a single carnivore that would call plants, trees, or seeds "meat."

The First Creation Story - with colors

I'm still thinking on the first creation story in the Bible. I've typed it up into a spreadsheet with the text in order, but color coded to help me see parallels and repetitions. I suspect I could pull a few more out if I kept working on it, but this is what I have so far. I'll attach a pdf copy at the end. (Grrrr. I tried to insert a table here and Blogger kept rewriting the table out of the page. So I'm just posting a jpg and attaching the pdf....  OK, tried to upload a pdf only to find out that you can't do that on Blogger without a 3rd party assist. So I'm just posting the jpg. Deal with it.)

Tohu wa Bohu

Rob and I have been reading through the book "In the Beginning," by Henri Blocher. The book works through several interpretations of the first few chapters of the book of Genesis, giving various reasons why one interpretation makes more sense than another. It's been an interesting read so far, though it does get a bit academic (in the big words, long sentences, complicated ideas sense of the term). It was in Blocher's book that I first came across the terms tohu and bohu. A search online, however, has revealed that tohuwabohu (or variations on that transliteration) are common in many European languages (an interesting reflection upon the Jewish influence upon Europe despite the Europeans many attempts to eradicate that influence).

Tohu means formlessness, chaos, confusion.
Bohu is generally only found right next to Tohu and is generally taken to mean empty or void.

Pic from RuneSoup with thanks to Terry Pratchett

Tohu and bohu show up in Genesis 1:2. "And the earth was without form, and void..." (King James Version) "Now the earth was formless and empty..." (New International Version) "The earth was unformed and void..." (Complete Jewish Bible).

I find the words, at the very beginning of the creation story, to be a total conundrum. Does "formless and void" have substance? Can you see it? Feel it? Experience it? And if everything is unformed and empty, then how is it that there's water in the second half of that verse? "... and the Spirit of God hovered over the surface of the water." (CJB) Doesn't that imply that there was a watery part and a non-watery part such that God's spirit could hover in the one and over the other? And if that's the case, doesn't that indicate some pattern or "form" to things?

And what is the tohu and the bohu doing there? Is it the stuff, the medium, that God used to create everything out of? If so, then when he spoke did that shape the tohuwabohu? Or did speaking create things from nothing? And where did the tohuwabohu come from in the first place?

If you were sitting down to write a story, and you thought it was a really important story that you wanted people to grasp, don't you think you'd make it more understandable than this second verse of Genesis? Even the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation story, makes more sense in the beginning than this second verse of Genesis 1. The Enuma Elish starts like this:

"When in the height heaven was not named,
And the earth beneath did not yet bear a name,
And the primeval Apsu, who begat them,
And chaos, Tiamut, the mother of them both
Their waters were mingled together,
And no field was formed, no marsh was to be seen;
When of the gods none had been called into being,
And none bore a name, and no destinies were ordained;
Then were created the gods in the midst of heaven,
Lahmu and Lahamu were called into being..." - sacred-texts.com

They've got chaos in there, and earth and water. There's a lot of similarities. But the story makes sense! You know what's going on. There are only so many ways you can interpret "And the earth beneath did not yet bear a name." But calling something formless and void when there was nothing there yet except that there was something there and it wasn't formless and if it was there then it wasn't void either.... 

All I can say is at least it rhymes. You've gotta admit, that's a nice touch. 

If, in reading through Blocher's book, I reach a higher level of enlightenment besides the joy of rhyming, I'll let you know. 

Gospel Made Visible

"Christian proclamation might make the gospel audible, but Christians living together in local congregations make the gospel visible (see John 13:34-35). The church is the gospel made visible." -- Mark Dever in his book entitled The Church.

In the Beginning

Rob and I started reading a new book together called, In the Beginning: The Opening Chapters of Gensis, by Henri Blocher. We're only at the beginning of the second chapter, so we're not real deeply into it yet, but I like what I've read so far. 

The first chapter is essentially explaining how he believes Genesis should be approached --> Scripture should be the overarching authority, illuminating other sources of information (and not the other way around). He gets into the discussions of "Who wrote scripture?" "What place does science have in this discussion?" and "What is the relationship between the two descriptions of creation in the Bible?"

The second chapter begins addressing commonly held beliefs/theories among Christians on how the universe was created. 

• Literal Interpretation: The days in Genesis 1 are 24 hour days.
• Reconstruction Theory: (Which I had always heard called the Gap theory.) God created the universe over a very long period of time (Genesis 1:1), then he destroyed it (vs. 2), and remade it in 7 literal days. 
• Concordist Theory: The days in Genesis 1 are really ages or geological eras. 
• He didn't name this one. The stinker. But the fourth view is that the description of the 7 days in Genesis 1 is a literary device. 

We still have to get into the nitty gritty of it all. But I thought I'd post the four views that he lays out in case anyone was interested. I've previously posted 6 views that were presented to us by my geology teacher when I was in 9th grade. It looks like Blocher is leaving out the diluvialist theory (unless he's merging that with Gap) which is interesting because I've heard Christians mention the diluvialist theory as something they believe as recently as within the past decade. 

Since I haven't included any nitty gritty here, let's not get into any of that just yet. But if you have thoughts on his 4 main theories/beliefs, feel free to pipe up.