THE PLACE OF MAN IN THE CREATION
I. THE PECULIAR VALUE OF MAN AS COMPARED WITH OTHER CREATURES
I. Indirect evidence
N AWARENESS THAT MAN OCCUpieS a Special pOSitiOn &&is
A
the Nature that forms his environment is to be found in Israel first of all in a conviction which she shares with other peoples. This is that there are at least certain areas of Nature that exist within an order of their own and in conformity with their own laws, which Man is required to acknowledge, and which debar him from controlling them just as he pleases. Such areas, protected in most cases by the supra-sensible power believed to stand behind them, and delimited by appropriate taboo prohibitions, have from the earliest times aroused in Man the suspicion that Nature confronts him not as something having an obvious affinity with himself but as an autono- mous entity keeping him at a distance. In Israel this limitation went hand in hand with belief in a God who was the effective sovereign of Nature as well as of history. Hence those ordinances which restricted human exploitation fell within the scope of conditions laid down at the creation, and gave Man’s obedient observance of them the character of submission to the personal will of a Creator. Adopted into the nation’s law,1 these became a part of the historically condi- tioned social order of the people of God, and through their inculcation of particular duties toward Nature led to the recognition of a natural cosmic order which Man, precisely because he is a subject of the covenant God and a member of the favoured covenant people, has 1 Ex. 23.19; 34.26; Deut. 22.gff.; Lev. x9.19; 22.24f, 27f. Cf. the prohibition of mutilation (Deut. 23.2), and the rules protecting animals (Deut. 22Af.; Prov.12.10).
118
MAN COMPARED WITH OTHER CREATURES I19
to respect. The remoteness of Nature, its alien quality and the way in which it stands over against Man are thus all given weight and meaning by their association with God, and in his confrontation with autonomous Nature Man sees himself as having a divine vocation.
This shaping of the Man-Nature relationship into a matter of per- sonal conduct acquires its focal point in the bestowal on Israel of Canaan as the God-given land of her inheritance. By making posses- sion of the land dependent upon faithfulness to the covenant’ God includes Man’s relation to Nature within the sphere of responsible human behaviour, and impresses upon him his distinctive position in the world of creatures. His sin means that the land is defiled,2 and the same land will vomit forth the nation which has become untrue to its moral resp0nsibility.s
Another influence working in the same direction was the concen- tration of faith on the one God, for this ruled out with increasing stringency the recognition, in Nature as well as elsewhere, of any independent divinity apart from that of Yahweh. As men experienced the exclusive character of Yahweh’s will as revealed in his control of history, so the life of Nature also became subject to him.4 This de- divinization of Nature not only freed Israel from the cultic practices which sought to drag her down into a mystical union with the forces of Nature through sexual licence and devotion to lifeless idols,5 it also opened her eyes to the fact that the gulf between Man and Nature was something inherent in the very deepest level of men’s spiritual and personal being. Hence it was impossible on the one hand that Man should find anywhere in Nature a being corresponding to himself, and on the other it made him joyfully certain in his relation- ship with God of his value as a responsible personal I. Just as God himself is not a natural force, but the living Lord who associates with men only through the fellowship of the word, so Man also sees himself 1 cf. the story of the spies (Num. rgf.), the barring of Moses from setting foot on the land (Deut. 34.4), the linking of affliction and apostasy, and the cursing of the unfaithful, in the Song of Deborah (Judg. 5.8, 23), the atmosphere of the Samuel and Saul narratives, the stress laid in Deuteronomy on the possession of the land as Yahweh’s primary blessing on the righteous people of Cod, and the laws relating to the sabbatical and jubilee years in Lev. 25.4ff. and Ex. 23.1of.
sDeut. 24.4; Jer. 2.7; 3.1f., g; 16.18; Ezek. 36.17f.; Lev. x8.25, 27; Ezra 9.11.
s Lev. 18.25, 28; 20.22.
4 Cf. vol. I, p. 186.
s Amos 2.7; Hos. 4.14; I Kings 15.12; 22.47; Deut. 23.18, etc. In this context also belong the prohibitions of bestiality (Ex. 22.19; Deut. 27.21; Lev. 18.23;
2o.rgf.). For polemic against the worship of sacred objects cf. Hos. x3.2; Jer. 2.27;
Isa. 4.4. I 7ff.
1 2 0 T H E P L A C E O F M A N I N C R E A T I O N
as set over against the multitude of natural objects and forces as different in kind, as one whose being and status find their security only in God.
11. Conscious formulations
(a) This sense of Man’s special position within the world of created things, nourished by law and history, receives .conscious formulation and summary in the two accounts of Creation and in the Nature hymn of Ps. 8. The factor common to all these documents is their vision of Man as the noblest work of God’s creation, and thus as the one to whom the Creator has promised the position of ruler in this world. But the explanations which they give of the essential reason for this preferential position vary. Ps. 8 and Gen. 2 are the most closely akin in the particular stress which they lay on the di$erence in power between Man and the other creatures. This is obviously the pre- dominant approach for the ancient Israelite view in general. Of the two texts Ps. 8 exhibits it in its more naive form, attributing Man’s position simply to the sovereign will of the omnipotent God, and thus putting it beyond further discussion. Just as God is king in the heavenly realm, so Man in carrying out his commission is king of the earthly realm, crowned with glory and honour, and by virtue of his status only a little lower than the inhabitants of heaven. This confi- dent comparison of Man to the ‘%V&n, from whom he is distinct only in degree, is likewise ancient in character.1 The almost defiant sense of power, and the naive joy in what Man can achieve, as evinced in the lively description of his kingdom,2 rings with all the self-confidence of antiquity,3 and is given a distinctive twist only by the fact that it is combined with the most profound reverence before the almighty Lord of creation. What makes the free sovereign power of the latter impressive is precisely the fact that the one whom he clothes with royal status is a weak and insignificant creature who by himself could never be more than an eloquent testimony to the complete impotence of created things. Because it is God’s inconceivably marvellous power 1 This alone ought to warn us against expounding the Psalm as if it were depen- dent on Gen. I (Duhm, Kittel, et al.). Man’s resemblance to the lower ‘Ghim is not the same thing as his being made in the image of God; and the identification of the primacy which the former gives him with his dominion over the earth is more naive than the derivation of this dominion from a special word of blessing which simply adds it per accidens to the state of being in God’s image. Hence Gunkel, too, argues for pre-exilic provenance.
svv. 7-g.
3 It is not without point that this description is often compared to the hymn in praise of Man’s dominion in the Antigone of Sophocles.
M A N C O M P A R E D W I T H O T H E R C R E A T U R E S 121
which alone is the basis of human self-confidence, the contrast be- tween Man and the glittering heavenly bodies serves to bring out in all the more pure a form the sense of Man’s special position. Ulti- mately therefore it is a spiritual factor which determines the. value Man sets upon himself, namely his consciousness of partnership with God, a privilege of which no other creature is considered worthy.
(b) This comes out even more clearly in the Yahwist creation story, when the author describes how Man becomes a living being.
Here he lays especial stress on the fact that life is a divine gift, be- stowed directly by God through the insufflation of the nihat bayyim, the breath of life.1 It is true that the life of all other beings is also ascribed to this divine breath of life,2 and that even the animals are classified with Man as nepeS fiayyi.3 However, it was clearly the narrator’s intention to mark Man out from the other creatures, since only in his case does he relate a direct transfer of the divine breath.
Whereas the animals are produced and brought to life simply, so to speak, by the universal divine breath blowing through the whole of Nature, and therefore partake of life only as a class of beings, Man receives his life by a special act of God, and is thus treated as an in- dependent spiritual I, and accorded a closer association with God than the animals. This is confirmed by the continuation of the narrative, where everything is directed to showing that he occupies a superior position vis-d-uis the animal world, inasmuch as he is able to interpret the nature of the other creatures by giving them their names.
Only in one like himself does he find a complement and an equal. It is true that the mythical form of the ancient tradition, according to which woman was placed on the same footing as man only by a supplementary creative act, has not been eliminated. But her position as ‘@er kenegdc, a help appropriate to man, is the basis of an I-Thou relationship which raises Man essentially above the level of the ani- mals, and offers him the proper fulfilment of his own nature only in association with another being like himself. With a view to this ful- filment man is granted the right to subordinate the ties of blood to those of this newly developing partnership, thus depriving of its power the patriarchal order of the family with its strict demands of fiietas. The value thus set on the relation of the sexes is markedly dif- ferent from the evaluation of woman generally obtaining in the
1 Gen. 2.7.
s Cf. pp. 47ff. above.
s Gen. 2. rg.
122 THE PLACE OF MAN IN CREATION
ancient world, which regarded her simply as an instrument of pleasure and procreation. Here woman as well as man is singled out from the rest of creation as uniquely capable of life as an individual, and set at the side of God. It is in keeping with this that Man stands at the head of created things as the one to whom the care of the paradise garden is entrusted.
(c) The affirmations of the first Creation story, that of Gen. I, also
point in the same direction. Here, however, we are already at the stage of the formulation of theological concepts; and of these the one which sums up the statements of the Priestly author about the God- given value of Man is that of the ‘image of God’.1 In the ancient Israelite account which formed the basis of his own the ~eZem’4%im, the image of God, may once have been conceived in a quite concrete way. This is suggested not only by the stories of God’s appearing in the form of a man2 but also by the accounts from Babylonian culture of the creation of Man, which frequently appear to have a physical similarity in mind.3
This is confirmed by the fact that the narrator expresses the idea of likeness to God by the term JeZem, the meaning of which unquestion- ably points in this direction, as Humbert and Kiihlers have proved as clearly as anyone could desire. The word denotes a statue, that is, a plastic representation, and finally also a two-dimensional image or a drawing. If therefore Man is created &eZem ‘~Z8zim, in accordance with the picture of God,* then it is certain that the original idea was of Man’s outward form as a copy of God’s; and here Man’s upright posture and movement may have been a major ingredient in the likeness.7 That this idea was, in fact, an innovation on the part of the Priestly writer himself (so Kohler) is as improbable as anything could well be; rather, like so much else in his account, it will have come down to him by way of an older tradition, the existence of which is indicated also by the Babylonian texts just mentioned. It is consonant
1 Gen. I .26f.
s Cf. pp. 2of. above.
s This applies particularly to the Sumerian liturgy of the goddess Nintu from Kish (cited in A. Teremias, Handbuch der altorientalischen Gektesaeschichtea, 1925,
p. 88) ,‘who fashions”a male being in the image of the god Asshirgi,-and a female &’
her own image. The creation of Enkidu in the Gilgamesh Epic (I.gof.) as a being like Anu is also to be understood in this sense.
4 i?tudes SUP le &it duparadis et de la chute dans la Ge&e, 1940, pp. 153ff.
5 ‘Die Grundstelle der Imago-Dei-Lehre, Genesis 1.26’ T< 4, 1948, pp. 16ff.
6 This is a case of normative b& not be’t essentiae.
7 So Kohler, op. cit., pp. rgf.
MAN COMPARED WITH OTHER CREATURES 123 with this that he does not adopt the crucial word (selem) as an adequate description of the picture of Man which he has in mind, but takes care to define it more closely; be~aZm&zi is both limited and weakened by the addition of kidmu’t&zu’. This abstract formation from the root dmh signifies ‘similarity’ or ‘likeness’; added to SeZem as an explanatory qualification its only possible purpose is to exclude the idea of an actual copy of God, and to limit the concept to one of similarity. With regard to this usage of &mdt Ezekiel, whose vocabu- lary in other respects also has many points of contact with that of the Priestly writings, is particularly illuminating. He uses it in ch, I to emphasize the purely approximate nature of the correspondence between his description of the enthroned universal Lord and the reality; in his portrayal both of the mixomorphic bearers of the throne, and of the God who appears above them, he continually inserts the word demu’t in the sense of ‘something resembling . . .’ In this way everything is ‘moved on to the level of that which cannot be perceived by the senses, the spiritualized, the symbolic which is at once unreal and more than real’ (Kohler) . In other contexts, too, the expression serves to ‘weaken the degree of likeness’ (Kohler).r This suggests that the Priestly narrator no longer had any intention of taking feZem to mean a simple copy of God’s outward form, but that what was in his mind was something for which the concept ‘copy’ was only an inadequate description, a correspondence between God and Man which could only figuratively be characterized as the endow- ment of Man with God’s ‘image’. Hence in Gen. 5.1, where he alludes once more to the creation of Man, he can content himself with the term demfit, and leave out feZem altogether.
In fact, the concept of the image was perfectly susceptible of such extension. Thus in Babylonian it occurs in the senses of the form in which something is manifested, of a representative, a substitute, or an equivalent, and can itself be replaced by the concept sikru, meaning
‘name in the sense of nature’.2 The spiritualization which the Priestly author had in mind should be sought in a similar direction,3 for this, in fact, accords with the whole pattern of his spirituality. It is he who
1 Cf. II Kings 16.10; II Chron. 4.3; Dan. 10.16.
s For the evidence cf. J. Hehn, ‘Zum Terminus “Bild Gottes” ‘, Sachau- FestschriJt, Igrg, pp. 41ff.
s For this reason it is impossible to follow Kijhler in defining P’s weakening of the old terminology as implying that men were created in the (upright) form of God, yet nevertheless not completely so, but only in the degree to which it looks as if they had this form. A clear concept cannot be combined with saving clauses of this kind.
.I24 THE PLACE OF MAN IN CREATION
better than any other writer knows how to convey vividly, both here and elsewhere, the absolute otherness and transcendence of the divine nature, he who eliminates all trace of anthropomorphism from his theophanies, and acknowledges no angel to mediate between God and Man because of his strict refusal to bring the divine realm down into the sphere of the creaturely. It was no longer possible for such a writer to speak without demur of a physical copy of God; he was bound to tv to comprehend ;eZem in a wider sense, to advance from the idea of a tangible image to that of parabolic similarity.1 Such an advance was, in fact, made easier for him by the Israelite view of human nature, which conceived the body very definitely as the form in which the psychic life was expressed. Strict separation between body and soul is here unknown; Man does not /cove a body and a soul, he is both of them at once.2 This made it possible, when con- sidering the relation of the $em Whim to the human body, to bring to the fore as the decisive element its function as the medium of spiritual and personal life.
There are other pointers in the work of the Priestly writer, in addition to this use of demz& to the shift of the ;eZem-concept from physical similarity to spiritual correspondence. First of all there is the choice of the plural suffix in the crucial declaration: ‘Let us make man in OUT image.’ It does not matter whether the fact that the divine invitation is issued in the plural is explained as an address to the heavenly court surrounding God,3 or rather, bearing in mind that this conception is not found in P, as a plural of deliberation with oneself4 or of reflection;5 or again whether by thus dissolving ‘I’ into
1 That commentators should disregard these facts, and prefer on the basis of purely philological conjectures to saddle P with a physical correspondence between God and Man is part of their horror of any so-called ‘breakthrough’, a horror which makes them sceptical in face of a creative reshaping of traditional spiritual values. The appeal to the theophanies and anthropomorphisms of the OT in order to support an exaggeratedly physical interpretation of the &em Whim though it may certainly be appropriate for ascertaining the original meaning of the concept (cf. p. 16 above), can have no significance for the usage of P, since here such expressions are not omitted by accident, but are avoided from a clear sense of their inadequacy.
2 Cf. section II of this chapter, pp. 131ff. below. J. J. Stamm has also recently laid emphasis on this insight: Die Gottebenbildlichkeit des hfenschen im AT (Theol.
Studien 54), 1959. -
a So, most recently, A. Alt, ‘Gedanken iiber das Ktinigtum Jahves’, Kleina Schriften zur Geschichte des Volkes Israel, 1953, p. 352.
4 Cf. H. Holzinger ad Zoc. in Kautzsch-Bertholet, Die h&lige Schrift des AP, Ig22.
6 Cf. F. Horst, ‘Face to face. The biblical doctrine of the image of God’, Inter-
pretation, 4, 1950, pp. 259ff. 0
MAN COMPARED WITH OTHER CREATURES I25
‘we’ the writer should be taken to imply the combination in the person of the deity of a wealth of different powers,1 or whether he is using the vulgar idiom which substitutes ‘one’ or ‘we’ for ‘I’ in order to avoid a premature use of the first person.2 In any of these cases the reference to creation as ‘in our image’ instead of ‘in ‘my image’ is definitely aimed at avoiding an altogether too narrow connection with God’s own form,3 and at changing the naively materialistic conception of earlier times into a more vaguely worded correspon- dence between the human and divine natures.4
In keeping with this is the way in which the Priestly thiriker speaks of the passing on of the image of God from Adam to his son Seth.5 His stress on the fact that Seth was conceived in the likeness and after the image of his father, thus placing &mat first, may not be without significance. In so careful a stylist this inversiop must spring from a deliberate intention of turning the reader’s thoughts away from physical similarity (which indeed is found equally in the parents and young of animals, and cannot therefore be regarded as itself especially marvellous) toward a spiritual definition of the human image, summing up that which is distinctively human. This is not contra- dicted by the writer’s explanation of the inviolability of human life compared with that of the animals.6 Though the divine protection of Man is based on the JeZem ‘elghim, the writer is certainly not thinking primarily, or even at all, of the difference between human and animal bodies, but of the psychophysical totality of human existence, which bears the stamp of a fundamentally different kind of life, and thus has reference to its creator.
If therefore we wish to define correctly the content of the ;eZem
‘eltjhirn, we cannot be content with lexical data, but first and foremost must ask in what form the divine nature was revealed to the Priestly writer. Now, it is clear that in his account of creation everything from 1 A. Dillmann, Die GenesisS, 1892, ad Zoc. This conception comes closest to the old Trinitarian one, which has recently been revived ixi a distinctive form by K. Barth. Barth assumes that the words refer to a God who is One, yet nevertheless has within himself the distinction between I and Thou (Church Dogmatics III, I, ET, 195% P. w).
2 L. K6hler, op. cit., p. 22.
* So also W. Baumgartner.
4 This is all the more understandable in view of the fact that heathen ideas of the place of the divine pattern in the creation of Man also included the element of sexual differentiation. In the Sumerian liturgy mentioned above the male being is fashioned in the image of the god, the female in the image of the goddess.
6 Gen. 5.3.
6 Gen. 9.6.