September 2005

Today in Religion 101

Today was the day for Unit 2B: The Exodus from Egypt. The reading assignment was Exodus 5-15, with a few of my own comments about “the geography of the exodus” and two brief articles from the web (neither scholarly, but both good for introducing undergraduates to the topic) on the historical value (if any) of the exodus narratives.

In class, the lecture focused a lot of attention on the problems of using the exodus narratives for historical reconstruction. I divided the issues up into “puzzles that inhibit understanding” (e.g., ambiguity about the locations of the Yam Suph and Mt. Sinai and debates over the time frame for the exodus) and “problems that inhibit belief” (e.g., miraculous/supernatural elements and especially lack of (Egyptian) textual or (any) archaeological corroboration. I described for the students some of the ways that people have tried to deal with these issues, focusing on three “mediating approaches” in between the extremes of completely rejecting the biblical account and completely denying the historical, archaeological and even textual problems. The three “mediating approaches” I mention are interpreting the exodus story as using compressed narration (Asiatic slaves escaping little by little from Egypt over a long period of time, and later telling their collective memories as if they all happened in one big event), assimilation of small-group experiences into large-group narratives (a small group experiencing something like the exodus, and eventually having their story adopted by the larger group of Israelites into which they had been absorbed), and reduction of the exaggerated numbers in, well, Numbers, to create a more realistic exodus scenario.

After dealing with the historical issues, I turn to literary-thematic issues. First I engaged the students in discussion about Pharaoh’s hardened heart, ultimately suggesting to them that the plagues have nothing to do with “beating Pharaoh into submission so that he would let the Hebrews go” and everything to do with keeping Pharaoh around so as to show God’s power (explicit in Exodus 9:14-16). In the first lecture, I had time to talk about a 3×3+1 pattern in the plagues, shown to me long ago by my teacher John Willis; but I ran out of time before I could get to that material in the second lecture.

Please feel free to download today’s PowerPoint presentation.

And we wonder why Johnny can’t do math

I just heard on the news that a military celebration called “Fleet Week” is going on right now in San Diego. Fleet Week lasts for a month. Proof positive that the military is full of day-age creationists.

Yesterday in Religion 101

Yesterday we started into Unit 2 of Religion 101. Unit 2 surveys the books of Exodus through Judges, or the “premonarchical period” in the biblical narrative. Unit 2A treats “Moses and the Name of God.” The preparation guide directed students to read several passages in which the God of Israel is referenced or addressed by different names.

To begin the session, I ask the students to report to me the different ways in which they, if they are Christians, address God in prayer, or how they have heard Christians address God in prayer (at Pepperdine, our mandatory “convocation” program comes close to ensuring that all students have heard at least a few prayers). Then I ask those who have studied other languages to name the words for “God” in the non-English languages they know. After that, I try to get students started thinking about the referential significance of names by ask questions like: “If an English-speaking Christian prays to ‘God,’ and a second English-speaking Christian prays to ‘Lord,’ are they praying to the same deity?” Almost all students say “Yes.” “What if an English-speaking Christian prays to ‘God’ and a Spanish-speaking Christian prays to ‘Dios’?” Again, almost all say “Yes, that’s the same deity.” “What about an English-speaking Christian who prays to ‘God’ and an English-speaking Jew who prays to ‘God’?” The simple majority of students say that’s the same deity, but (shockingly) not with the overwhelming numbers as on the other questions. “What if an English-speaking Christian prays to ‘God’ and an Arabic-speaking Christian prays to ‘Allah’?” After clarifying that I did say “Arabic-speaking Christian,” most students say “That’s the same deity.” “What about an Arabic-speaking Christian who prays to ‘Allah’ and an Arabic-speaking Muslim who prays to ‘Allah’?” This time, half or fewer say “That’s the same God.” Then I briefly explain that ancient Hebrew and Moabite were more or less regional dialects of fundamentally the same language, and ask, “What about an ancient Israelite who prays to ‘God,’ and an ancient Moabite who prays to ‘God’?” Most students say “That’s not the same deity.” “But, those of you who know your Bible, what if the Moabite’s name is ‘Ruth’?” Students raised on Sunday School change their answer to “Yes.”

From there I go into the more academic part of the lecture. I introduce the students to the terms “polytheism,” “henotheism,” and “monotheism,” which are serviceable though not perfect. I explain that the majority of real-life Israelites were actually basically polytheists, while the biblical writers and their “heroes” among the biblical characters generally express henotheistic (I use Jephthah as an example) or monotheistic (Deutero-Isaiah) outlooks.

After that, I start to survey the (genuine) “names of God” in the Tanakh: ‘elohim, ‘adonai, Yhwh, and ‘el. I also discuss the little saying in Exodus 34 that my colleague Tim Willis calls the “character name.” In connection with the name Yhwh, I briefly discuss the tradition of not pronouncing the Tetragrammaton, and show the students a photograph of an scroll from the DSS that has “YHWH” written in an archaic script (the rest of the manuscript uses square Aramaic letters). I don’t go into Albrecht Alt’s “God of the fathers” thesis very far; I just barely broach it by introducing the “God of PN” locution as something that emphasizes a personal relationship between the god and the person (or group) named. I don’t dig too far into the history of any particular tradition, but I do tell students that at least some of the ‘el-compounds tend to be associated with specific places (here again I reflect Alt, but don’t discuss him directly).

Now that students know about the names Yhwh and ‘el, I introduce the concepts of “inclusive monotheism” and “exclusive monotheism.”

After that, I take just about fifteen minutes to talk about the tensions created by Exodus 6 and the use of the name Yhwh by characters in Genesis. This involves introducing the students very briefly to Jean Astruc and Julius Wellhausen, and the classic Documentary Hypothesis. And that’s all I can get done in 75 minutes.

Please feel free to download the PowerPoint slides used in this session.

Microsoft disappoints … again

This morning when I launched PowerPoint I got a notice from the Microsoft Auto-Updater that a new service pack was available for Microsoft Office 2004 for Macintosh. Oh, how I hoped this would be the fix for that eternal plague, the dreaded Error 1025 when trying to connect Microsoft Entourage to a Microsoft Exchange server. I currently use Apple’s Mail application, and it works fine, but I would like the integrated calendar, address book, etc. that in Entourage is one program, and some of Entourage’s other features like the Project Center. But I’m not willing to have to click away an error message every stinking time the Inbox refreshes. But … no such luck. I installed the service pack, hopped over into Entourage, connected to the Exchange server, and boom: Error 1025.

I was also fervently hoping that this would fix the problem with RTL text in Word. Up to now, Word always wanted to rearrange my Hebrew characters, quasi-randomly “capitalize” them, and so on. Well, this latest service pack does nothing to help in this regard. Not one thing.

Lately I’ve been having a lot of problems with Word encountering a bug, launching Microsoft Error Reporting, and then both programs going nonresponsive. Maybe at least that problem will be solved in this SP. We’ll just have to wait and see.

If only there were really good alternatives. I sometimes use Mellel, but it doesn’t handle images as well as Word and doesn’t have a robust macro capability. I recently downloaded NeoOffice/J but was mightly underwhelmed by its presentation capabilities. NeoOffice/J is definitely not (yet) a PowerPoint-killer. The text editing module might do as a substitute for Word, but I found its headers and footers hard to manipulate. Also, since NeoOffice/J doesn’t use the standard Macintosh open/save dialog boxes, it’s kind of a pain to navigate around when opening a file.

Ah, well, So I continue to use flawed programs because I can’t find a satisfactory alternative. Sigh.

More on Mazar’s excavations

Paul Nikkel has posted some great pictures of Eilat Mazar’s Jerusalem excavations over on Deinde. Check them out!

Recently in Religion 101

On Friday, September 16, the topic for Religion 101 was “The Patriarchs and the Covenant.” The preparation guide summarizes the biblical story of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob for the students, directing them to read certain key episodes. The lecture focused on the concept of covenants. Particularly important is the description of three power dynamics in ancient Near Eastern covenants: the suzerain-vassal dynamic (overlord tells underling what to do), parity dynamic (equals negotiate what each other should do), and promissory dynamic (overlord tells underling what overlord will do). We next examine the Abrahamic covenant-making episodes (Genesis 15 and 17) in more detail, emphasizing the function of circumcision in Genesis 17 and the “pieces” ceremony in Genesis 15 (using Jeremiah 34 as an interpretive clue). Our attention to the other parts of the Abraham narrative focus on those episodes of questionable patriarchal morality, on the way to a “theology of (unmerited!) election.” I intended to work in a brief discussion of how each of the three major worldwide monotheistic religions today links itself to Abraham, and there’s a chart of that in the PowerPoint slideshow, but in the actual event I ran out of time before getting to that part of the lecture.

On Tuesday, September 20, we focused on the Joseph novella. The preparation guide directed students to read selected chapters from the Joseph novella, and summarized the parts in between (skipping Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38 and focusing on Joseph himself). In the class session, I gave the students a break from lectures and we watched Andrew Lloyd Webber’s delightful Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (the film version starring Donny Osmond). I offer the students the option of writing a brief comparison and contrast of the biblical story and the musical for extra credit. Since it was “movie day,” there is no PowerPoint slideshow for this session.

Historiography at Endor

>A few days ago, Jim West posted the following on his blog:

Since the Bible mythologizes history, I come to my direct question for Joe, and Ken, and Tyler and others who have suggested that the Bible is “historical”. A yes or no answer will suffice- 1 Sam 28:6-14 tells the tale of the necromancer of Endor. Did it “happen” as the Bible tells it, is it “history”, or not?

If it did not happen- why is it “unhistorical” while the story of Saul is “historical”? What can the criteria be for your conclusion that a story within a story is not history while the larger story itself is?

I’m finding this “roundtable” (”roundblog”?) discussion interesting, so I thought I’d chime in with a few thoughts of my own. Sorry for taking so long to get around to this (actually, I’ve been slowly adding to drafts in my Blogger dashboard for several days), but I’ve been really busy offline lately.

First, a couple of musings on “presumption of (non-)historicity.” Part of the problem we have in assessing the historicity of the “Saul at Endor” narrative is that we have only one witness to any such event, namely, 1 Sam 28:6-14 itself. (1 Chron 10:13 does not represent a tradition independent of the Deuteronomistic history). Historians tend to want multiple attestation. In fact, multiple attestation is even a biblical principle for establishing the truth of a report:

On the evidence of two or three witnesses the death sentence shall be executed; a person must not be put to death on the evidence of only one witness. (Deut 17:6 NRSV)

A single witness shall not suffice to convict a person of any crime or wrongdoing in connection with any offense that may be committed. Only on the evidence of two or three witnesses shall a charge be sustained. (Deut 19:15 NRSV)

But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. (Matt 18:16 NRSV)

This is the third time I am coming to you. “Any charge must be sustained by the evidence of two or three witnesses.” (2 Cor 13:1 NRSV, evidently “quoting” Deut 17:6)

Never accept any accusation against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses. (1 Tim 5:19)

Now of course I am not saying that the relevant biblical writers lay down rules for historiographical methodology in these passages, but I do think these verses at least suggest that modern historians who systematically insist on multiple attestation as a methodological principle are by no means thereby revealed as impious infidels. By the principle of multiple attestation, we would have to be somewhat agnostic about the story of Saul at Endor, since we have only one source attesting to such an event.

On the other hand, the principle of multiple attestation, as methodologically sober as it is, does present us with some serious difficulties when we are dealing with periods from which few records of any kind have survived (and even 2 Samuel is hardly a contemporaneous record, but rather a later narrative of a real or imagined past). Clearly, multiple attestation has some positive evidentiary force, but must single attestation therefore necessarily have negative evidentiary force, especially when dealing with contexts where multiple attestation might not even be a reasonable expectation? Once again, I intend that as a genuine conversation starter, not as a rhetorical question.

If mono-attestation is used as a negative criterion, then there is nothing more to say than “we can’t verify that Saul ever existed, much less that any specific event narrated about him ever happened.” For the moment, however, and for the sake of argument, I will for the moment speak as if multi-attestation is a good positive historical criterion but mono-attestation need not necessarily be a strong negative criterion. It is well within the range of possibility that a real person might be attested in only one documentary source. Nowadays, for example, many people live and die and are mentioned only one time in any sort of archive: namely, in their obituary. A thousand years from now, if all an investigator has to go on is a stack of newspapers, if s/he were to apply mono-attestation as a negative criterion to the obituary section, then s/he would have to discount the existence of a great many people who actually lived and breathed.

But this brings up the important question of genre. Does the book of Samuel itself constitute historiography, or is it something else? This is one place where Jim West and Joe Cathey sharply part company, it seems to me. Jim ardently proclaims that biblical narratives like the book of Samuel are theology, not history, while Joe continues to perceive some sort of historiographical intention on the part of 1 Samuel’s author(s)/editor(s). I confess to not being quite sure how to find my way through these questions. 1 Samuel certainly looks historiographical. Indeed, according to M. Noth and others who have followed him and refined his hypotheses, the entire Deuteronomistic History was written to provide a “historical” explanation for the dissolution of Israel and especially of Judah. If one of the major intentions lying behind the Deuteronomistic History is to answer the question “Why did Israel/Judah come to an end?” then answering in a narrative form makes sense, at one level, only if the authors believed they were representing an authentic past.

Even if it be accepted that the author(s) of Samuel had at least partially historiographic motives, that would not make every narrative therein historically accurate. Indeed, expansions and free invention of dialogue and even events are, as I understand it, characteristic features of early Hellenistic historiography (e.g., Herodotus). So even if we grant Samuel the genre label “historiography” (perhaps modified by adjectives like “theological”), as I am personally inclined to do, not only should we not then conclude that everything inside is reported “as it happened,” but we should actually expect to find materials within that were invented by the “historiographer” for his evaluative and theological purposes.

Now the invocation of Herodotus brings up an interesting point. Herodotus reports that, just before engaging the Persians at Thermopylae, the Spartans consulted the Oracle at Delphi. The Battle of Thermopylae itself is attested in at least two Greek sources relatively close to the time frame of the event (Herodotus, who was a baby at the time of the war, and Simonides, an old man at the time of the war). However, as far as I know (and my knowledge of Thermopylae is very limited), only Herodotus mentions this consultation. If so, we are dealing with a mono-attested event: the consultation of the Oracle at Delphi by the Spartans. This might lead us to doubt that it happened, or to insist that we have to remain agnostic. On the one hand, we might argue that it is a perfectly plausible thing for the Spartans to do, to consult the Oracle before warfare; on the other hand, we might argue that this is just the sort of thing that Herodotus might have thought they should have done, and therefore he invented the scene. It seems to me that the best one can do is register which arguments one finds more persuasive, but in the end, certainty will be elusive. If this analogy is valid, then in thinking about 1 Samuel, we would be led to say that the idea of a king consulting a spiritist before a battle is plausible, but we would have no real basis upon which to say whether the Deuteronomist here reported a prior tradition or invented a new tradition, much less whether that tradition was accurate. In terms of historical methodology, we are still left here with agnosticism with regard to the historicity of the Endor narrative.

Let us for a moment, for the sake of argument, suppose that we accept the notion that the Deuteronomist had at least partially historiographical intentions, and therefore that the Deuteronomist believed that a King Saul had really existed, and that it is at least “plausible” that King Saul would seek divine or supernatural guidance before entering a battle, just like the Spartans. Now Jim asks us to evaluate whether Samuel’s shade really arose from the depths and spoke to King Saul. We might also want to ask, by way of analogy, whether the Delphic Oracle answered the Spartans, on the eve of Thermopylae, in perfect hexameter. Curiously, there are plenty of folk who would accept the one and reject the other as historical (I am specifically not identifying which is “the one” and which is “the other,” because it cuts both ways). Historians who eschew supernatural explanations for anything have good methodological reasons for doing so, because such can never be proven or disproven by historical research. However, it is, in principle, a historical question: either Samuel’s ghost really did speak to Saul at Endor, or didn’t (and somebody later made up the story, or that part of the story); either the Delphic Oracle really did speak to the Spartans in hexameter, or didn’t (and somebody, e.g., Herodotus, later made up the story, or at least the oracle part, or framed it in hexameter).

The problem is, quite frankly, that we can never know (without judicious use of a working time machine). The stories simply are not susceptible to verification or falsification using any of the means at our disposal. For this reason, our a priori commitments, whether methodological or confessional (or fill-in-the-blank), exert a strong influence on our approaches to such stories.

For reasons outlined above, I would have to say that the Deuteronomist had genuine historiographical motives, though not exclusively so, and one must understand that “historiographical motives” for the Deuteronomist were much different from the historiographical motives of, say, a Ken Burns or Thomas Cahill. But that does not mean that the narratives in the Deuteronomistic History necessarily “tell it as it was.” We have to contend with the possibilities of Deuteronomistic embellishments of traditional source material, and even outright invention of speeches, events, etc., not to mention that those things may have gone on at any point in the tradition prior to the Deuteronomist.

In sum, unless we a priori rule in or out the historical accuracy of given biblical texts, for many stories we will simply never be able (cross-apply my time machine caveat) to verify or falsify them. So, Jim, you whether the Endor narrative “tells it as it was.” It might. Was there a King Saul? Maybe. I’m inclined to think the Deuteronomist didn’t make him up, especially since the Deuteronomist preserves competing traditions about him, and the author of the book of Esther seems to take his existence and some of the stories about him for granted at least as traditions known to his or her readers. But I don’t know for sure. “Maybe” is the best I can do. Did the Philistines press an attack against King Saul’s Israel? Maybe. It’s the sort of thing an expanding coastal people group might do to their immediate inland neighbors, but saying that this particular battle at this particular place is beyond the reach of historical methodology. Did King Saul visit a necromancer at Endor? Maybe. It’s not implausible that a king would want such advice before a battle; in fact, the story depends precisely on the plausibility that a king would want such input. But again, an absolute “yes” or “no” is beyond the reach of historical methodology. Did Samuel’s shade really rise and speak to Saul? Here we might think that historical research would provide a definite “no,” since historical methodology normally rules out the supernatural as a matter of course. While I do not particularly believe in ghosts, since I do believe that God exists and is supremely powerful, I cannot rule out the possibility that such might have happened on this occasion. So, “maybe.”

Does the Endor narrative “tell it like it was”? Maybe. The possibilities range from “it’s a complete invention of the Deuteronomist” to “Saul went to the necromancer but experienced nothing supernatural” to “there was a Battle of Gilboa but Saul didn’t consult a necromancer” to “there was a Saul but no Battle of Gilboa” to “there was no Saul or Battle of Gilboa,” and these are not exhaustive permutations. In my judgment, historical methodology cannot adjudicate this question and therefore, I believe the best answer to Jim’s question is “I don’t know.”

Well thanks, Microsoft

The Microsoft Mactopia newsletter for September 2005 just arrived in my e-mail inbox, and once again I am completely underwhelmed. The newsletter has a couple of “back-to-school” articles about using Office 2004 in education. Yawn. This is old news, Microsoft. The newsletter encourages teachers and students to manage their schedules using Entourage, but still doesn’t offer a solution to the persistent and vexing Error 1025 problem (Microsoft Entourage always returns an error when checking a Microsoft Exchange inbox, yep) despite a year’s worth of complaints on the Microsoft support forums and third-party support forums. The newsletter encourages students to use Word to write for their English, history, and science classes, and in fact I do require my students to turn in their papers digitally in Word, RTF, or PDF format. But it’s a good thing Microsoft didn’t mention Hebrew or Arabic studies classes in their blurb, because the several-hundred-dollar Microsoft Word 2004 still doesn’t handle right-to-left Unicode as well as the $29 Mellel. Oh, but now we can download Microsoft Messenger 5.0 with a brushed metal skin. Yee-haw. Microsoft, how about giving us some actual bug fixes? Every program I use except for MS Office and Dreamweaver can mix left-to-right and right-to-left Unicode with ease. Why can’t Word? Apple’s bundled Mail program works beautifully with an Exchange server (via IMAP), why doesn’t Entourage? This fluffy stuff is getting old, Microsoft. And yet I keep using Word, because there’s no other word processor out there that offers the same level of page-element positioning and a robust macro language. I guess this is what co-dependency feels like.

Today in Religion 101: “The Image of God in Humanity”

Today’s Religion 101 session focused on the concept of the “image of God” as expressed in Genesis 1:26-27 and, in different ways, other passages like Psalm 8. The preparation guide for today’s class instructed students to read Genesis 1-3 (they have already read 1-2 for an earlier class session), 5:1-5, 6:1-9:17; Psalm 8. The reading assignment also included one page from Barry Bandstra’s Reading the Old Testament, where he introduces different ideas about what “the image of God” means, an essay by Desmond Tutu on the “image of God” as the basis for human rights, an essay by Lynn White that blames Christian “dominion theology” for contemporary ecological problems, and an address by Pope John Paul II on the World Day of Peace, January 1, 1990 (find hyperlinks to the Bandstra page, White essay, and papal address inside the preparation guide).

In the lecture, I try to address three basic questions: (1) What does the phrase “image of God” signify? (2) What are the limits to humanity’s “image of God”? (3) What difference does the “image of God” concept make?

On the point of bare meaning, I survey four possible understandings of the “image of God” concept: (1) People bear a physical resemblance to God. (2) People share a spiritual nature with God. (3) God and people are both inherently relational. (4) People function as God’s representatives or proxies on earth. Personally, I think the first three have serious problems, and the fourth is the “plain meaning” of the key texts in Genesis 1; 9 and Psalm 8, but in the lecture I try to help students see how each suggestion makes sense and at least some of the weaknesses of each suggestion.

With regard to the limits of the imago Dei, I spend some time with Genesis 3 and 6. One of the major themes of Genesis 3, of course, is the distincion between gods and humans. In that story humans gain, in a meaningful sense, godlike intelligence, but they are denied access to godlike immortality. In that sense, the story struggles with the experience of being “in apprehension how like a God” (to [mis]quote Shakespeare, or was it Captain Picard?) but also very fragile with regard to mortality. One of the “points” of Genesis 3 is that people are not gods and cannot become gods; although humans are godlike in meaningful ways, there will be no apotheosis for humanity. As for Genesis 6, it opens with that bizarre story about divine-human interbreeding. Once the students start to wrap their heads around the “divine council” motif in Genesis 1; 3; 6; etc., I hope that they will see that Genesis 6 attacks a similar problem to Genesis 3, but from the other angle. If Genesis 3 takes a stand against the possibility of apotheosis for humans, Genesis 6 takes a stand against the idea of an infusion of “divine DNA” into humanity. Any such god-men belong only to the distant past, to a corrupt age that God wiped away in the flood.

Finally—and there is so much to say on the other two points that this usually just the very tail end of class—I ask students to consider what impact the “image of God” belief would have on interpersonal, environmental, and biomedical ethics. If you really believe that humanity bears in some meaningful way the image of God, then how does that affect the way you treat other people? the way you treat the rest of creation? the way you pursue knowledge? I end the class by showing a clip from The 6th Day starring our own dearly beloved “Governator,” in which the “mad scientist villain” opines that believing in the “image of God” concept means that we should push biomedical technology as far as we can, including human cloning.

If you wish, please feel free to download the PowerPoint slideshow for this session (it’s a short one).


Duane commented:

How do you explain, say, Genesis 5:3, in which, like Genesis 1:27, both צלם and דמות are used but in the opposite order,

“And when Adam has lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.?”

This sure seems like a physical resemblance to me. At least this passage seems to me to point to your first interpretation rather than the one you prefer.

I commented:

Duane,

In the class lecture for this session, I try to give students a feel for both the strengths and the weaknesses of each of the various proposals for understanding “the image of God in humanity.” Gen 5 is precisely one of the passages that I use to show students why the “physical resemblance” interpretation not only makes sense, but might be the most basic lexical sense of the words. In that connection, I also introduce the fact that God often appears to people in the Hebrew Bible’s narratives in the form of a human male, and that ancient Near Eastern gods outside of Egypt were almost uniformly depicted anthropomorphically, not theriomorphically, by their worshipers. Ezekiel’s vision in Ezekiel 1 would also offer a degree of support for this interpretation, insofar as Ezekiel uses the word דמות to indicate that something looked like something else.

On the other hand, there are at least four reasons to question whether the “physical resemblance” interpretation is the best understanding of Gen 1:26-27 specifically:

1. Although biblical narratives often speak of God appearing to human beings in the form of a human male, they also speak of God appearing to human beings in other forms, especially fire and thunderstorm. When God assumes a visible form in a biblical theophany, we must precisely understanding that God is assuming that form for purposes of interacting with humans, and the human form that God took to interact with Abraham at his tent does not necessarily reflect God’s “true form” any more or less than the flame form that God took to interact with Moses at the burning bush, the thunderstorm/volcanic eruption at Sinai, etc.

2. In Gen 1:26-27, the “image of God” applies not just to human males, but to male and female; in fact, I would go so far as to say it applies to humanity as a whole rather than to individual humans, though this point is more debatable. At any rate, the gender-inclusiveness of the “image” concept problematizes (though by no means disproves) the “physical resemblance” interpretation. It would, at most, suggest a sort of “humanoid” God, who was either androgynous or “biologically” neuter, in order to embrace both male and female within the “physical resemblance” as Gen 1:26-27 demands. This is perhaps more of a “puzzle” than a “weakness,” but it clearly does not beset the verse in Gen 5 that describes Seth (a male son) as his father Adam’s צלם and דמות.

3. דמות and the root verb דמה can certainly be used to indicate physical resemblance, as in Gen 5 and Ezek 1, but can also be used for looser comparisons, particular in Isaiah 40.

4. I have a sort of vague sense that the biblical aniconic tradition doesn’t make much sense if the “physical resemblance” interpretation of the “image of God” in Gen 1:26-27 is adopted, although I don’t think I can yet articulate this sense very well. Certainly, other ancient Near Eastern cultures who depicted their gods anthropomorphically in sculpture did not infer aniconism from the resemblance between humanity and people.

For me, however, the strongest evidence in favor of the “functional/dominion” reading is simply that this is what Gen 1:26-27 itself highlights. Bandstra’s discussion briefly explains a few considerations in favor of this conclusion.

Eilat Mazar’s Jerusalem excavations

Ken Ristau has posted some comments on Eilat Mazar’s excavations. Ken has some particularly useful things to say about the state of archaeological investigation in Jerusalem and the stratigraphical issues raised.

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