Made in the image of God
In this session we cover a brief overview of Genesis and look at what it means to be made in the image of God. The session concludes with some interesting information concerning the intelligence of ancient man - a real contrast to modern day thinking!
1. What do you think Genesis is all about?
2. What do you think it means to be made in the image of God?
3. What do you think Adam was like compared to us?
4. Is it a perverse sort of God who allows freedom of choice when He knows all the suffering it will bring?
Genesis is a book about origins. God is our creator. Genesis seeks, in part, to link the origin of the people of Israel with that of the world, relating in the process how various human characteristics and institutions arose.
All people are interested in their own beginnings, but Genesis differs from other ancient literature in that it downplays the heroic element of people's origins and in its place stresses God's role in them.
From Genesis (and on into the rest of the Bible), we learn about God's relationship to people and what he expects of them; almost everything else is subordinated to this purpose.
Seven major themes which occur:
Origins: Of the world, of humanity, of Israel, of us!
Blessing: From creation onward God bestows blessings on his creatures in general, and on the fathers and mothers of Israel in particular, and subsequently children as well.
Covenant: God enters into special relationships with people. He makes agreements. God Punishes Evildoing: God is against sin. He is not pleased with human failure to uphold justice and morality.
Promise: Ultimately, fulfilled in Messiah.
Sibling Conflict (Often With Younger Emerging the Victor): The order of nature (primacy of the firstborn) is overturned, demonstrating that God, not nature is the ruling principle in human affairs. God's ways are not our ways.
Testing: God tests those who are to carry forth his mission; the result is the development of moral character.
The stress on continuity and discontinuity in Genesis has one purpose: to make clear that God is in control of history. Human fertility and continuity in history does not come from magical rites, good works or decisions from 'gods,' but from a God who bases His rule on perfect justice. This God does not watch from the touchline but gets involved with human relationships.
Nature disappears as a ruling factor in human affairs, replaced by a principle of morality that is unshakable precisely because it comes from a God who is beyond the rules of nature.
The entire book of Genesis is replete with tension and continuity-threatening situations. There are barren wives, who along with husbands abuse servants and brothers vowing to kill brothers. There are men who are dealt with by God, and men who think they can deal with God.
There is the rise of pagan culture and perversion of the truth; there is the picking of unexpected people for amazing tasks and unexpected situations, where God sometimes does the opposite of what we would have done. (How would you have dealt with a man you promised to look after who later dumped his wife in someone else's Harem because he was scared of losing his life?)
Man is a killer and a healer; he builds complex civilisations and at the same time corrupts himself with so much of what he uses to protect himself.
Man's achievements in the arts and sciences have guaranteed him no happiness and no protection against the temptation to overreach and destroy himself. There is so much to look at, and so much to learn as we walk through parts of Genesis.
Made in the image of God - the intelligence of Ancient Man
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27
To be human is to be made in the image of God. What does it mean/entail?
Note Gen 1:26-28; (Gen 2 origin of human life rather than creation as a whole), Genesis 5:2-3 mentions image again, "He created them male and female and blessed them. And when they were created, he called them 'man'.
When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth." note also Gen 9:6-7. (MAN still in image of God, though image marred).
So three critical points in scripture concerning man in image of God:
1. highpoint of God's creative activity
2. at the beginning of new stage of human history after Eden
3. in the midst of God's new beginning with the human race after the judgement of the flood.
Rather than asking 'what is the image of God' we need to be asking the question, "What does it mean to be made in the image of God?"
Looking at the rest of God's creative work, we see that it is only man who enters into communion and fellowship with God. Therefore man has primarily been created for a relationship with God. He is capable of receiving great love and can learn to give this in return.
Humanity speaks of the only part of creation addressed by God, and told to be 'fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.
God created (Elohiym bara) us for relationship. Also morally upright. There was to be no contradiction between God's holy will and man's will.
Differences between man and animal:
Man was created a morally upright being. He could do what was right purely because it was right. He has the ability to say no, not because he was scared of being caught out if he did something wrong, but simply because it is wrong.
Capacity to learn from past. Animals can only learn from their experiences, we can learn from the experiences of past generations.
We have the capacity to think about the goal and purpose of our existence and to voluntarily improve ourselves. Animals are born essentially complete and change only by growing larger and stronger. There can be radical changes in the caterpillar which transforms into a butterfly; yet this improvement is not something that the caterpillar does voluntarily. No caterpillar can say "I don't like the idea of flying - I'm not going to become a butterfly or moth."
Animals do not have the ability to delay gratification - this is a uniquely human trait.
Man has the capacity to control anger - we can express it, reflect upon whether we want to express it at all, and if so, how and when.
Man has the ability to forgive the offender.
Note: man's educability, his capacity for complex symbolism and speech to express his thoughts, etc.
"The power of speech involves the power of abstraction and of self consciousness, and of delayed reaction and decision. It enables man to learn in a unique way and to pass on the substance of his learning so that culture has become cumulative."
Man is the only living creature that can be considered truly free when compared with the animal kingdom. Animals are completely under the domination of their bodies and cannot make free choices. The ability to defy a bodily desire is unique to human beings, (when an animal does it, it is simply doing so because of fear of retribution).
"When is suppression of desire uniquely human? When there is no possibility of detection and retribution, yet the person suppresses a desire and restrains himself only because it is morally and ethically wrong. This is something which animals cannot do."
Dr Tverski, Spirituality.
Some people emphasise man being morally upright, and speak of servitude etc. Such people may have had their own problems in understanding relationships. We can clearly see what 'image' is all about in Jesus - the perfect man.
Man was not created to be a slave - but to share in the love that resides within the Trinity. The world was created for man to benefit from. Man was created for growth. Man is incredibly powerful.
Image: Tselem = from root, 'to shade', 'illusion', 'resemblance', 'representative.'
Dominion: kabash - negative- tread down / positive- conquer. Creation is not to rule man!
Rule: Radah - rule, have dominion.
'Dominion' can leave us with the idea of brute force. Yet man's dominion over nature was not to be based on brute force or technological advancement, such as is the case today with disastrous results. Man's dominion was derived from, and patterned after, God's dominion over all creation, so that in this respect, too, man should exhibit the image and likeness of God in "knowledge" (Col 3:10) and "righteousness and true holiness" (Eph 4:24).
Something to think about
Read about Adam's first recorded act concerning creation: (Gen 2:19ff) and then Noah's first
recorded act concerning his involvement with creation (Gen 9:18ff). Can we learn anything from this, and if so, what?
What do you think of the following statement?
"The difficulty which civilised Western man in the world today experiences is in convincing himself that he has any special assigned status in the Universe, and upon the sense of instability which this uncertainty produces.
Many of the psychological disorders which are so common and distressing a feature of our time are, I believe, to be traced to this cause."
E.L. Mascall in 'The Importance of Being Human', Columbia University N.Y. 1958 p 18
"Spirituality in human beings is not an extra or 'superior' mode of existence. It's not a hidden stream of separate reality, a separate life running parallel to our bodily existence. It does not consist in special 'inward' acts, even though it has an inner aspect. It is, rather, a relationship of our embodied selves to God that has the natural and irrepressible effect of making us alive to the Kingdom of God - here and now in the material world."
Dr M. Jeeves in 'Mind Fields', Reflections on the Science of Mind and Brain, p130.
Ancient Man
The following information is taken from:
The Puzzle of Ancient Man' by D.E. Chittick.
Fingerprints of the Gods' by G.Hancock.
Keeper of Genesis' by R. Bauval and G. Hancock.
Unlocking the Mysteries of Creation' by D. Peterson.
God's Promise to the Chinese', by E. Nelson, R. Broadbeerry & G. Chock.
Man, Key to the Universe,' by Prof A. Custance (Doorway Papers).
Ancient cultures appear to emerge in a high state of technical development and then decline after a period of time. Associated with ancient cultures are concepts of astrology and an interest in astronomical measurementand the construction of large monuments for astronomical measurement.
For example, in a News and World Report dealing with the 'Lost Empires of the America's' (1990) W.Allman had this to say: "A recent series of stunning archaeological finds in South America has revealed that the Incas were merely the final act in an Andean civilization that was far older and far more sophisticated than ever imagined. New excavations have turned up huge stone pyramids and other monuments that date back nearly 5,000 years, to about the time when the Great Pyramids were being constructed in Egypt." (Note that Pyramids are not unique to Egypt; a pyramid belt is found around the world, including the Americas and Asia).
D.T. Bayard in "Early Thai Bronze Analysis and New Dates" in 'Science' 1972 writes, "I believe that it is possible to say with a high degree of confidence that a well-developed bronze technology was present in mainland Southeast Asia prior to 2000 B.C."
Dr Henry Morris in 'The Defenders Study Bible' (1995) writes, "Evolutionary archaeologists have attempted to organise human history in terms of various supposed 'ages' - Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, etc. The Noahic record, however, indicates that early men were very competent in both brass and iron metallurgy, as well as agriculture, animal husbandry, and urbanisation. It is significant that many kinds of bronze and iron implements are known to have been used in the earliest civilisations of Samaria and Egypt. The same is true of musical instruments, and it is evident that the science and art of metallurgy and music had been handed down from ancient times to these earliest post-Flood civilisations. Modern archaeology is confirming the high degree of technology associated with the earliest human settlers all over the world."
Around 1400 BC the Chinese were producing what is commonly accepted as the finest examples of bronze casting in the world, from any place or period. The Editor's of Life's "The Epic of Man" observed that the Chinese Shang Bronzes were "the finest objects of metal ever created by the mind and hand of man."
In Time magazine (Jan 13th 1975) we read this under the heading, "The Oldest Mine?" "Archaeologists once thought that Bronze Age people got their metals largely by chipping away at surface rocks; at most they would tunnel only a few dozen feet. The newly discovered mine shows that the Bronze Age miners were far more skilled and adventurous than that. Located at the base of towering, 2,200ft red sandstone cliffs, the mine contains a complex, multilevel network of some 200 shafts and galleries.Bronze Age miners were able to produce 22lb copper ingots that were 97% to 98% pure, a degree of purity not exceeded until modern times."
Charles Hapgood in 'Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advanced Civilisation in the Ice Age' (1966) writes, "Copies of very ancient maps such as the Piri Reis Map show that the ancients not only were aware of world geography, but that they accurately mapped it as well. For example, the entire coastline of Antarctica before the ice age was mapped including the location of the south geographic pole."
Graham Hancock in, 'Fingerprints of the God's' (1995) writes, "What is remarkable is that there are no traces of evolution from simple to sophisticated, and the same is true of mathematics, medicine, astronomy and architecture and of Egypt's amazingly rich and convoluted religio-mythological system."
The Nazca Desert (one of the driest in the world), south of Lima in Peru is famous for the lines, geometric figures and drawings of animals sketched on its surface (for example: Monkey = 400ft long and 300ft wide; hummingbird =165ft long; spider=150ft long; Condor = 400ft from beak to tail feathers; Lizard = 617ft long. As a consequence of extremely little moisture precipitation, the desert surface is not eroded by water. The pebbles that litter the ground absorb and retain the sun's heat, throwing up a protective force field of warm air. In addition, the soil contains enough gypsum to glue small stones to the subsurface. Nazca designs include animals that reflect the Nazca's version of the zodiac, and also straight lines that are over five miles long. How did they manage to do this?
Jim Woodman in 'Nazca: Journey to the Sun' writes, "By examining Nazca artefacts it has been learned that the Nazcas wove a very high quality black cloth with a very fine weave. It appears that this finely woven black cloth was used for constructing hot air balloons."
When a person died, the body was placed in a basket attached to the hot air balloon. A fire was built providing hot air to cause the balloon to rise. Because the covering on the balloon was black cloth, the sun's rays striking the black cloth kept the air inside the balloon warm. As the balloon and body rose up over the desert, the Nazcas claimed that the body was returning to be with the sun god. An actual demonstration of the fact that it is possible for a hot air balloon to fly over the Nazca Desert has been carried out using principles and materials known to have been available to the ancient Nazcas.
Stones for the ancient city of Sacsahuaman (near the present day city of Cuzco, Peru) are up to 20,000 tonnes in weight and were carved several miles away before being hauled to the city and put in position. The stones were carved so accurately that it is impossible to insert even a strip of paper into the joints between the blocks, despite all the intervening years.
There are examples of stone calendars from the Maya culture in Central America. These calendars are said to be more accurate than the one we currently use. Silvanus Morley, in 'The Ancient Maya' (1956) writes, "In modern Western society we still make use of a solar calendar which was introduced in Europe in 1582 and is based on the best scientific knowledge then available: the famous Gregorian calendar.Pope Gregory 13th's reform substituted a finer and more accurate calculation: 365.2425 days. Thanks to scientific advance since 1582 we now know that the exact length of the solar year is 365.2422 days.Strangely enough, though its origins are wrapped in the mists of antiquity far deeper than the sixteenth century, the Mayan calendar achieved even greater accuracy. It calculated the solar year at 365.2420 days, a minus error of only 0.0002 of a day."
National Geographic magazine (May 1974) carried the article, 'A Lady from China's Past'. The article spoke of an elaborate burial in an underground building, carefully engineered with protective layers of charcoal and white clay. In it were preserved corpses dating back over 2,100 years. Advanced knowledge would have been necessary to halt natural decay processes so immediately and for such a long time. In our modern age we are just beginning to understand such preservation by observing what the ancients did.
Some ancient human skulls reveal that cranial surgery was performed with at least some success on the Inca people of ancient Central America. The discovery of many skulls shows that the bone tissue partially refilled the surgical removal through normal healing processes.
Circa 1600 the historian Garcilasco de la Vega wrote these words concerning the ruined Bolivian city of Tiahuanaco: "There are gigantic figures carved in stone.these are much worn which shows their great antiquity. There are walls, the stones of which are so enormous it is difficult to imagine what huge force could have put them in place. And there are the remains of strange buildings, the most remarkable being stone portals, hewn out of solid rock; these stand on bases anything up to 30ft long, 15ft wide and 6ft thick, base and portal being all of one piece.How, and with the use of what tools or implements, massive works of such size could be achieved are questions which we are unable to answer."
Across the whole area of Tiahuanaco are Temples and Pyramids (sometimes Temples atop Pyramids). Many temples contain astrological charts and signs similar to our present-day Zodiac. The southwestern area of Tiahuanaco is known as the Kalassaya (Place of Upright Standing Stones). Scholars believe that the purpose of these huge stones was to fix the equinoxes and the solstices and to predict, with mathematical precision, the various seasons of the year. Certain structures within their walls appear to have been lined up to particular star groups and designed to facilitate measurement of the amplitude of the sun in summer, winter, autumn and spring. In addition, the famous 'Gateway of the Sun,' which stood in the north-west corner of the enclosure, is accepted as a world-class work of art, and thought by those who had studied it to be a complex and accurate calendar carved in stone.
Pyramids are found all across the world - note for example the city of Teotihuacan (25 miles north-east of Mexico City) with its Pyramids of the Sun and Moon and the Pyramid of the Quetzalcoatl (principal deity of the ancient Mexican pantheon), with a Temple within the citadel in which the Pyramid was built.
In Chichen Itza in northern Yucatan, Mexico, there is a 100ft tall perfect ziggurat with the Temple of Kukulkan. Its four stairways had 91 steps each. Taken together with the top platform, which counted as a further step, the total was 365. This gives the number of complete days in a solar year. In addition, the geometric design and orientation of the ancient structure had been calibrated with Swiss-watch precision. On the spring and autumn equinoxes, triangular patterns of light and shadow combined to create the illusion of a giant serpent undulating on the northern staircase. On each occasion the illusion lasted for exactly 3 hours and 22 minutes.
The Great Sphinx of the Giza plateau, Egypt, is 240ft long, 38ft wide across the shoulders, and 66ft high. It is worn down and eroded and was originally thought to have been fashioned during the period of Egyptian history classified as the 'Old Kingdom' on the orders of the Fourth Dynasty Pharaoh named Khafre who reigned from 2520-2494BC. However, some archaeologists believe that he was not the builder of the Sphinx, but the restorer. For example, Gaston Maspero, Director of the Department of Antiquities at the Cairo Museum in 1900, wrote: "The stela of the Sphinx bears, on line 13, the name of Khafre in the middle of a gap.There, I believe, is an indication of a renovation and clearance of the Sphinx carried out under this prince and consequently the more or less certain proof that the Sphinx was already covered with sand during the time of his predecessors." A contemporary stela, the so-called 'Inventory Stela' also found at Giza states that Khufu (Khafre's predecessor), saw the Sphinx, the implication thus being that Khafre could not have built the Sphinx.
In his Hibbert Lecture (1879) P. Lepage Renouf quotes an architect who examined the Great Pyramid. "No one can possibly examine the interior of the Great Pyramid without being struck with astonishment at the wonderful mechanical skill displayed in its construction. The immense blocks of granite brought from Syrene, a distance of 500 miles - polished like glass, are so fitted that the joints can hardly be detected."
Some archaeologists (no, not just Christian ones!) believe that the damage to the Sphinx was caused by massive water erosion. R.A Schwaller de Lubicz, the French mathematician and symbolist who wrote Sacred Science (1961) said, "A great civilisation must have preceded the vast movements of water that passed over Egypt, which leads us to assume that the Sphinx already existed, sculptured in the rock of the west cliff at Giza; that Sphinx whose leonine body, except for the head shows indisputable signs of aquatic erosion". Another researcher, J.West writes, "The problem is that the Sphinx is deeply weathered up to its neck. This necessitates 60ft floods, (at a minimum) over the whole of the Nile Valley. It was difficult to imagine floods of this magnitude." Could the Sphinx be pre-flood?
Nobody knows how the Valley Temple and the Sphinx Temple at Giza were built. The Valley Temple is almost square, measuring approximately 130ft along each side. The Sphinx Temple is more pronouncedly rhomboidal with side lengths of about 100 ft. Both were originally around 40 ft high and are built out of massive limestone core-blocks and both were at one time fitted with inner and outer casings of granite. All blocks used weigh between 50 and 200 tons.
In 1997 there were only two land-based cranes of the 'counter-weight and boom' type able to handle loads in the 200 ton range. In 1996 a crew of twenty men had to work for six weeks to prepare the ground in order to bring a crane in and lift a 200 ton boiler into a factory. The crane engineer responsible for lifting the 200-ton boiler was shown photographs and given technical details concern the blocks of the Valley Temple and asked whether he thought that he could hoist similar blocks into place with his crane. He replied: "I'm looking at what you're showing me here, and looking at the distances involved. I don't know if we would be able to pick the 200 ton blocks from the positions that I see available to us.In my business we pick heavy loads, and we look to see how heavy loads were picked by other people before us. And seeing how they moved these heavy blocks, 2-ton blocks, thousands and thousands of years ago, I have no idea how they did this job. It's a mystery and it'll probably always be a mystery to me, and maybe to everybody."
For over 4,000 years (until the Manchus were deposed in 1911), the reigning emperors of China travelled annually to the border of their country and sacrificed and burned young unblemished bullocks to their God, ShangDi, whose name means literally 'the Supreme God'. Confucius (551-497 B,C,) said of this Border Sacrifice: "He who understands the ceremonies of the sacrifices to Heaven and Earth.would find the government of a kingdom as easy as to look into his palm!"
One of the earliest accounts of the Border Sacrifice is found in the Shu Jing (Book of History) compiled by Confucius, where it is recorded of Emperor Shun (C.2230 B.C.) that "he sacrificed to ShangDi"). From an early date the Chinese were already offering sacrifices to ShangDi on an altar of earth on the top of Mount Tai in Shan-Dong.
The Inventor of the original Chinese characters, inscribed on tortoise shells and bones, knew and believed in an identical account of creation and earth's beginnings as found in the Hebrew Scriptures. For example, the following words, recorded in the collected Statutes of the Ming Dynasty, were recited at the Border Sacrifice, clearly showing that ShangDi is the Creator of the world: "Of old in the beginning, there was the great chaos, without form and dark. The five elements (planets) had not begun to revolve, nor the sun and moon to shine. You, O Spiritual Sovereign first divided the grosser parts from the purer. You made heaven. You made earth. You made man. All things with their reproducing power got their being."
The Great Pyramid at Giza in Egypt has a base that covers 13.1 acres, and is estimated to weigh about six million tons, consisting of roughly 2.3 million individual blocks of limestone and granite. To these had once been added a 22-acre mirror-like cladding consisting of an estimated 115,000 highly polished casing stones, each weighing 10 tons, which had originally covered all four of its facets. These facing blocks had been removed for the construction of Cairo after being shaken loose by a massive earthquake in AD1301. The pyramid is 450ft high. Each side of the pyramid (at base), measures as follows: north side = 775ft 4.9891 inches; west = 775 ft 9.1551 inches; east 775ft 10.4937 inches, and south = 756ft 0.09739 inches. The error between the sides is a tiny fraction of 1% on an average side length of over 9063 inches. No-one knows how they built so precisely.
The Great Pyramid was thought to have been built by the Pharaohs of the Fourth Dynastsy (Khufu, Khafre, Menkaure - 2575-2467 B.C.). However, unlike any other pyramid there are no ornamental pictures on any of the interior walls, and no sign of any break-in, or of any burials or burial treasure ever having been in the pyramid. In light of this, there is the possibility that the pyramid was already present long before the Fourth Dynasty. What was it for?
There are three much smaller 'subsidiary' pyramids lying immediately to the east of the Great Pyramid, and also three deep and narrow rock-cut pits which resembled giant graves. These were found to be empty by archaeologists, but were shaped as though they had been intended to enclose the hulls of high-prowed, streamlined boats. To the west of the monument were a further two boat-shaped pits, one of which, although sealed, had been investigated with fibre-optic cameras and was known to contain a high-prowed sea-going vessel more than 100ft long. The other pit excavated in the 1950's had revealed an even larger seagoing vessel (141ft long). Made of cedar wood, it was in perfect condition, and has a displacement of around 40 tons, with a design that incorporates all sea-going ship's characteristic properties, with the prow and stern higher than that of an Viking ship, to ride out the breakers and high seas. Why were these boats by a pyramid in the desert?
Now go back and look at the answers to your questions. How can you add to them? Do we see that Adam was created a very powerful and highly intelligent being?
What does this session tell you about God?