And showing Moses his backside.

I just thought of something, maybe that was the first case of someone being mooned: Goddidit.

So "our image" means something other than what it is understood to mean, for all we know then, God could be a flying tea pot!

The verse goes:

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness:

The word used for 'image' means likeness, resemblance, and is also used in for instance Numbers 33:52, which says

Then ye shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, and destroy all their pictures, and destroy all their molten images

and in Genesis 5:3, where Adam is said to "begat [a son] in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth".

The word for 'likeness' means... well, likeness, similitude, and is used in verses such as Ezekiel 1:5, which goes:

Also out of the midst thereof [came] the likeness of four living creatures. And this [was] their appearance; they had the likeness of a man.

Not that any of this matters, as you'll soon hear. Just thought I'd mention it for your convenience.


I guess there are two ways to look at this. In a modern, matured Christianity, about ~2500 years removed from the writing down of these verses, it is quite self evident (unless you're Mormon) that 'image' does not mean physical likeness - it wouldn't really even make sense. But the other way is to have a more step-by-step, bottom-up view, and see if perhaps the conception of God was different to the authors than it is to modern Christianity. If so, then perhaps 'image' back then could have meant literal likeness, and the whole "And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen. " would make more sense?

And Jesus was blond and had blue eyes, which was why Hitler thought that God was a member of his pure race.

Mick wrote:Jesus was human in appearance because he took on the human form. This doesnt suggest that jesus is embodied now or that he has a human physical image. Feel free to google what image of god meant to the jews/christians guys.

He will have again when he returns presumably.

John

I love the way people who know very little about a whole lot of things, imagine that they have knowledge of nothing that the rest of us have to join an organization and pay over a tenth of our income to, in order to find something out about that nothing.

I don't have anything invested in this, so I don't see the point of pursuing it, but I'm not saying that Christians today (except some LDS people probably) believe that God was human-like in appearance, or that Jews today believe it either. I do believe, based on the way the scriptures go, that the concept changed over time though. I'd like to see a logical explanation where Exodus 33:23 is explained as purely metaphorical. Not that stuff isn't easy enough to make up, but.

I did Google 'image of God', and what I found was that there is no scholarly consensus on the matter, and this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_of_G ... _Imago_Dei

But you know... it's your religion, I don't really care anymore.

Yes men in dresses, thinking they can cure men who want to actually wear dresses from wearing them, and men who like men rather than women from being "that way!" I know a family, a very religious one, who pretends that their homosexual son's preference doesn't exist and that "they know they'll never have grandchildren and can accept that." But mention that he might be actually involved with someone and they go on about how that sort of thing will never be tolerated and that he would know better than to bring "that sort of person to our house" hello, "that sort of person" is already living in your house.