Liberating Image , livre ebook

“Up-to-date interpretations of the Imago Dei have long been needed. Richard Middleton has accomplished this considerable feat with great learning and sophistication, both by gathering the issues so clearly and accessibly and by providing an important advance in thinking about this theme. He has presented an expert historical and literary analysis, ranging widely across extrabiblical and biblical literature. Even more, Middleton has drawn out significant theological dimensions of the text and demonstrated the ethical implications of his analysis—with a lively engagement of contemporary concerns. Readers will encounter here fresh ways of considering both God and the human beings created in the image of that God.”
— Terry Fretheim, Luther Seminary
“Middleton’s study of the Imago Dei represents biblical scholarship at its best. Here is a book that displays careful and meticulous research, balanced judgment, and insightful application, all of which are clearly and logically presented in a most readable fashion. By engaging meaningfully with current ethical debates that utilize the concept of Imago Dei, Middleton highlights the importance of his conclusions for contemporary discussion. Readers will find their horizons broadened and their preconceived ideas challenged by a work that contributes very positively to a better understanding of what Genesis 1 means when it states that human beings were made in the image of God.”
— T. Desmond Alexander, Union Theological College, Belfast
“J. Richard Middleton examines an exegetically worn phrase, ‘the image of God,’ and gives it a theological freshness. His careful attention to the Genesis context as the decisive factor for understanding this intriguing concept is a good example of exegetical method.”
— C. Hassell Bullock, Wheaton College

© 2005 by J. Richard Middleton
Published by Baker Academic a division of Baker Publishing Group Grand Rapids, Michigan BakerAcademic.com
Baker Academic edition published 2022
ISBN 9781587431104
Ebook edition created 2013
Ebook corrections 11.22.2021, 11.12.2024
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4412-4278-5
Unless otherwise noted, all scripture quotations are the author’s own translation.
Scripture quotations marked NRSV are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission.
Translations of ancient texts throughout this book reproduce the translators’ typographic features (for example, question marks, brackets, parentheses, ellipses), which represent either (a) words missing from the original and supplied by the translator or (b) the translator’s guess at the meaning of a difficult text. Foreign words in square brackets were inserted by the author.
Baker Publishing Group publications use paper produced from sustainable forestry practices and postconsumer waste whenever possible.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Endorsements
Abbreviations
Figures
Preface
Part 1: The Meaning of the Image
1. The Challenge of Interpreting the Imago Dei
2. The Imago Dei in the Symbolic World of Genesis 1
Part 2: The Social Context of the Image
3. An Ancient Near Eastern Background for the Imago Dei
4. The Matrix of Mesopotamian Ideology
5. Genesis 1–11 as Ideology Critique
Part 3: The Ethics of the Image
6. Created in the Image of a Violent God?
7. Imaging God’s Primal Generosity
Index
Notes
Back Cover
Abbreviations
ANET
Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (ed. James B. Pritchard; 3rd ed.; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969)
CAD
The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (Chicago: Oriental Institute, 1956–)
COS
The Context of Scripture (ed. William W. Hallo and K. Lawson Younger Jr.; 3 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1997–2002)
MT
Masoretic Text
NRSV
New Revised Standard Version
Figures The Substantialistic Interpretation of the Imago Dei The Relational Interpretation of the Imago Dei The Functional Interpretation of the Imago Dei The Structure of Literary Panels in Genesis 1:1–2:3 Creation as a Cosmic Building Anomalies in the Pattern of Panels in Genesis 1 Variations in the Fiat Patterns of Genesis 1 The Mandebrot Set The Lorenz Strange Attractor
Preface
T his book is the fruit of years of academic reflection on the meaning of humanity as the image of God ( imago Dei ) in Genesis 1. I first began researching the subject during the nineteen eighties while I was a graduate student in biblical studies at Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School in Rochester, New York, and this research came to fruition in my interdisciplinary doctoral work at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto (in a joint degree program with the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam).
But the impetus behind this book is more than academic. Its origins are deeply rooted in my own life-long struggle with the question of identity. Intersecting vectors that have impacted this struggle—and the resulting book—include the extreme introversion and shyness I experienced as a child, which generated a sense of profound insecurity about the world, and the fact that I grew up white in predominantly black Jamaica and underwent the typical adolescent struggle with identity precisely at the time that the newly independent island was looking to Africa as a symbolic resource for defining a postcolonial cultural identity. On top of this, the sacred/secular, otherworldly dualism that pervaded my foundational church experience led to a personal crisis during my undergraduate theological studies (at Jamaica Theological Seminary) concerning the status and validity of my career choice of teaching and research (instead of pastoral ministry, which was the vocation of choice among nearly all my fellow students). This crisis led me to explore a biblical theology of creation and culture as the foundation for life in the so-called “secular” world. Finally, having immigrated from Jamaica to Canada as a newly-married young adult, and then moving from Canada to the United States a few years later, I came to know firsthand the dislocation and even alienation that being thrust into an alien culture often precipitates among immigrants and refugees (my wife and I finally settled on “Jamericadian” as an apt summary of our hybrid cultural identity). These varied experiences conspired to render the question of identity prominent in my consciousness over the years.
I don’t remember when I first came across the notion of humanity as imago Dei , but this soon became the single most seminal theological concept for my own developing self-image and the one I have reflected the most intensely on. This book is an attempt to bring together the fruit of years of academic and existential reflection on the meaning and significance of the imago Dei in Genesis 1. My aim is to make Old Testament scholarship on the creation of humanity in God’s image accessible as a resource for theological reflection on human identity and ethics in a world increasingly characterized by brutality and dehumanization. As such, this book is meant to facilitate an interdisciplinary conversation between theologians, ethicists, and biblical scholars on the imago Dei .
The book is structured as a complex argument that moves from an initial exploration of the meaning of the image (part 1) to consideration of the image in its ancient Near Eastern context (part 2) to interrogation of the image concerning its implications for ethics (part 3).
Part 1 lays the foundation of the later two parts by exploring the basic meaning of the image. Chapter 1 addresses the question of the interpretive stance we adopt toward the imago Dei in Genesis 1, highlighting the issue of hermeneutical subjectivity. How might we go about discovering or articulating the meaning of the image in a manner that does not simply impose ancient or contemporary theological categories on the text? Specifically, does the imago Dei in Genesis 1 refer, as Old Testament scholars have suggested, to God’s delegation of power to humanity (a royal or functional interpretation)? This question is answered in chapter 2 by a close reading of Genesis 1:26–28, followed by attention to the literary patterns and broader symbolic world of Genesis 1:1–2:3.
Part 2 then addresses the question of the sociohistorical context that would have formed the background to the imago Dei in Genesis 1. Specifically, how plausible is the standard critical hypothesis of Babylonian exile as the context for Genesis 1? And how does the postulation of a particular social context contribute to the meaning of the imago Dei already explored in the previous section? These questions are addressed first by examining putative ancient Near Eastern parallels to the Genesis imago Dei notion, especially parallels with Mesopotamian royal theology (chapter 3), then by exploring in greater depth the broader Mesopotamian worldview (chapter 4), and finally by reading the imago Dei in the context of Genesis 1–11 as a critical alternative to Mesopotamian ideology (chapter 5). The exploration of the social context of the image both supports the royal/functional interpretation proposed in part 1 and reveals the radical, subversive potential of the imago Dei to ground a vision of human life that is alternative to unjust systems of power in the world.
Part 3 focuses on the question of ethics, specifically the possibility that violence is implicated in the creative activity of the God in whose image humans are c