"Image of God" -- meaning and usage in ancient times?

[GakuseiDon]

Does anyone have any sources or ideas for how "man in the image of God" was used in ancient times, up until the first few centuries CE (i.e. pre-LC ), outside of its application to Jesus? What part was the image related to? Also in pagan sources, if there are any (they seem to only have "gods in the image of men.")

Bible

Outside of Gen 1 and referencers to Jesus, there are:

Gen 9.6: Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man.

1 Cor 11.7 For a man ought not to have his head covered, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man.

1 Cor 15:48 As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.
9 And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.

2 Cor 3:18 But we all with unveiled face, beholding and reflecting like a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord Spirit.

Col 3:10 And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him:
11 Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free

It seems to be a combination of the physical (blood, covering heads) and the spiritual.

Apocrypha

2 Enoch 44:1-3: The Lord with his own two hands created mankind; and in a facsimile of his own face. Small and great the Lord created. Whoever insults a person’s face insults the face of the Lord; whoever treats a person’s face with repugnance treats the face of the Lord with repugnance.

Wisdom of Solomon 2:23: For God created man to be immortal, and made him to be an image of his own eternity.

Philo

http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/text ... book1.html

• Accordingly he, when recording the creation of man, in words which follow, asserts expressly, that he was made in the image of God--and if the image be a part of the image, then manifestly so is the entire form, namely, the whole of this world perceptible by the external senses, which is a greater imitation of the divine image than the human form is. It is manifest also, that the archetypal seal, which we call that world which is perceptible only to the intellect, must itself be the archetypal model, the idea of ideas, the Reason of God...
  
  So then after all the other things, as has been said before, Moses says that man was made in the image and likeness of God. And he says well; for nothing that is born on the earth is more resembling God than man. And let no one think that he is able to judge of this likeness from the characters of the body: for neither is God a being with the form of a man, nor is the human body like the form of God; but the resemblance is spoken of with reference to the most important part of the soul, namely, the mind...
  
  After this, Moses says that "God made man, having taken clay from the earth, and he breathed into his face the breath of life." And by this expression he shows most clearly that there is a vast difference between man as generated now, and the first man who was made according to the image of God. For man as formed now is perceptible to the external senses, partaking of qualities, consisting of body and soul, man or woman, by nature mortal. But man, made according to the image of God, was an idea, or a genus, or a seal, perceptible only by the intellect, incorporeal, neither male nor female, imperishable by nature...
  
  Every man in regard of his intellect is connected with divine reason, being an impression of, or a fragment or a ray of that blessed nature; but in regard of the structure of his body he is connected with the universal world. For he is composed of the same materials as the world, that is of earth, and water, and air and fire, each of the elements having contributed its appropriate part towards the completion of most sufficient materials, which the Creator was to take in order to fashion this visible image...

Lots more in Philo, but generally the same point: it is man's intellect (but not the body... maybe!) that is the image of God.

If anyone knows of any others, I'd appreciate you adding to this list. Thanks!

[Stephan Huller]

The image of God = Ishu = his man, Jesus

[Stephan Huller]

Consider the survival of this idea in the Pseudo-Clementines in the comical subplot of Faustus receiving Simon 'the standing one's' image and his desperate attempts to not appear like Simon for fear the authorities would arrest him.

[Leucius Charinus]

^^ The Clementine_literature was authored by an Arian after Nicaea

IMITATION OF GOD (Imitatio Dei), a theological concept meaning man's obligation to imitate God in His actions.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... 09507.html

• There are similarities between the rabbinic conception of the imitation of God and that of the Greek philosophers, especially Plato (see Shapiro, loc. cit.). In the writings of Philo, the doctrine of imitating God is associated with the Platonic idea of becoming "like God" (see H.A. Wolfson, Philo, 1 (1947), 194–6).

You've already mentioned Philo.

[wiki]Adam_Kadmon#Philo[/wiki]

• The first to use the expression "original man," or "heavenly man," was Philo, in whose view the γενικός, or οὐράνιος ἄνθρωπος, "as being born in the image of God, has no participation in any corruptible or earthlike essence; whereas the earthly man is made of loose material, called a lump of clay."[4] The heavenly man, as the perfect image of the Logos, is neither man nor woman, but an incorporeal intelligence purely an idea; while the earthly man, who was created by God later, is perceptible to the senses and partakes of earthly qualities.[5] Philo is evidently combining philosophy and Midrash, Plato and the rabbis.

There will be precedents in Plato.




LC

[Clive]

The alternative term glory is very interesting. I thought that had sexual overlays. The opposite is modesty and ideas of veiling. Freud where are you when we need you!

http://www.sbl-site.org/publications/ar ... icleId=271

The apostle Paul wanted women to cover their tresses while praying because he — like the rest of Hellenistic culture then — believed that the long hair of adult females was the sexual equivalent of male testicles, according to a newly published study.

Citing writings from Aristotle, Euripedes and the disciples of Hippocrates, the "father of medicine," Troy W. Martin of St. Xavier University in Chicago said that Paul reflected the physiology of his time in believing that the hair of adult women "is part of female genitalia." Martin's article appears in the spring issue of the Journal of Biblical Literature.

Modern commentators on the First Letter to the Corinthians have often confessed their confusion over exactly what Paul was telling the Greek church to do. Martin contends that is partly because Paul used a sexual euphemism in 1 Corinthians 11:15 for a word translated as "covering." The word means "testicle" in works by Euripedes and a second-century AD Greek novelist, he said.

Ancient medical views of where semen comes from and where it goes help to explain Paul's convoluted argument in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16, Martin wrote. "Hippocratic authors hold that hair is hollow and grows primarily from either male or female reproductive fluid or semen flowing into it and congealing," he said. The brain is the place where this fluid is produced or at least stored, they thought. "Since hollow body parts create a vacuum and attract fluid, hair attracts semen," Martin said.

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

Modern commentators on the First Letter to the Corinthians have often confessed their confusion over exactly what Paul was telling the Greek church to do. Martin contends that is partly because Paul used a sexual euphemism in 1 Corinthians 11:15 for a word translated as "covering." The word means "testicle" in works by Euripedes and a second-century AD Greek novelist, he said.

The word is περιβολαίου. It is also used in the LXX

LXX-Dt 22:12 "You shall make yourselves fringes on the four borders of your testicle (περιβολαίων), with which you cover yourself."

[Stephan Huller]

four borders of your testicle (περιβολαίων)

but the Greek is the genitive plural. And the Greek word for testicle has always been orchis - the same word for 'orchids' unless I am mistaken.

[Stephan Huller]

I think you are mistaken. I think the singular περιβολαιον means 'foreskin' again unless I am mistaken. Funny, I've always found most women have little interest in distinguishing the various parts of the male anatomy.

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

It is an honor for you that you always defend the scholars.

Funny, I've always found most women have little interest in distinguishing the various parts of the male anatomy.

Absolutely right. The exception is the case when male scholars connected the female hair with foreskin without reading the LXX . Let's try a singular (not quite so funny):

Isa 50:3
καὶ ἐνδύσω τὸν οὐρανὸν σκότος καὶ θήσω ὡς σάκκον τὸ περιβόλαιον αὐτοῦ
I clothe the heaven with blackness and I make sackcloth his testicle.

Ex 22:26 If ever you take your neighbor’s cloak in pledge, you shall return it to him before the sun goes down, 27 for that is his only testicle (περιβόλαιον), and it is his cloak for his body; in what else shall he sleep? And if he cries to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate.

[Clive]

I think we need to explore Greek ideas of the birds and the bees to be clearer about these "issues"! And not just stick to religious texts. For example, this discusses Greek beliefs about semen and hair

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2 ... id=3738032

It was a tradition
of Hippocratic medicine that semen is carried from the brain or head to the sex organs
by two veins from which blood could be let behind the ears. ...

And things get very interesting when medical history and politics is taken into account!

This study examines the evolution of Greek and Roman medical conceptualizations of preputial aesthetics, utilizing evidence found in classical medical texts as well as clues from literature, legal sources, and art. A conclusive picture emerges that the Greeks valued the longer prepuce and pathologized the penis characterized by a deficient prepuce--especially one that had been surgically ablated--under the disease concept of lipodermos. The medical conceptualization of lipodermos is also placed in the historical context of the legal efforts to abolish ritual circumcision throughout the Seleucid and Roman empires.

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/bhm/summar ... odges.html