Thomas Romer in his book The Invention Of God(Harvard University Press; 2014) has this to say about that verse:
The fact that “man” in the image of god is male and female may refer to the tradition of the divine couple(Yhwh and Asherah) , transposed to the human couple, or it may express that god contains within himself male and female functions…
From the same book:
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Both the Hebrew and the Christian Bibles open with this well-known statement. In the first chapter of Genesis, “god” has no proper name. This might seem completely unsurprising if we assume that the Bible is a monotheistic book. If there is only one god, why would he need a proper name?
Upon closer inspection, however, we encounter our first surprise. The Hebrew word that is translated as “god”—’ elõhîm—has a plural ending and could also be translated as “(the) gods.” One god or several gods? The same word may express both the singular and the plural, and only the form of the verb indicates which is intended. This ambiguity may perhaps be intended to prevent us from making a firm decision on one of these possibilities to the exclusion of the other. Could the author perhaps be suggesting that the one god subsumes in himself a diversity of gods?
Interestingly, in Egyptian religion you find both concepts: humanity created in god’s image and a god incorporating all of the gods/goddesses and having masculine/feminine qualities.
This is found in Egyptian religion:
Gods and Men in Egypt: 3000 BCE to 395 CE(Cornell University Press; 2005) Françoise Dunand, Christiane Zivie-Coche
In the instruction for King Merikare, the author goes so far as to tell us that the creator god concieved the world for the sake of humankind:
‘Well, provided are men, the herd of the god. It is for them that he made the sky and the earth. It is for them that he repulsed the greed of the water. It is so that their nostrils might live that he made the breezes, for they are his images, issued from his flesh. It is for them that he rises in the sky: it is to nourish them that he made plants, herds, birds, and fish.’
Ancient Egypt Investigated: 101 Important Questions and Intriguing Answers(IB Tauris,2013) Thomas Schneider
Ever since Egyptian texts became widely known in the second half of the nineteenth century, scholars began searching for ancient Egyptian parallels to biblical texts…
Numerous religious concepts also have Egyptian parallels: man as God’s image, the concept of God as shepherd, the weighing of the heart, the forming of men on a potter’s wheel, the discovery of sacred books in order to legitimize religious reform, and so forth.
Monotheism and Polytheism, Jan Assmann
A passage in the Instruction for Merikare speaks of the ways that God cares for humans as his cattle or herd, in terms strongly reminiscent of biblical anthropocentrism:
Humans are well cared for,
the livestock of god:
he made heaven and earth for their sake,
he pushed the greediness of the waters back
and created the air so that their nostrils might live.
His images are they, having come forth from his body.
The Egyptian god encompassing all the gods and goddesses:
Egyptian Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of Ancient Egypt(Oxford University Press,2002) , Geraldine Pinch
Before creation begins there is no division into genders. The creator seems to include both the male and female principles. Creator deities were commonly called “the father and mother of all things.”…
In many Egyptian sources the creation of life involves three elements: the creation of a body, the transfer to that body of some part of the divine essence of the creator, and the animation of the body by the breath of life…The second element, the transfer of the divine essence, eventually led to the concept that all deities, or even all living beings, were not just made by a transcendent creator but were in some sense forms of the creator.
From Akhenaten to Moses: Ancient Egypt and Religious Change(The American University in Cairo Press, 2014), Jan Assmann
The culmination of these tendencies was reached when the whole pantheon came to be seen as just aspects of one supreme god. “All gods are three,” we read in an Egyptian text, which then states that these three gods are just aspects of One God:
All gods are three:
Amun, Re, and Ptah, whom none equals. He who hides his name as Amun,
he appears to the face as Re,
his body is Ptah.
All gods are three, and these three are encompassed and transcended by a god who is referred to only as “He,” whose name is Amun, whose cosmic manifestation is Re, and whose body, or cult image, is Ptah. Even the name of “Amun,” the “Hidden One,” is just an epithet screening the true and hidden name of this god, of whom another hymn states:
People fall down immediately for fear
if his name is uttered knowingly or unknowingly.
There is no god able to call him by it.
The above quote shows that they also had the concept of a trinity.
Genesis in Egypt the Philosophy of Ancient Egyptian Creation Accounts(Yale Egyptological Seminar, 1988) James P. Allen
“Chapter 90” continues the theme of Amun’s preeminent causative role by explaining how the various “developments” of the creation in fact derive from, and are manifestations of, Amun himself. The entire pantheon is nothing more than the sum total and image of the creator, whose existence precedes theirs (lines C2-6). The first elements of the creation—the Primeval Mound and the sun—as well as the pre-creation universe that surrounded them, all emanate from the creation (lines C7-9). The primordial Monad, and its first development into the void and the sun, are also his manifestations (lines C10-17). And his was the voice that pronounced the first creative utterance, shattering the stillness of nonexistence and setting the entire process of creation in motion (lines C18-26).
The above quote shows that the creator created through speech or the “word”.
“Amun and Amun-Re”, Vincent A Tobin in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt: Volume 1
During the New Kingdom, the theology of Amun-Re at Thebes became very complex. His position as king of the gods increased to a point that approached monotheism. In Amun-Re’s most advanced theological expressions, the other gods became symbols of his power or manifestations of him- he himself being the one and only supreme divine power. This absolute supremacy of Amun-Re was eloquently expressed in the sun hymns found in the eighteenth dynasty tombs at Thebes. As Amun, he was secret, hidden, and mysterious; but as Re, he was visible and revealed. Although for centuries Egyptian religion had been flexible and open to contradictory mythological expressions, the Theban theology of Amun-Re came close to establishing a standard of orthodoxy in doctrine.
Adoration of the Ram: Five Hymns to Amun-Re from Hibis Temple, David Klotz
So did you establish your throne in Ankhtawy,
As Amun-Re, Ba Lord of the firmament,
These (both) mean: your form in the initial moment,
When you arose as Amun-Re-Ptah.
This is another example of a “three-tier” world or, more appropriately, of a trinity. These three deities appear together at Hibis as recipients of a Maat-Offering scene. Noting the Graeco-Roman correspondences of Egyptian deities (Amun=Zeus, Osiris-Ptah=Hades, Re=Helios) one should compare the following Orphic statement quoted by both Macrobius and Julian: “Zeus, Hades, Helios Serapis: three gods in one godhead!” More explicitly dealing with Egyptian religion, Iamblichus aptly described the various aspects of the demiurge(Kneph): “The demiurgical intellect, master of truth and wisdom, when he comes in the creation and brings to light the invisible power of hidden words, is called Amun, but when he infallibly and artistically, in all truth, creates every thing, he is called Ptah (a name which the Greeks translate Hephaistos, only observing his ability as an artisan)”
Ancient Egyptian “Monotheism”: A Comparative Analysis, Stephen O. Smoot
‘All the gods are three: Amun, Re, and Ptah, without their equal. His name is hidden as Amun. He is Re as the face, his body is Ptah. Their cities are upon the earth, established forever: Thebes, Heliopolis, and Memphis, for eternity’
In what Gardiner unapologetically referred to as “a trinity in unity,”47 here Amun, Re, and Ptah are assumed into one divine being identifiable as various manifestations. Particularly striking here is the numerical (and thus grammatical) ambivalence witnessed in the use of both the singular and plural prenominal suffixes. So while Amun, Re, and Ptah are without their (.sn) equal and establish their (.sn) cities, his (.f) name is Amun, he (ntf) is Re, and his (.f) body is Ptah…
The “Trinitarian” formulation in P. Leiden I 350 find both antecedents and descendants that may help us make better sense of it. For instance, what is said of Amun-Re-Ptah in P. Leiden I 350 is similar to what is said of Atum in Spell 80 of the Coffin Texts (II, 39):
‘Atum achieved eldership through his power when he birthed Shu and Tefnut in Heliopolis; when he was One and became Three’
The determinative attached to “three” (?mt) in this text is a seated god (with plural strokes). Coupled with the verbs (wn, “to be,” followed by ?pr, “to become”), it becomes clear that “the doctrine emphasizes that Atum remained One after he became Three,” a theological conception which Griffiths compares to the position arrived at by the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451 concerning the Christian Trinity. That is to say, the ontological distinctiveness of Atum, Shu, and Tefnut as individual parts of the triad are acknowledged while nevertheless being unified as one in Atum. “By aid of the triad, divine plurality is explained as a unity.”…
‘Apis, Apis, Apis, that means, Ptah, Pre, Harsiesis, who are the lords of the office of sovereign. . . . The three gods denote Apis. Apis is Ptah, Apis is Pre, Apis is Hariesis.’
“What is implied” in this passage, Griffiths remarks, “is that these three gods are incorporated in Apis; they are, in effect, three forms of him. This recalls the doctrine of some early Christians that God in the trinity is revealed in three aspects or modes, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the primacy being assigned to the concept of God per se.”57 It also recalls the depiction of Amun-Re-Ptah in P. Leiden I 350 above, where the one god (Apis) is manifested as three separate deities (Ptah, Pre, and Hariesis) who are assumed into a composite unity while retaining their individual ontology. It indeed even seems reasonable to suppose that the earlier New Kingdom theology influenced this later Demotic text.
Solar Discourse. Ancient Egyptian Ways of Worldreading, Jan Assmann
The text deals with the transition from preexistence to existence, from inertness to movement. It interprets this moment as an act of selfevolution: the preexistent unity changes into a trinity. Mythologically speaking, this is the engendering of Shu, the god of air, and Tefnut, the goddess of moisture, by Atum, the primeval and creator god. But this text gives an interpretation of the ancient myth which anticipates the procedures of allegoresis by almost 2000 years. It interprets Shu as “life” and Tefnut as “truth”/”justice”/”order”. Life and Truth appear in this text as the cosmogonic principles par excellence, which determine the direction, the ‘sense’ of the first movement and by necessity determine the sense of existence as well. The name of Atum needs no interpretation because it has a clear meaning: the “whole” which at the same time means “the nonexistent”, thus referring to the idea of a transcendent primordial and preexistent unity/totality
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Image of God?
In the wider context of Mesopotamian mythology, it was meant literally. For example, in the myth of Enki and Ninmah, it is related that the task of caring for the world fell to the ‘lesser’ gods who grew weary of their labor and petitioned Enki for respite. In response, the god bade the mother goddess to make forms of clay that she would then ingest and birth as humans. The humans were tasked with carrying out the labor of the gods, which meant that they were fashioned to use the instruments that the gods had previously invented. Thus, they had the form of the gods, but lacked immortality.
It’s probably important that the creation of humans in Genesis 1 occurs in concert with one of the few uses of the plural ‘us’ (Gen 1:26). In most Mesopotamian myths, the creation of the world was the work of one god while the creation of humans was a joint effort. In the enuma elish, for example, it is Marduk who fights and slays tiamat, and constructs the world from her remains. The creation of man, however, is carried out by a consortium of gods, male and female, who create humans from clay and give them life using the blood of a slain god.
Egyptian Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of Ancient Egypt(Oxford University Press, 2004), Geraldine Pinch
In spite of this imperfection, the creator was said to have done many things to help humanity. In Coffin Texts 1130, the Lord of All describes his four good deeds. These were to create the four winds to give the breath of life to every body, to make the annual Nile flood so that everyone would get enough food, to create everyone with equal potential, and to make every person’s heart “remember the West.” This last deed implies that from the beginning humans were destined for an eternal life in the Beautiful West, the realm of the dead. A Middle Kingdom text set in the turbulent First Intermediate Period compares humanity with a flock and the (unnamed) creator with the good shepherd who cares for them. “For their sakes He made heaven and earth, and drove away the rapacity of the waters. So that their nostrils should live He made the winds. They are images of Him, come forth from His flesh. For their sakes He rises in heaven. For them He made plants and flocks. . . .”…
Ancient Egyptian “Monotheism”: A Comparative Analysis(NMC 1614-Ancient Egyptian Religion, 2018), Stephen O. Smoot
What’s especially striking is how “strongly reminiscent of [the] biblical” conception the sun god is in this passage. In language that closely parallels Genesis 1, the god of Merikare is said to create heaven and earth, flora and fauna, day (and implicitly night), and protect his human “livestock” who are “his images”. Unlike Aristotle’s “unmoved mover,” the god of Merikare, like the biblical God, is anthropopathic, listening with a parental care for his creations when they weep or are distressed.
Egyptian Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of Ancient Egypt(Oxford University Press, 2004), Geraldine Pinch
In many Egyptian sources the creation of life involves three elements: the creation of a body, the transfer to that body of some part of the divine essence of the creator, and the animation of the body by the breath of life…The second element, the transfer of the divine essence, eventually led to the concept that all deities, or even all living beings, were not just made by a transcendent creator but were in some sense forms of the creator.
Moral Values in Ancient Egypt(University of Zurich, 1997), Miriam Lichtheim
Understood as being rooted in human nature, grown to maturity during three millennia of recorded practice and discussion, Egyptian ethic possessed an essential rightness because it focused on the basic fact of human interconnectedness, and on the need to make that interconnectedness benefit all segments of the population… Altruism advanced early beyond the reciprocity principle of do ut des by emphasizing the obligation of everyman to care for the poor and disadvantaged, and, altogether, by stressing benevolence toward all… Gradually, belief in a last judgment, and piety, became closely associated with moral thought…
The increasingly sophisticated outlook on human affairs which evolved in the second and first millennia came to include foreign nations as peoples equally human, and partners in the adventures of individual and national existence. The gods above were thought of as shepherds of all mankind… By the formulation of Coffin Text spell 1130, where the sun-god declares “I made every man like his fellow”, and by later formulations as well, the Egyptian made explicit what was implied in his ever repeated teachings on benevolence to all. He recognized the brotherhood of mankind. By this recognition his ethic was an ethic for everyone.
“Conversion, Piety and Loyalism in Ancient Egypt”, Jan Assmann, in Transformations of the Inner Self in Ancient Religions (Studies in the History of Religions)(Brill, 1999)
Pharaoh had to present himself to his people as the most powerful patron of all, as “the good shepherd” to use the favorite metaphor of royal ideology. The role of the patron is unfolded in a great variety of metaphors. Beside the good shepherd we find images such as the pilot, the steering oar, the father of the orphan, the husband of the widow, all of which will reappear, along with some new ones, in the discourse of personal piety…
Let us now return to the point from where we started, the movement of Personal Piety and the emphasis it laid on the heart and its decision for God… This development has a very strong parallel in the Bible and its covenant theology. The covenant theology is nothing other than the application of another political model, the lord-vassal-relationship to the religious sphere. The relationship between JHWH and His people is modelled upon the relationship between an overlord such as the king of Assur and a vassal king. In Biblical religion, we are dealing with the relationship between god and a collective subject called Israel. In Egypt, we are dealing with the relation between a deity and an individual…
The new Egyptian concept of God as formed within the context of Personal Piety inherits the traditional roles and images of the patron. Like the patrons of the FIP and the pharaohs of the MK, God is called pilot and steering oar, father of the fatherless, husband of the widow, judge of the poor. The new ideal of the pious one, on the other hand, inherits the characteristics of the client, his virtues of humbleness, modesty, self-control and “silence” as well as his status as an orphan, a poor one, a pilgrim and a mendicant… In the New Kingdom we meet with problems of a more individual kind. People are turning to god in search of a shelter from fear and anxiety, guidance in a pathless and unintelligible world, protection against persecution, human injustice, malign demons and deities, dangers of all sort including the fear of Pharaoh…
This is the point where piety differs from loyalism. No loyalist text has ever gone so far as to ask for placing the patron or the king into one’s heart… Now, with the transition from loyalism to piety, the idea of the heart-directed man turns into that of the god directed heart.
It is also worth noting the tension with royal ideology, with the king adopted as the son of the tutelary deity (2 Samuel 7:12-16, Psalm 2:7, 89:26-27). The egalitarianism here may address this special status of rulers, particularly since Genesis 1:26 uses the word רדה to refer to the dominion that every human being has over the whole earth and everything living on it.
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