Humankind as being created in the ‘image of God’ in the Old testament : possible implications for the theological debate on human dignity

CITATION: Bosman, H. L. 2010. Humankind as being created in the ‘image of God’ in the Old testament : possible implications for the theological debate on human dignity. Scriptura, 105:561-571, do:10.7833/105-0-157The original publication is available at http://scriptura.journals.ac.zaThis contribution provides a survey of existing scholarship on the nature and extent of the image of God/imago Dei' according to the Old Testament. Some of the aspects that will be discussed are: - Image in the physical sense with the focus on selem in Genesis 1 - humankind as representing the divine. - Image in a spiritualized sense with the focus on demut in Genesis 1 - humankind as resembling the divine. - Image as attribute or relationship - in conversation with Barth and Bonhoeffer. A few concluding remarks will be made about human dignity and Old Testament anthropology as a theological synthesis between the Egyptian emphasis on humankind as a royal being and the Mesopotamian (Assyrian and Babylonian) view of humankind as a slave to do the most menial of work.http://scriptura.journals.ac.za/pub/article/view/157Publisher's versio