Gender and the Bible
Genesis 1:26-27
"Then God said, 'Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them."
This is interesting to me. Initially the plural "us " and "our image" are used when the idea of mankind's creation is brought up, suggesting multiple identities, but ultimately the pronoun shifts to male at the creation event. If it is truly the male identity of God that ultimately creates both male and female in his image, would this not suggest that the male image of God, from our perspective, if perceived by a human would actually be seen as both male and female? If this is the case, would then the "us" image be presently incomprehensible?
In Hebrew, based on my admittedly limited research, nouns are gendered. יהוה (YHWH), is treated a masculine noun, although it seems that the rule of thumb is that words ending in ה (H) are feminine. I'm sure I had more in mind for this post, but I'm kind of doing a "draft clearing" thing at this stage, so I'll leave it here.
Comments
Post a Comment