Imago dei or image of God in the Coptic of Genesis 1:26

by koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Kyungbook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

14 December 2009

Coptic is a language that was popular for Christians in Northern Egypt and still today there are Orthodox Coptic Christians who read the Coptic translation of the Bible and their Church Fathers for their devotion.

We do not know of Coptic translations before 250 CE or later. In fact, the Coptic manuscripts of the Bible that are preserved dated much later, mostly after the sixth century CE.

We are taking from a Coptic manuscript (probably later than the 6th century CE) this text of Genesis 1:26 on the Image of God doctrine and look at their translation of it.

Coptic cannot improve our understanding of the Word of God since the original Hebrew of the consonantal text of the Masoretic Tradition (without the vowels) is the very Word of God. The Modern paradigm by E. Tov et al (1993) that there were a multiplicity of Vorlages of Hebrew in the second temple period, is based on speculation due to variants found at Qumran. There is another explanation for the variants at Qumran so that one cannot operate with this theory of the text of the Hebrew for the Second Temple Period. Although the theory is popular and conventional in Textual Criticism, it is overlooking or unaware of many finer points that displays the opposite, namely, that there was one standard text which was considered perfect and canon for that period in Hebrew. This researcher's doctoral dissertation for the DLitt et Phil (Unisa 2004) was about this revision of data.

This researcher studied Coptic under prof. dr. Johann Cook who is well known in Septuagintal LXX studies and publications. Johann Cook was interested in Genesis, especially the Sabbath description in Genesis 2:1-3. Cook saw some differences between the Septuagint LXX and the Hebrew on these verses and wrote an article whether God worked on the seventh day? On VAN WYK NOTES his theory was carefully investigated and can be respectfully dismissed due to reasons offered by investigating the issue of these words in the LXX in a wider context, including the book of Deuteronomy.

Genesis 1:26

"Then God said: Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." (NASB)

Literal Hebrew reads

"And God said: Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens/sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth"

Comments

1. There is a difference between this Coptic manuscript of the 6th century CE and the Byzantine "corrupt transmitted or retrieved LXX" which reads not "our likeness" as here in the Coptic with ΤΕΝ-INI "our" in front of the noun for likeness.= INI. It is repeated twice in the Coptic for both image and likeness but in the so-called LXX, the second our is missing and it reads here  ̀̀ομοιωσιν = likeness. The Targum Onkelos, which is a literal Aramaic translation or paraphrase at times, of the Hebrew original, reads similar to the Hebrew an affix 1 person plural "our" at the end of the word kdmwtn' (Aramaic) which resembles the Hebrew of the original kdmwtnw in the Masoretic Text. 

This is very important since scholars are claiming that the Coptic slavishly copied the LXX and stick to the format of the LXX. It is not exactly the case. Whether there was attempts later to adjust the early Coptic text "away from" the "corrupt LXX" form of the Byzantine era, is not certain. This means that we are wondering whether the 6th century CE Copts felt uncomfortable with some expressions of the LXX that are deviating from the Hebrew and that they chose to align those cases with the Hebrew or other Semitic literal form, like the Targums and probably also the Syriac.

2. Nearly all Latin translations from TE CY until Jerome, all used the 1 person plural affix "our".  

3. The following church fathers do not use "our":

Clement, Barnabas, Theophilus, Hippolitus, Origen, Eusebius, Athanasius, Chrystostom, Cyril, Theodotion.

4. There are no manuscripts of the corrupt Greek LXX that reads "our". Text 111 is dependent on the Latin (see B. Fisher, Vetus Latina [Freiburg: Verlag Herder, 1951-1954], 26).

5. Why did the Greeks avoid saying man was made in our [God's] likeness but had no problem saying man was made in our [God's] image? The Greeks had two words for likeness namely homo-ousin and homoi-ousin. The first one is exactly, absolutely identical but the second one is similar but not identical. That is the one they used here but they did not want to say similar to us [God] but only similar.

The answer is not simple. The reason is that we do not have a note somewhere explaining why they did this. Thus, everyone is postulating, me included. Some may suggest that they are trying to deny the Trinity and thus hint for a unity position. That is why they did not want to say "our likeness". This is not correct either, since the 1 person plural pronoun is used with "our image". Another explanation is probably that an image was known by heathens to be a form of someone else but very different since images cannot speak. To say that Adam was like an image of God is then easy to understand but when on say that Adam was very similar to God, is problematic since sinful humans [from which vantage-point they were explaining] cannot be similar to God otherwise gods are also sinful. This idea may have been resented by their Hellenistic and Byzantine societies. The Hellenistic period spans 300 BCE until 300 CE, a period of over six hundred years.

The homoousia and homoiousia debates in the early church regarding the nature of Jesus may have also contributed to their leaving the pronoun out. They may have wanted to reserve that title only for Christ.

6. We do not find any problem in translating "our image and our likeness". Hans La Rondelle provides an excellent explanation of the situation:

"The traditional position, developed in the early Church since Irenaeus, remodeled and elevated into a theological key doctrine by medieval Scholasticism was to distinguish between a natural and a supernatural similarity with God, in close  connection with the terms selem and demut in Gen. 1,26" (H. La Rondelle, Perfection & Perfectionism [Berrien Springs, Michigan: Andrews University Press, 1971/1984], 59. La Rondelle indicated that the LXX translation contributed to this understanding among church fathers. Later Judaism only used one expression (eikon) for the imago Dei, according to J. Jervell 1960). 

As a result they explained the image as man's rational nature and free will and the likeness was taken as man's original perfection and righteousness (La Rondelle 1971/1984: 59).

La Rondelle demonstrated that this patristic and medieval understanding continued in modern theology when it interpreted the imago Dei as man's ontic qualities: rational nature of man, moral nature of man, religious-moral predisposition, human body, personhood, self-consciousness, dominion over other creatures (La Rondelle 1971/1984: 59).

The problem is underlined by La Rondelle namely that these ontic theories suffered from a defect of a preconceived dualism of man where man is considered primarily by himself. Man was not considered in his dynamic Biblical relationship with his Creator (La Rondelle 1971/1984: 59 citing Karl Barth that it does not consist in anything that man is or does. Also Berkhouwer indicated that if we define man merely in terms of various qualities and abilities, we are not presenting the Biblical picture).

Karl Barth shifted from a traditional ontological dualism of the imago Dei by replacing the concept of the analogia entis with that of analogia relationis (La Rondelle 1971/1984: 60).

The problem with Barth's view is that he considered man's position in relation to God only as it is in confrontation with God and this is not the Biblical picture (La Rondelle 1971/1984: 60).

Barth is correct that he sees in the 1 person plural pronoun the view of the "plurality in the being of God" (K. Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik 216).

Berkhouwer also criticized Barth in that this distinction between analogia entis and analogia relationis is "a false dilemma" (La Rondelle 1971/1984: 60 at footnote 46).

Whereas Karl Barth admits that God wills and creates man as a partner who is capable of entering into covenant-relationship with Himself" [thus the imago Dei] Th. C. Vriezen explained it slightly different: that God establishes with the imago Dei a peculiar relationship for man unto Him, in his vocation to be God's regent on earth, to reflect his nature to the nature of God just as a child is the image of his father (La Rondelle 1971/1984 paraphrased 62).

Berkhouwer went a step further and considered the imago Dei as man's humanness, in a context of God's salvation (La Rondelle 1971/84: 62).

La Rondelle added a more developed nuance to it: just as God demonstrated through His Creatorship in Genesis 1 His love for humans, so the imago Dei suggests man will be likewise motivated and directed in his activity on earth out of love for God, his Father, the imago Dei as gift and task (La Rondelle 1971/1984: 63).

In other words, because God so loved the World that He created it therefore humans were given the possibility through imago Dei to also love other humans as God loved them in order to reflect His love to others around them so that they can also come into a love relationship with Him who made them all.

Conclusion

In summary of the imago Dei or image of God we have the traditional scholastic view of the Middle Ages, replaced by Karl Barth, further developed by T. Vriezen, some more developed by G. Berkhouwer and finally further developed and nuanced by H. La Rondelle in 1971.

When we read this view of prof. Hans La Rondelle [who was a student of G. Berkhouwer and Systematic Theologian at Andrews University] we simply are at awe of this deep concept and there is no need to adjust the text as the Greeks did in the Byzantine period by leaving out our in our likeness.

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