Community as image (was Sandman)

[Amy Z]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "David" <dfrankiswork at n...> 
wrote:
> Amy quoted:
> 
> > Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, 
and 
> > let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, 
> over 
> > the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures 
that 
> > move along the ground."  So God created man in his own image, 
> > in the image of God he created him; male and female he created 
> them. 
> > (Genesis 1:26-27, King James Version)
> 
> and glossed:
> > 
> > The creation-from-the-rib version comes later, in Genesis 2:7, 15-
> > 24.  Gaiman, or whoever he got it from, is using some poetic 
> license, 
> > since there's nothing to indicate that Eve was created first.  
But 
> > it's significant that the Eve of the first creation story has a 
> > better shot of being equal to Adam than the rib-Eve in that the 
> > former was created at the same time as he, explicitly in God's 
> image 
> 
> ...and the 'us'... 'our'... 'our'... 'them'?

The gods, or God using the royal We.  Another difference between the 
two versions is that one has a singular God and the other a plural 
(Elohim, literally "gods").

I imagine it's been used as scriptural evidence of a Trinity.  But 
it's also reminiscent of the Babylonian creation story, in which the 
gods, as in, the whole committee, come up with the idea of creating 
humans.

Amy Z