The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1

by J. Richard Middleton

Brazos Press, Grand Rapids, 2005. 304 pp. $21.99. ISBN 1-58743-110-6.

Well may we ask, “Does the world need yet another book on Gen 1:26–28 and the image of God in humankind?” My answer is, “Yes, if it is Middleton’s book!” It is an excellent contribution to biblical exegesis and biblical ethics alike.

Professor Middleton confesses that imago dei has been one of his major interests for many years, and it shows. Maintaining a positive spirit all the while, he has read practically everything on the subject from all parts of the critical and theological spectrum. His own background is conservative and evangelical, yet he warmly acknowledges his scholarly debt to Brueggemann and Hanson, Fretheim, and Levenson (even though he has serious disagreement with the latter’s book, Creation and the Persistence of Evil). He is able to view the “image of God” issues from the perspectives of the developing world and an ethnic minority, partly because he grew up as a white person in Jamaica; however, he writes this book as an adoptive North American with a Ph.D. from a Dutch university. He is his own man, challenging wisdom received from such scholarly giants as Gunkel, Noth, von Rad, and Barr, and even casting doubts on the Priestly source and the entire documentary hypothesis en route to erecting his own important position.

Middleton begins his work by reviewing the insights of Old Testament scholarship about the meaning of “image of God” in humankind. As do I in my article in this issue of Interpretation, he joins Douglas John Hall (Imaging God: Dominion as Stewardship) in grouping many of the proposals into the categories of “substantialist” or “relational” understandings of the concept. However, Middleton identifies a third category that he variously calls a “functional,” “royal,” or “ruling” understanding of the meaning of “the image of God.” Noting that the syntax connecting Gen 1:26a with verse 26b could be interpreted as conveying “intention” or “aim,” he says, “The syntax. . . points to ‘rule’ as the purpose, not simply the consequence or result, of the imago Dei” ( p. 53). Such an understanding opens a way to see the human creature as the one delegated by God to take over the task of mediating and representing the divine presence on earth and, for that matter, continuing the work of creation and rule even after God retires from the action on the open-ended and unfinished seventh day (p. 291).

Considering various ancient Near Eastern sociohistorical backgrounds against which Genesis 1 might have been written, Middleton settles on several Mesopotamian epic texts that set forth the works of Marduk and the other creator gods as well as the status of human beings in the creative order. The possibility that a human being might bear the image of a god was granted in Assyria and Babylon, but it was bound to the elitist notion of sacral kingship. All other human beings were created to serve the gods. Such an ideology legitimated a rigidly stratified social order, and it guaranteed oppression of the masses.
Of this powerful and pervasive culture Israel provided an ideological critique. It grounded its egalitarian social order in a “democratized” notion of imago dei in which all human beings share God’s ruling function within the sacral temple that is God’s creation. By perceiving in human beings the gift and responsibility of stewardship in the earth, described as kingly rule shared by all, Israel delegitimated both royal and priestly hierarchies and elevated the status of the individual. As Middleton puts it, “All persons have equal access to God simply by being human . . . . Humans are the only legitimate or authorized earthly representations of God” (p. 207).

In addition to this elevated and egalitarian understanding of the role of humanity in relation to the rest God’s creatures, a second major contribution of the cosmogony in Genesis 1 is its rejection of the mythic theme of creation-by-combat. Where that myth flourished and the gods had to grapple at the creation with chaos (variously reified as Tiamat, Lotan, Leviathan, Rahab, the dragon, the sea), violence was built into ontology and was in fact co-eternal with the gods. In the Old Testament, the myth of divine victory over chaotic waters is usually employed to exalt God’s vanquishing of historical enemies, especially at the Red Sea (e.g., Ps 77:16–20; Isa 51:9–11). Middleton allows that the myth of creation-by-combat, ubiquitous in the ancient Near East, also is to be found in the Old Testament, but only in about three cases: Job 26:7–14; Pss 74:12–17, 89:5–14. The problem with the notion that God has to master a “worthy opponent” (Levenson’s term) at the creation of the world, is that evil/chaos is “given primordial status, [and] the conquest of this evil/chaos to found the ordered enshrines violence as the divinely chosen method for establishing goodness” (p. 254). It is not difficult, then, to imagine persons linking militarism and holy war to the work of religion. Furthermore, if one regards the imago dei as essentially a gift to an elect humanity (as opposed to everyone else), then there is “a fundamental us/them distinction, with only a win/lose alternative” (p. 252).
In Middleton’s view, none of this derives from a proper understanding of Genesis 1. He sees no link there between creation and violence. The primordial ocean of Gen 1:1–2, the waters of the second and third days of creation in Gen 1:6–10, are not mythological monsters. In Gen 1:21 the sea dragons are creatures, not pre-existent opponents, of God. God creates with great ease, against no resistance, by fiat. The author follows Brueggemann in speaking of God’s gracious “summons” or “permission” for creatures to exist (p. 265).

The proper outcome of the idea of imago dei in Genesis is an ideology that is democratic and nonviolent. Humanity should exercise its God-given mandate to rule in the earth not in a manner animated by cosmogonic conflict, but gently and generously.

In the last chapter, “Imaging God’s Primal Generosity,” Middleton uses close rhetorical observation to show that Genesis 1 is a story of a good creator who invites the creatures to participate actively in the process of creation (e.g., “Let the earth put forth vegetation. . . . Let the waters bring forth swarms,” Gen 1:11, 20). God does not “overdetermine the order of the cosmos” (p. 286). Of course, the chief beneficiary of this generous offer of co-creativity is human agency.

To illustrate the “symmetry and dissymmetry” that he discerns in the Genesis 1 account, Middleton introduces diagrams of the Mandelbrot set (fractal geometry relating to chaos theory) and the Lorenz Strange Attractor (a meteorological model that offers a constant that exercises some governance in an otherwise never exactly repeating though essentially symmetrical system). Candidly, these illustrations strike me as less than convincing.
Never mind that quibble. Middleton ends by advocating an ethic, rooted in the imago dei, characterized by the exercise of “power with rather than power over” (p. 297). This is exactly where I, too, want to end up.

Here are a few minor criticisms. The book lacks a bibliography, though its copious notes are a rich source of recent scholarship on Genesis, imago dei¸ and ancient Near Eastern religion. It does have an index, but the index is oddly incomplete in its listing of scholarly citations in the book. Clearly, however, Middleton missed little that was relevant, except for an article by S. Dean McBride, “Divine Protocol: Genesis 1:1–2:3 as Prologue to the Pentateuch,” in God Who Creates (2000).

In my effort to encapsulate Middleton’s argument and outcome, I have highlighted certain points of his that have been made often enough by others (e.g., democratization of imago dei, dominion as stewardship, cosmos as temple). It is true that he draws frequently and deeply on the scholarly discussion. Yet, taken as a whole, his book is original and profound; furthermore, its denouement in a fruitful discussion of the biblical basis of social and environmental ethics is invigorating. Scholars and preachers alike, particularly those who stress right relationships with the whole of creation as the key to human survival, will find study of this book to be time well employed.

W. Sibley Towner, Professor Emeritus
Union-PSCE
Richmond, VirginiA

back to top

Jeremiah 21–36: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary

by Jack R. Lundbom

The Anchor Bible 21B. Doubleday, New York, 2004. 649 pp. $68.00 (cloth). ISBN 0-385-41113-8.

Jeremiah 37–52: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary

by Jack R. Lundbom

The Anchor Bible 21C. Doubleday, New York, 2004. 624 pp. $68.00 (cloth). ISBN 0-385-51160-4.

Jack Lundbom, along with Phyllis Trible and Walter Brueggemann, was a student of James Muilenburg, the eloquent articulator of rhetorical-criticism for biblical studies. Lundbom is a well-known practitioner of rhetorical-criticism and a highly regarded interpreter of the book of Jeremiah. The publication of the second and third volumes of his Anchor Bible commentary concludes a massive labor of love on his part and marks a welcome addition to Jeremiah studies. For biblical scholars and teachers, these works are treasure troves of information, exposition, and interpretation relating to Jeremiah’s ferocious book. For pastors seeking help with sermon preparation or theological reflection, I am not so sure.

The difficulties lie in the format of the Anchor Bible Series that presses heavily upon matters of text, translation, history, and interpretive problems. Lundbom imparts vast amounts of information about these in lucid prose on each portion of the text. He is highly appreciative of Jeremiah’s rhetoric in its linguistic creativity, multiple genres, metaphors, and persuasive claims. The books can serve ministers well by laying the groundwork for theological and hermeneutical reflection, but they are theologically thin and require readers to integrate the material from the commentary’s multiple sections themselves.

The two new volumes do not stand alone but need to be read in conversation with the “Introduction” to the first volume (Jeremiah 1–20, 1999, 55-151). There Lundbom lays out the rhetorical-critical method and discusses other critical questions of canon, divergences between the Hebrew and Greek versions of Jeremiah, relationships between poetry and prose, division of the book into literary units, historical settings of the book, and the life and ministry of the prophet Jeremiah. This first volume is worth acquiring for its clear, detailed exposition of rhetorical criticism (pp. 68-101). Lundbom teaches readers how to decide genre and boundaries of texts and how to discover structural elements and the “configuration of their component parts” (p. 72). By discovering the text’s effects, he shows how to identify the text’s claims upon readers and makes it possible for readers to do similar work themselves.
The commentaries follow a four-part division: “Translation” of the section of the text under consideration, “Rhetoric and Composition,” “Notes,” and “Message and Audience.” Lundbom’s translation for each volume appears in continuous form at the front of the book and is repeated section by section in the commentary. He captures the cadences and heated imagery of Jeremiah’s poetry. His word order, faithful to the Hebrew, is often surprisingly effective in English.

By far the most original contribution of these commentaries appears in the “Rhetoric and Composition” section where Lundbom applies rhetorical-criticism with fulsome, scrupulous detail. He uncovers how the text creates its power, musicality, and rushing force. In the process, he names structural features from a variety of perspectives and represents them in graphs. For example, on Jeremiah’s narrative polemic against emigrés to Egypt (Jer 44:1–30), Lundbom divides the text in half according to the chapter’s two superscriptions and further divides the two parts on the basis of Hebrew grammatical markings of closing and opening that coincide with genre divisions (poetic oracles or narrative). With a second graph, he presents structuring elements such as repeated syntactic structures, key words, and repeated vocabulary. Finally, he divides the chapter in yet another way on the chronological basis of past, present, and future. These accumulating literary features reveal a text that speaks of evil in the past, present, and future.

With refreshing new insight arising from his literary work, Lundbom calls into question standard assumptions of Jeremiah studies. First, he disputes the view that the more complex Hebrew version, by contrast to the leaner Septuagint translation, is not the result of scribal errors and additions. The expansive Hebrew text of Jer 44, for example, indicates “vigorous discourse, something akin to the music of an organist who ends a grand performance by pulling out all the stops” (Jeremiah 37–52, p. 155). Such is Lundbom’s sense of the literature’s power. Second, Lundbom challenges the long-held assumption that Jeremiah comprises three or more pre-existing literary documents combined in haphazard fashion. From his close literary readings, he concludes that a far more inventive literary process takes place in this book than a rough editorial patching would allow.

“Notes” on text and translation are amazingly thorough. They attend to deviations between the Septuagint and the Hebrew translations and offer detailed information about place names, unfamiliar terms, and cross references to texts biblical and otherwise, ancient and modern. For example, Lundbom includes a lengthy accounting of the double spelling in Jeremiah of the Babylonian emperor’s name, Nebuchadrezzar and Nebuchadnezzar.

Although the analytic divisions of Lundbom’s commentary are deeply erudite and clearly written, I find little integration among its various levels of analysis. The “Message and Audience” sections are the most disappointing throughout the two volumes. I expected to find in them a synthesis of material so far discussed or a highlighting of central themes and images, culminating in theological questions or reflections on meaning in the passage or in relation to the whole book. Instead, these entries generally paraphrase the text almost in a pre-critical fashion, as if one could successfully interpret the text at face value. Paraphrases of the text’s “message” generally make little or no reference to the preceding analysis and leave readers to assimilate the various sections of the work on their own.

By “message,” Lundbom typically means a straightforward retelling of the passage. By “audience,” he means the groups in the population named in the text under study rather than the “implied audience” of the book itself. Sometimes the audience is the whole community, or kings, or priests, or in Jer 44, the expatriots in Egypt with whom Jeremiah is immensely angry. But what are the text’s claims upon the readers? How might passages have functioned for the audience of the book? Why, for example, is Jer 44 preserved and included in this part of the book and not elsewhere in the redaction? How does it contribute to the life of Judeans and to larger biblical theology that it should be preserved at all? In commenting on the new covenant passage (31:31), however, Lundbom finds apt and startling analogies between the text and the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. and between other texts and words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther’s, and struggles in present day Palestine.

Among contemporary interpreters, “historical reliability” of the accounts of Jeremiah’s life and words are a subject of deep controversy. Lundbom concludes the “Message and Audience” sections by dating passages on the basis of the general history of the period. An appendix at the end of Jeremiah 37–52 lists important dates of the period. Lundbom is no historical literalist; he recognizes the difficulty of making an “historically precise reconstruction” from some of the narrative material (p. 51). Nonetheless, he trusts the text more than I do, particularly in his presentation of Jeremiah’s life. The large amount of “biographical” information about Jeremiah may be recorded simply to keep the details of his memory alive, but it is likely that the portrayal of his life has further symbolic purposes to address the situation of a people devastated by the Babylonian invasions.

Most of the twelve appendices to the commentary are of great help to general readers of the Bible: conversion tables of weights, measures, and distances; extensive lists of differences between the Hebrew and Greek versions; names and dates of archaeological periods; and even the names of the months in the Jewish calendar, plus a glossary of rhetorical terms. Also important are two excurses, “The New Covenant in the literature of Judaism, including Qumran” and “The New Covenant in the New Testament and Patristic literature to A. D. 325” (Jeremiah 21–36). Although fine descriptive histories of theological interpretation, these two excurses stop short of implicating modern Christians in anti-Semitism on the basis of the new covenant interpretation.

I think Lundbom’s commentary is too trusting of historical information, and wish it were more attentive to critical theological questions, and more integrative of its own information. However, I will use these reference books often and with gratitude for the depth and breadth of their scholarship on nearly everything concerning Jeremiah.

Kathleen M. O’Connor
Columbia Theological Seminary
Decatur, Georgia

back to top