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Part One · Chapter One — Image and Likeness
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People have supposed that ṣelem ('image') in the Hebrew language denotes the shape of a thing and its outline — and this led them into outright corporealism, on account of His saying, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness' (Gen 1:26).
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They imagined that God has the form of a man — I mean his shape and outline — so that outright corporealism necessarily followed for them, and they believed it.
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And they held that were they to abandon this belief they would be giving the lie to the text — indeed, they would be doing away with the Deity altogether — unless He were a body possessing a face and a hand like their own in shape and outline,
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though greater and more resplendent, by their fancy, and His matter, too, not being blood and flesh. This was the utmost they conceived to count as exalting God (tanzīh).
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As for what ought to be said in denying corporeality and establishing the true unity — which has no reality except through the removal of corporeality — you will come to know the demonstration of all that from this treatise.
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The aim here, in this chapter, is only to call attention to clarifying the meaning of ṣelem and demut.
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So I say: the form well-known to the multitude — the one that is the shape of a thing and its outline — its name proper to it in the Hebrew language is to'ar.
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As Scripture says, 'beautiful of form (to'ar) and fair to look upon' (Gen 39:6); 'What was his form?' ... 'like the form of the king's sons' (Judg 8:18).
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And of the artificial form it is said, 'he marks it out with a stylus ... and with a compass he marks it out' (Isa 44:13).
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This noun is never applied to God, may He be exalted — God forbid!
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As for ṣelem, it applies to the natural form — I mean to the notion (maʿnā) by which a thing is constituted as a substance and becomes what it is; it is its very reality insofar as it is that particular existent.
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That notion, in the case of man, is the one from which human apprehension arises; and it is on account of this intellectual apprehension (al-idrāk al-ʿaqlī) that it is said of him, 'in the image of God He created him' (Gen 1:27).
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And therefore it is said, 'their image Thou wilt despise' (Ps 73:20), because the contempt attaches to the soul — which is the specific form — not to the shapes of the limbs and their outline.
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And likewise I say that the reason the idols are called ṣelamim is that what is sought from them is their imagined notion, not their shape and outline.
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And likewise I say of 'the images of your hemorrhoids' (1 Sam 6:5): what was intended by them was the notion of repelling the harm of the hemorrhoids, not the shape of the hemorrhoids.
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But if it must be that 'the images of your hemorrhoids' and 'images' are used on account of shape and outline, then ṣelem is an equivocal noun (ism mushtarak) — or an amphibolous one (mushakkak).
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— said of the specific form, and of the artificial form and the like, of the shapes of natural bodies and their outlines.
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And what is meant by it in His saying 'let us make man in our image' would be the specific form — which is intellectual apprehension — not shape and outline.
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So we have made clear to you the difference between ṣelem and to'ar, and we have explained the meaning of ṣelem.
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As for demut, it is a noun from the verb damah ('to be like'), and it too denotes resemblance in notion.
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For his saying 'I am like a pelican of the wilderness' (Ps 102:7) does not mean that he resembled it in its wings and feathers, but that his grief resembled its grief.
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Likewise, 'no tree in the garden of God was like it in its beauty' (Ezek 31:8): resemblance in the notion of beauty.
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'Their venom is like the venom of a serpent' (Ps 58:5); 'his likeness is like a lion longing to tear' (Ps 17:12) — all of these are resemblance in notion, not in shape and outline.
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And likewise it is said, 'the likeness of a throne' (Ezek 1:26) — resemblance in the notion of elevation and majesty, not in its squareness, its bulk, and the length of its legs, as the wretched imagine.
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And likewise, 'the likeness of the living creatures' (Ezek 1:5).
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Since man was singled out by a notion in him exceedingly strange — one found in nothing among the existents below the sphere of the moon — namely intellectual apprehension, in which no sense, no limb, and no extremity is employed,
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it was likened to the apprehension of the Deity, which requires no instrument — even though there is, in truth, no real resemblance, but only on a first impression.
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It was on account of this notion — I mean on account of the divine intellect (al-ʿaql al-ilāhī) conjoined to him — that it was said of man that he is 'in the image of God and after His likeness'; not that God, may He be exalted, is a body so as to possess a shape.