I believe (among other things) it is the first picture of a desolate woman.
Bereshit 1
V1: In the beginning of God's creation of the heavens and the earth.
V2: Now the earth was astonishingly empty, and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the water.
The Tankh gives a clearer picture, we see the beginning of the God's creation of the heaven and earth at least in a Judaic context. Also, the earth was empty, the previous verse concludes there was a creation already of the heavens and earth. In the picture we see God hovering over the face of the water. So there is little confusion as to the picture that Genesis is painting, but you the reader should understand that Genesis is translated from Judaic texts.
Of course looking at a much earlier picture we see that long before Christianity emerged there was a formula used buy Mesopotamian Kings to show that their power extended over the whole land of the two rivers; King of Sumer and akkad. The great alluvial plain from the site of the modern city of Baghdad this is where the Tigris and the Euphrates approach closely together and then down to a little point below Kurna, this was where the head of the gulf was and it was divided into two parts. Keep in mind the boundary between these both Rivers was not properly defined, shifting this way and that with the vicissitudes of Conquest and of course with the rise and fall of rival elements in the population the two main countries stood in opposition of each other and we're distinguished by race and language. We have the akkad in the North who were predominantly Semitic and Sumer in the south, which are not Semitic but pre Semitic. Both inhabited Mesopotamia and of course lower Mesopotamia included Sumer and the akkadians (acadians). So the Upper Euphrates Valley and the high plateau of the Syrian desert were inhabited by man long before the Gulf Waters had receded. In this area there would be monuments of Paleolithic Age and later Stone Age has left its traces in The Valleys of the Euphrates and the the Khabur and Sajur. However, in Mesopotamia itself nothing of this kind is found and in the earliest human settlements Flint instruments indeed are common but they are associated with metal or betray the influence of metalworking and we can only conclude that it was comparatively late in human history when man had already advanced into calcholithic age, that the Lower Valley became fit for this occupation. The modern town of Muhammerah in Old Days stretch the Waters of the greater Gulf, the river karun will empty into shatt-al-arab and this is opposite of the Wadi al-batin it's now dry but was a river at one time and it ran up and down in the heart of Arabia. The karun brings down from Persian Hills as much silt as do the Waters of the Tigris and the Euphrates the Old River al batin stream. The bar neutralize the scouring action of the gulf tide and enable The Tigress and the Euphrates River to deposit at their mouths of silt which had been swept out to sea and at the same time the seal to the southern rivers begin to fill in what is now the great Lagoon. the mud of the to Northern streams that did not go to swell the Delta now formula thermals were dropped and the current was check by the bar over the whole of the old Gulf Waters and help raise the level of its bed so while Dryland was formed first and most quickly in the north and in the South the Lagoon between grew more and more shallow so Islands appeared and at last we're all had been a waste of water they're stretched a fast Delta of clay of sand and mud. it was a Delta periodically that flooded and in the summer Scorch the pitiless Sun, but it's dirt soil, light and stoneless, was as rich as could be found anywhere on Earth, and rarely needed man's labor to produce men's food. this is the same description in Genesis of the creation of the Earth as man's home and agrees admirably with the process of formation of the Mesopotamian Delta. "let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place and let the dry land appear and it was so," this passage is written much later by St Moses but is adopted by Moses to show what had already occurred naturally. because the manner in which land is formed is important as serving to explain the differences in the population that occupied it. a country so rich potentially invited settlers, but these settlers came and gradually as a process of transformation took place and they did not come from the same regions, but from all the shores of the ancient Gulf. The north part of the Syrian desert and the upper Euphrates Valley we're inhabited by people of Semitic speech known and when they first appear in history as the martu and later known as the amurru. so it would be natural that the delta formed in the north at the mouth of the Euphrates the new land should be calling Eyes by these the new land should be colonized by these neighboring folk, following the retreating Waters and cultivating the freshly dried alluvium. They occupied Sippar and opis on either side of the neck of land where the two rivers come closest together, and thereby secured possession of the northern triangle which was to be the land of Akkadian. so St Moses has these ideas as he is already educated by the Egyptians and this reflects so in the Book of Genesis concerning land formations and how land formations worked historically.
Bereshit 1: 27-28 goes on about image, so image and the image of God. Right from the start, human creation is for P an event sui generis. Then God said, åðúåîãë åðîìöá íãà äùòð “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over
the fish of the sea, and over the birds of heaven, and over the beasts, and over the whole earth, and over everything that moves on the earth.” So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created it, male and female he created them.
“The creation of human life is an exception to the rule of creation by divine fiat, as signaled by the replacement of the simple … Hebrew command (the jussive) with a personal, strongly expressed resolve (the cohortative [see § . . ]).”12 Whereas the earlier jussives expressed God’s will with a third person, nonagentive verb form, the cohortative is both first person and agentive. Unlike the jussives, too, the cohortative does not itself create but prepares or introduces the creative act.
With justification, then, Wol notes that “the man and the woman in Gen. I … are … created … by God’s own personal decision (v. 26)—a decision unique in the Priestly document’s whole creation account.” Similarly, von Rad is justified to infer that “God participates more intimately and intensively in this than in the earlier works of creation.”
As the cohortative form suggests, P’s God anticipates a more active role, greater control, and stronger personal involvement in the human creation than in his previous seven creative acts.
God’s involvement also runs deeper. As P tells the story, this last creative act coincides with an extraordinary divine event. When God initiates human creation, God takes the opportunity to identify himself, for the first time, in the self-referential first person. At the same time, God’s identity is invested in this human creature and is represented by two characteristics: a divine image and a divine likeness. Humanity resembles divinity through two inherent yet divine features. Of all God’s creations, only humanity is envisioned as comparable to divinity
V. corroborates and executes this vision. Its first clause names the creator, the human creature, and the divine image that God invests in human beings (v. 27aα). Overlapping with the first,19 the second clause identifies the divine possessor of the image (v. 27aâ). The third clause deletes reference to the image yet describes the human creature as a constituent pair (v. 27b). V. 27 therefore reiterates the unique relationship between God and humanity, explains the relationship, and tracks it from its source to its individual heirs.
The interpretive details of Gen :26–27 are unclear at best. To be sure, the characteristics uniquely shared by creator and creature assert “the incomparable nature of human beings and their special relationship to God.”22 But when its two nominal components—‘image’ and ‘likeness’—are queried, the assertion of incomparability is quickly qualified. For example, what does the ‘image’ of God signify, and how does the human race reflect it? Or, what is a divine ‘likeness’, how
does it compare to the divine ‘image’, and how is the ‘likeness’ reflected in humankind?
The responses are often unsatisfying. Preuss finds that “very little distinction can be made between the two words.” Sarna’s language is somewhat stronger: “The two terms are used interchangeably and indiscriminately.”
Horst adds bravado. One has to conclude that “image” and “likeness” are, like “prototype” and “original,” essentially equivalent expressions. They do not seek to describe two different sorts of relationship, but only a single one; the second member of the word-pair does not seek to do more than in some sense to define the first more closely and to reinforce it. That is to say, it seeks so to limit and to fix the likeness and accord between God and man that, in all circumstances, the uniqueness of God will be guarded.
These statements, then, testify to the problem. The ‘image’ is problematic in its own right. For in most of its occurrences, íìö ‘image’ is a concrete noun. And as such, it refers to a representation of form, figure, or physical appearance (see § . . ). Thus if the human race is created in the ‘image of God’, there is an unavoidable logical implication: God must also be material, physical, corporeal, and, to a certain degree, humanoid (see also § . . ).
Problematic, too, is the intertextual implication of a concrete, human ‘image’. Indeed, the very existence of such an ‘image’ seems to violate the second commandment, which forbids idols and idolatry (Ex 20: – ; Dt : –10; see also Dt :15–19, and, within the Priestly tradition, Lev 19: , 26: ).
From a theological perspective, then, the ‘image’ in Gen :26–27 may be dangerous or, at least, “tainted.” Grammar compounds the problems. One grammatical di culty lies in the prepositions that govern ‘image’ and ‘likeness’: ‘in’ and ‘like’, respectively. A minority of interpreters believe this differential marking sufficiently indicates an interpretive difference between the two prepositional phrases.
The majority disagrees. “There is no particular significance in the change of prepositions (‘in’ our image, ‘according to’ our likeness). In [Gen] . they are exchanged without any difference in meaning.”34 “It is in accordance with the sense to render both prepositions in the same way. Both the nouns and the prepositions are interchangeable …; one verb covers both phrases, åðúåîãë and åðîìöá; we have not two but one expression.”35 Whereas the language of Gen :26 differentiates two types of divine-human relationship, most scholars abandon a grammatical analysis as futile. “Early attempts to distinguish between á and ë have been given up.
