My understanding is that this comes from a nit-picky reading of the creation story in Genesis 1 followed by the creation story in Genesis 2. I can't remember the details of their reasoning, but it was popular with Jewish and Christian Gnostics. The first human was a combinations male/female Adam, but God removed the female Eve from Adam leaving him incomplete as a male. Therefore marriage became important to create "one flesh" again.As to the relationship between being his image, and male and female, I think these are separate things. Being his image comes before any mention of male and female, and at least in English translation, I read Gen 1:27 as making in his image and male and female as separate statements. To my knowledge, when this was written, no one would have thought that there were separate male and female Gods. The OT vision is sufficiently patriarchal that I don't think it's even likely that would have said that God combined both, though later people did.
There are interesting traditional interpretations. Some Christians, for example, thought that the original humans were one gender, "male and female" being understood as all humans having both male and female characteristics.
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