Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Like, not "to be"

Although the serpent was correct that Adam and Eve’s eyes would be opened and they would become like ʾelōhîm, his promise that they could disobey Yahweh and live was a lie. In the mouth-washing and mouth-opening rituals, the animation of the sensory organs, including the opening of the eyes, was a necessary part of the process by which the statue was transformed into the divine. In Genesis 3, the opening of Adam and Eve’s eyes did result in god-likeness (Gen 3:22), but this particular likeness to God was prohibited. Unlike the divine statue in Mesopotamia, which became an ilu by means of the mīs pî ritual, and the Egyptian mummy which was transformed through the wpt-r into a manifestation of Osiris, humans were not created to be gods. This is perhaps the most significant difference between the creation of a divine statue according to the mīs pî pīt pî and the wpt-r and the creation of humans in the Eden story.—The "Image of God" in the Garden of Eden, page 169 (emphasis original)

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