And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him... (Gen. 1:27)
He [Aqiba] said: Beloved is man for he was created in the image [of God]. Especially beloved is he for it was made known to him that he was created in the image [of God]...(Pirqe Aboth 3:14)
Man's Intelligence:
Intelligence marks man as different from other animals because man can see himself as intelligent, distinct from other animals. This ability to look back at himself is what distinguishes him. In the episode of the creation of man, in a departure from other statements of creation, God says, “Let us create man in Our own image". After his creation, in addition to being commanded to reproduce like other creatures, man is given dominion over all other creatures.
This episode generates puzzles and we are invited to figure out who and who are asked to participate in the creation of man? A dominant opinion suggests that this shift hints at God's extra deliberation prior to creating man.
Man is created in God's image is a conclusion reached reflexively. We reach there by considering
That God created/creates, and we study his creation as a process of bring forth new things, and we create with a process that brings forth new things by manipulating matter. We then recognize a similarity between our creative process and the natural development of living things that represents God's creation at work. This leads to
If we recognize this similarity, then there must be a similarity between the entities that make things become by their volition, at least in a conceptual sense. Therefore,
If our creative acts are preceded by contemplation and deliberation, we can imagine God's deliberation in the act of creation, and more so in his creating us, the ones who deliberate.
Here Maimonides's negative conception of God finds application, which simplified is that God can only be described by stating what he is not. We observe God through His creation but He isn't in His creation. He can't be grasped outside His creation, either. It is a bit like the use of negative space in graphic design.
For example, the FedEx logo has a hidden arrow in the negative space between the E and x. It can be seen only when the logo is considered as a united, compact idea, but it isn't in itself a shape separate from the union of letters in that specific arrangement. It transcends the concept of the logo, even though it is contingent on the logo, and can be read only through the logo.
In the aftermath of the Golden Calf misadventure, Moses requests that God reveal Himself to Moses (Ex. 33: 12-23). God responds by saying that no man can see His “face” and live. Rather, He will place Moses in a cleft of rock, cover him with His palm, and remove the palm only as He passes so that Moses will only see His “back" as He passes. With some imagination and a tortured translation, the word for back translated as “other/all else" and “palm” standing in for handiwork, we can render the passage: Man cannot see Me. However, you, who has found favor with Me, can read My work, and all reality (in which I'm not), and understand Me through them. He is read by the difference of all that can be witnessed, even if His “face", essence is not in that difference.
N.B. This exploration is founded, however, on a basic foundation: God being beyond our plane of existence, and our best concepts of Him come from piecing together a working model -- a shroud over an indistinct form, as it were -- from elements in our plane of existence.
(There can be no better footnote to the first chapter of Israel's public idolatry than Moses' interaction with God. This idea forces one to hold a mental tension of conceiving the non conceptual Source of all, a tension idolatry seeks to ease by pinning it down to a specific and specified object. Atheism seeks relief in the other direction: declaring as non-existent that which cannot be grasped in this realm.)
Man Develops Language:
The most important tool of man as intelligent being is language. It is singularly most responsible for harnessing man's potentials for conceptualization. And God brought to man the animals and whatever he called them they were (Gen 2: 19). With this faculty to call names, man may no longer rely on the lengthy incorporation of experience in acquired immunity and inherited adaptation, in the chancy meet of nature and fortuitous circumstance.
A naming system keeps stock of events and tags them for future reference. This system becomes an operative layer upon the base of direct experience and fatal outcome. A named thing is mapped, the naming sets the conditions for further relations with the thing like in antibody-antigen interactions. In the application of this system of names, a greater range of events can be engaged with more safely, or even met at all.
The fixing of a name, though conclusive, is also flexible. Names are somewhat alive and respond to changing conditions but are stable enough to reliably represent an idea or thing when we want to substitute the name for the thing.
Language, as an articulation of names, is a trap for reflections, the leftover impression from man's interacting with his environment. Because of the fleeting nature of these impressions, we anchor them with names.
Mashal: Word Power
Is there a link between the Hebrew word, "mashal" read as 'proverb', 'metaphor', 'similitude', and the same word read as 'dominion', 'control'?
Perhaps, a name begins as mashal, a tentative marker, and progresses into a solid sound-symbol representation of a thing. This marker facilitates encounter with objects without having direct contact with the object. A handy development especially if the named thing is too cumbersome, out of reach, or abstract to be handled directly when needed. This markers’ interaction with the object it represents evolves and grows until it becomes a sound-symbol unit that returns expected and certain responses when used in a particular manner. As an invention, as a feature of communication, this is a game changer.
From here we can leap to mashal as dominion. Man has mastered the use of names to capture the quality and shape of a thing or idea that makes for easy manipulation and management of objects and ideas. Language makes prompting for action, interaction and synergy for purpose to a hifi degree possible. For the sake of these names made stable, we can make combinations and permutations of ideas with otherwise fleeting impressions, layer upon layer, in towering heirarchies. It is because of the mutual intelligibility of and universal response to these sound-symbol operators, in themselves nonsense, and their complex, versatile, and exact applications, can man start to imagine dominion, exerting influence far greater than what he would as a basic animal.