Quotation
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“People have thought that in Hebrew 'image' means shape, and that is the root of a serious confusion about God.”
Maimonides · Jewish philosophy · Medieval · c. 1190
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the opening chapter as a linguistic therapy: the Hebrew word translated image does not mean bodily shape, so the line that humans are made in God's image is not a licence to picture God as a body. Image, on his account, points to intellectual apprehension. A rival reading thinks he is explaining scripture away in order to save a Greek metaphysics, which is the charge the Guide's whole method has to live with. Chapter 1 begins the book as it means to go on, by repairing a word before a doctrine is built on it.
Did Maimonides really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. A paraphrase of the opening discussion in Guide of the Perplexed, part one, chapter 1. Maimonides argues that tzelem, image, is not bodily shape. Pines's translation is the standard. This English is not a single canonical sentence.
Where it comes from
Guide of the Perplexed I.1
Approximate date: c. 1190.
How to use it
A child in a synagogue class in Manchester draws God as a large person in the sky, and the drawing is the confusion this chapter thinks is serious, not charming, because it will govern what the child can later mean by a commandment. Maimonides does not start by scolding the child. He starts by asking what the word was doing in Hebrew; A community that keeps the drawing and quotes the verse has not yet met the opening of the Guide.
A mindset reading
The chapter is easy to recruit for a general war on metaphor, and he is a severe critic of corporeal readings, not a critic of every figure of speech. He distinguishes image from a word that does mean shape. The care is lexical; A rival use treats the whole Bible as a code for philosophy and stops reading the verse's moral force, that a human being has a standing; He thinks the standing is intellectual, and he thinks the body-picture destroys it.
Understand the philosophy
The key term is tzelem, image, which he separates from a word for physical form, so that being created in the image is participation in intellectual apprehension rather than a look. Chapter 1 of the Guide is the model for the book: equivocation explained, then a theological error traced to the equivocation. Pines translates the Arabic, which itself discusses the Hebrew. This entry paraphrases that opening and says so.
- knowledge
- meaning
- mind
FAQ
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the opening chapter as a linguistic therapy: the Hebrew word translated image does not mean bodily shape, so the line that humans are made in God's image is not a licence to picture God as a body. Image, on his account, points to intellectual apprehension. A rival reading thinks he is explaining scripture away in order to save a Greek metaphysics, which is the charge the Guide's whole method has to live with. Chapter 1 begins the book as it means to go on, by repairing a word before a doctrine is built on it.
Did Maimonides really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. A paraphrase of the opening discussion in Guide of the Perplexed, part one, chapter 1. Maimonides argues that tzelem, image, is not bodily shape. Pines's translation is the standard. This English is not a single canonical sentence.
Which work is it in?
Guide of the Perplexed I.1 Approximate date: c. 1190.