THE IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN - Tyndale House

82 TYNDALE BULLETIN
bearer of the divine fluid in its greatest potency. . . . The visible
and tangible body of the king is only the covering for the god
or the dwelling of the god. The king's words and acts are
expressions of the god dwelling in him.' 134
If the essential thing in the image is its possession of the
divine fluid, its representational quality as a likeness of the
deity or the man must play a secondary role. Images are in
fact by no means always representational portrayals; many
images of great antiquity were unhewn lumps of rock or other
non-pictorial objects, and the Akkadian word ִsalmu can refer
not only to representational portrayals, but also to mere stelae
without the depiction of any form. 135 Bernhardt perhaps
minimizes the representational character of the image; the
obvious fact that most images do in fact look like something
cannot be utterly insignificant, but must reflect some attempt
to conform the appearance of the image to the supposed appear-
ance of the being whose spirit it bears, and shares. Yet we may
agree that the degree of similarity to the being represented is
of quite secondary importance; for images are 'not an illustra-
tion of faith, but the object of faith'. 136
As bearer of spirit, the image is consistently regarded and
treated as a living being. After it has been completed by the
workman, the image is ritually brought to life by touching
mouth, eyes, and ears with magical instruments. The image of
a god in a temple has a daily routine. In Egypt the day begins
with the call of the priest to the image 'Wake in joy!' The little
chapel in which the image has been shut up for the night is
opened. In Babylonia also images are awoken, dusted and
washed, sometimes bathed in the sea; then a large breakfast is
brought to the image, and so the day continues. An injury done
to the image is a crime against the deity and is punished as
such; hence images were seldom destroyed in war, but rather
carried into captivity, where the image still remained god. 137
Statues of kings also would appear to have some spiritual
link with the rulers they represent, although our evidence for
134
F. Preisigke, Vom göttliche Fluidum nach ägyptischer Anschauung, Papyrusinstitut
Heidelberg, Berlin/Leipzig (1920) 11.
135
K. H. Bernhardt, op. cit. 31ff., 55. For Babylonian evidence of non-representational
images, cf. E. D. van Buren, Orientalia 10 (1941) 76-80. W. van Os
`Wie haben die Sumerer ihre Statuen angefertigt?', BO 18 (1961) 3f., has shown
how in Sumer the shape of the image was largely dictated by the material.
136
K. H. Bernhardt, op. cit. 33.
137
K. H. Bernhardt, op. cit. 42-51 (with references).