Walking on campus with another Social Justice student just now when someone came up to us and said, “Hi I’m with one of the bible clubs on campus. I wanted to ask if you know about the bible.”
Me: “I went to state for bible trivia and I was raised by missionaries and pastors. My family started several churches in the town I grew up in.”
Him: “Wow ok so are you aware that in Genesis 1:26, God said, ‘Let us make man in our own image,’ so therefore since God made men and women, god was referring to himself and his wife when he said that.”
Me: “Wow there are four problems with that. First, there are over 40 biological conditions that put a person in between or outside of those two gender categories, as well as many identities outside those categories.
Second, the tense of that word elohim in hebrew is not “both,” it’s “all.” It’s “Let all of us create man,” not, “Let both of us create man.”
Third, you’re quoting from the late deuteronomic era which was the first yahwistic rationalism cult. They were not dualists any more than they were monotheists. They were in fact monolaterists who believed in all gods and chose to worship only their own; Yahweh. This is actually still evidenced in the modern bible when references are made to other gods like Baal. It wasn’t until the second council of Nicea and the debate around icons that over forty neighboring gods of the hebrews were converted into the newly created devil, and that was in the fifth century, thousands of years after the writing of the verse you’re quoting. Many christians and jews and mormons and other religions reject your monotheistic interpretation. This idea is only in vogue in a small group in modern America.
Fourth the whole point of the deuteronomists was that they took the consort of Yahweh out of the text and the canon. God had a wife before that, Asherah. But the way of worshipping her was to fuck prostitutes at her temples, and that didn’t fit with the ultra-conservative vision of the deuteronomists, so they deleted her.
So no, that is not at all what that verse means, even within Christian mythology. You should do some more learning before you try to teach people about a religion you don’t seem to know anything about.”