Reason, scripture, and the limits of language › “Image” does not have to mean bodily shape

The first chapter examines the biblical language of human beings made in God's image. Maimonides distinguishes the relevant sense of tzelem, image or form, from a word for outward shape. In the passage he is interpreting, the distinctive feature concerns intellectual apprehension, rather than a resemblance between human limbs and divine limbs.

The argument is linguistic and philosophical. The word must admit the proposed meaning, and the meaning must avoid attributing a body to God. Maimonides supports the distinction through other uses of the vocabulary. He does not simply replace an inconvenient sentence with an unrelated philosophical statement.

The resulting comparison still needs limits. Describing human intellectual apprehension in connection with the divine image does not mean that our thinking reproduces God's knowing. Maimonides explicitly qualifies the comparison. A reader who exchanges a giant human body for a giant human mind has not necessarily escaped the underlying problem.

Part I, chapter 26 explains why scripture uses expressions drawn from ordinary human life. It speaks in language people can understand. Many readers initially connect existence with bodily existence, so descriptions that communicate divine existence can employ familiar terms. The same language needs correction when its audience is able to consider what the terms imply.

This account makes reading an educational activity. A first understanding can direct someone toward a truth while carrying an image that later needs revision. The task is not to mock the first reader or to assume that every passage conceals a secret. It is to distinguish what the language teaches from the physical picture someone may attach to it.