God Begat Mankind
Journal of Discourses 11:123; “God has made His children like Himself to stand erect, and has endowed them with intelligence and power and dominion over all His works, and given them the same attributes which He himself possesses. He created man, as we create our children; for there is no other process of creation in heaven, on the earth, in the earth, or under the earth, or in all the eternities, that is, that were, or that ever will be.” – Brigham Young, Salt Lake City, June 18, 1865
Genesis 1:26; “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”
The Hebrew word image is tselem meaning shade or phantom, illusion or resemblance and the Hebrew word for likeness is demuòth meaning concretely model, shape, adverbially like, fashion, like (ness) and resemblance.
Holman Bible stated the repetition of these two words is a form of Hebrew literary style of parallelism used for emphasis. While tselem refers to a hewn or carved image like that of a statue the word for likeness is a facsimile, but neither of those words implies man is divine at all.
Did Brigham Young use a dictionary of any kind for understanding the words God used? If so, what was it and where is it now? Why do people accept what he says without any questions asked?
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