Yair Lorberbaum. In God’s Image: Myth, Theology, and Law in Classical Judaism. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2015, 339 pp., $99 (hardback).
Yair Lorberbaum (Faculty of Law at Bar-Ilan University) completed his doctoral dissertation in 2004, titled Zelem Elohim: Halakhah ve-Aggadah (Hebrew). His current work In God’s Image is an abridged translation of his dissertation, making his work accessible to a wider range of readers. Essentially Lorberbaum argues that man’s creation in the divine image as an eikon of God is fundamental to and a linchpin for R. Akiva’s teachings and much within Rabbinic Judaism.
Chapters One through Four provide the methodological foundations and Chapters Five through Nine analyze the literature on hand.
Chapter One draws out shortcomings with Jewish interpretations of anthropomorphism and illustrates to necessity to take more seriously the connect between anthropomorphism and Imago Dei. Having offered critiques of anthropomorphism as understood in much Talmudic…
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