In God’s Image: How Western Civilization Was Shaped by a Revolutionary Idea

Western society is rooted in the biblical notion “that all humans bear the image of God,” according to this thought-provoking intellectual history. That assertion, contends Persico (The Jewish Meditative Tradition), a visiting professor of Jewish studies at UC Berkeley, represented a key ideological departure from contemporaneous Near Eastern religious traditions that viewed royals as the heirs to the divine, and has played a vital part in shaping modern ideas of individualism and autonomy. Ranging from biblical times to the present, he explores how the idea influenced belief in values like equality (if everyone is created in God’s image, universal rights are the logical result). Other links are more surprising—for example, Persico suggests that secularism’s rise beginning in the mid 19th century was aided by how the idea affirmed intrinsic human value, which, ironically, helped to repudiate the same divine authority that had given it purchase. Ultimately, Persico uses the notion that mankind was created in God’s image to call for people “to protect our autonomy and that of our neighbours... to struggle for the establishment of a just, egalitarian” world. Erudite and well-reasoned, it’s an illuminating and expansive look at the interplay between faith and society. (July)