I/W: 2022 General
The verse is:
Then 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 birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” Genesis 1:26
The key parts to highlight in this verse are “let them have dominion…over all the earth.” This verse makes the bold statement humans are the supreme beings on the earth during a time when humans had no way of knowing such a thing.
To put this statement in perspective, it’s like someone saying today that humans are the supreme beings of the universe. We don’t have the resources to be able to prove if such a statement is true or not. You would require a source with superior knowledge who knows this to tell you, as the receiver of this information would have.
That information is believed to be revealed sometime around 1300-1500 BC. That was a time when they didn’t know we live on a round planet nor did they have any sense of how large the land surface they lived on was. They only knew of a small part.
It was very well possible there could have been a race more superior than humans living somewhere else on earth they didn’t know of. The author would have had no way of knowing such a thing, such as we don’t have a way of knowing if we’re the supreme race of the universe.
A hypothetical scenario could have been a passive supreme race living somewhere else on earth that wasn’t exploring. They could have been reigning over the rest of the earth’s species with supreme consciousness or some kind of supreme technology. Another scenario is a species that’s slightly more superior and developing their civilization slightly faster, but they haven’t crossed paths with humanity yet.
It wasn’t until the early twentieth century, around 3500 years later that all the earth’s landmass was discovered, that a pretty good conclusion could be made that humans are the supreme species on earth.
A pretty good conclusion can be made this verse has proven to be true but not with complete certainty. Much of the ocean and parts of Antarctica are yet to be fully explored. There could hypothetically be a more supreme species living in the bottom of the ocean or frozen below the surface in Antarctica.
I specify revelations in the Torah (first 5 books of bible) in the title as its revelations are believed to be given to the same body of people, predominately to Moses. So based on this verse you can make a case that all the revelations in the Torah are from a higher power as Genesis is a part of it. If the Torah was not all revealed to the same people, then a case for at least part of Genesis.
Early manuscripts with this verse in them would add to the validity of the case.
Earth in the verse can also be translated as the ground. Regardless, I think it’s hard to make a case the verse is talking about one part of land as it seems clear it’s talking about all the earth. “over all the earth (ground).” “every creeping thing.” “over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens.” Fish and birds aren’t bounded by land so as they wander all over the earth, human’s dominion is applicable everywhere they are.
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