The most important scholarship on the concept of “chosenness” was Michael Wyschogrod’s The Body of Faith (1983) and David Novak’s The Election of Israel (1995). Wyschogrod held that the people of Israel were elected because of God’s exceptional love for them and that God’s love existed prior to the revelation to Moses on Mount Sinai. Novak also accepted the traditional belief that God formed a unique relationship with Israel but maintained that God extends his covenant to the world and that the particularity of Israel’s election is implicated in the general covenant with the world and vice versa. Humanity The image of God
In Genesis 1:26, 27; 5:1; and 9:6 two terms occur, “image” and “likeness,” that seem to indicate clearly the biblical understanding of essential human nature: humans are created in the image and likeness of God. Yet the texts in which these terms are used are not entirely unambiguous; the idea they point to does not appear elsewhere in Scriptures, and the concept is not too prominent in the rabbinic interpretations. What the image and likeness of God, or the divine image, refers to in the biblical texts is not made explicit, and, in light of the fact that the texts are dominated by psychosomatic conceptions of the nature of humanity (i.e., involving both soul and body), it is not possible to escape entirely the implication of “bodily” similarity. What the terms meant in their context at the time and whether they reflect mythological usages taken over from other Middle Eastern thought are by no means certain. However, according to Akiba, the most prominent 2nd-century-ce rabbi, the “image” of God seems to mean the unique human capacity for a spiritual relationship with him; this interpretation thus avoids any suggestion of a physical similarity between God and humans. The earthly-spiritual creature
A dualistic interpretation of humanity was offered in parts of the ancient Jewish community that were deeply influenced by Greek philosophical ideas. In this understanding, the divine likeness is identified with the immortal, intellectual soul as contrasted to the body. Other ancient and modern thinkers have understood the likeness as ethical, placing particular emphasis on freedom of the will. Clearly, no doctrine of humanity can be erected on the basis of these several verses alone—a broader view must be taken. A careful examination of the biblical material, particularly the words nefesh, neshama, and ruaḥ—which are often too broadly translated as “soul” and “spirit”—indicates that these terms must not be understood as referring to the psychical side of a psychophysical pair. A human being does not possess a nefesh but rather is a nefesh, as Genesis 2:7 says, “wayehi ha-adam le-nefesh ḥayya” (“…and the man became a living being”). Humans are, for most of the biblical writers, “a unit of vital power,” not a dual creature separable into two distinct parts of unequal importance and value. While this understanding of human nature dominated biblical thought, in apocalyptic literature (2nd century bce–2nd century ce) the term nefesh was viewed as a separable psychical entity with existence apart from the body. This conception of human nature was not entirely divorced from the unitary biblical view, but a body-soul dualism (see mind-body dualism) was effectively present in such literature. In the Alexandrian version of Hellenistic Judaism, the orientation toward Greek philosophy, particularly the Platonic view of the soul imprisoned in the flesh, led to a clear-cut dualism with a negative attitude toward the body. Rabbinic thought remained closer to the biblical position, at least in its understanding of the human being as a psychosomatic unit, even though the temporary separation of the components after death was an accepted position.
The biblical view of the human as an inseparable psychosomatic unit meant that death was understood to be human dissolution. Although a human being ceased to be, this dissolution was not utter extinction. Some of the power that functioned in the unit may have continued to exist, but it was not to be understood any longer as life. The existence of the dead in sheol, the netherworld, was not living but the shadow or echo of living. For most biblical writers this existence was without experience, either of God or of anything else; it was unrelated to events. To call it immortality is to empty that term of any vital significance. The concept of sheol, however, along with belief in the possibility of the miraculous restoration of dead individuals to life and even the idea of the revival of the people of Israel from the “death” of exile, provided a foothold for the development of belief in the resurrection of the dead body at some time in the future. The stimulus for this may have come from ancient Iranian religion, in which the dualistic cosmic struggle is eventually won by life through the resurrection of the dead. This idea appeared in sketchy form in postexilic writings (Isaiah 26:19; Daniel 12:2). In this view there is life only in the psychosomatic unit now restored. This restoration was bound up with the eschatological hope of Israel and was limited to the righteous. In subsequent apocalyptic literature, a sharper distinction between body and soul was entertained, and the latter was conceived of as existing separately in a disembodied state after death. Although at this point the doctrine of the resurrection of the body was not put aside, the direction of thinking changed. The shades of sheol were now thought of as souls, and real personal survival—with continuity between life on earth and in sheol—was posited. Greek ideas, with their individualistic bent, influenced Jewish thought, so that the idea of a resurrection that was in some way related to a final historical consummation began to recede. True life after death was now seen as release from the bondage of the body, so that in place of or alongside of the afterlife of physical resurrection was set the afterlife of the immortal soul.
It was not the status of the soul, however, that concerned the biblical and rabbinic thinkers. Instead, the latter’s discussions of biblical themes emphasized the ethical import of the composite nature of human beings. Humans are in a state of tension or equilibrium between the two foci of creation, the “heavenly” and the “earthly.” They necessarily participate in both. But this means that they are the only creatures who can truly serve their creator, for they alone, partaking of both sides of creation, may choose between them. It is this ability to make an ethical choice that is the distinguishing mark of humans. It is not derived from the “heavenly” side but resides in the dual nature of human existence. This view is clearly not a type of body-soul dualism in which the soul is the source of good and the body the basis of evil. Such an attitude, however, did appear in some rabbinic material and was often affirmed in medieval philosophical and mystical speculations and by some of the later moralists. An important development of biblical-rabbinic ideas, these later commentaries represent authentic attempts to come to terms with other currents of thought and with the problems and uncertainties inherent within the earlier materials themselves. The ethically bound creature