Gustav Klimt: "L'Arbre de Vie" (1909)
Scripture recounts that humanity was created in God’s image to oversee the world in his name.
Genesis 1:1-2:3 establishes the expectation that everything has its rightful place: celestial bodies with assigned places and prescribed orbits to rule night and day; flying birds with feathers and wings to roam the sky; free swimming fish with scales and fins roam the seas; and plant-eating animals to roam the fields and forests. This would seem to be the underlying logic of the laws enumerated in Leviticus 1:1-47 that define ritually clean animals (e.g. cattle, partridges, and carp) and ritually unclean animals (e.g. lizards, bats, and eels), a scheme that defines vast numbers of creatures as ritually unclean from the beginning and which Adam and Eve are tasked with incorporating into an orderly scheme.
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.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:26-28)
This notion of man as an image of God is made explicit in Psalm 8, which underscores the surpassing greatness of a transcendent God who has created a (miniature) god-like creature tasked with ruling over the Earth.
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. (Psalm 8:3-8)
The tasks of subduing and having dominion over the Earth are best understood in terms of the Garden of Eden, an exemplary area of limited extent, which Adam and Eve were to cultivate and protect.
And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, hand the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (Genesis 2:8-9) The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. (Genesis 2:15)
The fact that Adam and Eve were tasked with cultivating and preserving the garden while also subduing the Earth suggests that they were to extend the borders of the garden until it encompassed the entire Earth. The garden was thus a template for the rest of the world, which is to say that humanity was to incorporate lands and creatures found beyond the garden as the garden’s boundaries expanded. This brings up the matter of Adam naming the animals, which connotes having dominion over them.
Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. (Genesis 2:19-20a)
The time allowed for this event is only a fraction of the sixth day, which includes: the creation of all the animals, the creation of Adam, the planting of the garden in Eden, the naming of the animals, the formation of Eve from a “side” of Adam, and God’s instructions to Adam and Eve. The implication is that only those animals initially present within the garden are named.
The plan therefore was for humanity to serve as the Image of God to order and to multiply the goodness of creation—but things did not turn out that way.
