A wise philosopher, Xenophanes, once said, “If... horses... had hands, and could paint with their hands... horses would paint the forms of the gods like horses... and make their bodies in the image of their various kinds.” If god created the human in his image, then where is the fine line that divides the divine from mere mortals (19)? God’s flaws in The Five Books of Moses reveal his humanity.
Beginning with creation, it is apparent that God is imperfect. Soon after he fashions humans from humus into living beings, he makes a mistake that initiates all of God’s future frustrations (21). The exact moment may be when he put the tree of knowledge in the realm of his creations or when he tells Adam and Eve they can eat any fruit, “But from the…show more content… God’s blindness to this innate character flaw purports to show that he does not know much about humans at this point, but is rather acting on a set of divine instincts. Before he created Eve he said, “It is not good for the human to be alone, I shall make him a sustainer beside him” (21). Robert Alter notes the direct translation is somewhat ambiguous due to the inability for sustainer, counterpart or help to be a proper translation (21). Here, God’s words imply deeper meaning in light of loneliness. He understands something -- though it may not have to do with his creations -- rather to do with God himself. The loneliness humans experience is “not good” because, as Gilgamesh, the godly one in an ancient Mesopotamian text encounters, loneliness is easier to find oneself engulfed in when there is no one of equal measure to bond or connect with. God would have “planted a garden in Eden... placed there the human...and the tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge, good and evil,” if he was lonely, and hoped for the humans to make a choice between intelligence or longevity so they could become suitable company