Blood Revenge in Light of the Imago Dei in Genesis 9:6. Its Semantics and Pragmatics

Abstract

In recent years, some scholars have claimed that God’s creation of humanity in the divine image (Gen 1:26-28) presents both a royal-functional reading and also the model of nonviolence that counters recurrent violence throughout the Hebrew Bible. This nonviolent reading of humanity created in God’s image disregards the mention of this concept at the end of the Flood Narrative in Gen 9:6. This article firstly takes into consideration the proximate context and semantics of Gen 9:6 expressed through its structural, linguistic and syntactic aspects. Moreover, the pragmatics of this saying will be analyzed through the investigative criteria of discursive analysis to better identify how semantic meaning and other contextual features underpin what is communicated by this challenging utterance.