# Let US make man in OUR image?!? — Dan McClellan ## 🗂️ Triage — annotated highlights surfaced > [!note]- Cross Reference > - **Genesis 1:26 plural addresses the divine council** — the majority critical reading; connects Gen 1:26 to Psalm 82, Isaiah 6, Deut 32:8–9. Consensus-level. #xref > - **Cohortative grammar marks one deity addressing a group** — singular verb ("Elohim said") plus first-person-plural cohortative severs both the plural-of-majesty and Elohim-is-plural inferences. #xref > - **Author restricts actual creation to the singular deity** — creation is announced plurally (1:26) but executed with singular verbs (1:27); McClellan's "jealousy" gloss on top is interpretive. #xref ## 🧭 Bib capsule Dan McClellan (PhD, University of Exeter), "Let US make man in OUR image?!?," YouTube, 2026 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38hJgc4mPrU ## 🧠 Author's thesis (Adler Q1+Q2) McClellan explains the first-person plural in Genesis 1:26 ("Let us make humanity in our image") by ruling out three popular answers — the plural of majesty, the grammatical plurality of Elohim, and the Trinity — and arguing the mainstream critical position: God addresses the divine council, the other gods of the ancient Israelite/Northwest Semitic pantheon. In detail, he dates the text (late 6th/5th c. BCE), reads the Hebrew grammar (singular verb governing a cohortative), and marshals convergent evidence (Psalm 82, Isaiah 6, Genesis 3/6/11, Deut 32:8–9, Ugaritic material) while carefully separating consensus claims from his own contested judgments (second-tier Yahweh under Elyon; the redactional "jealousy" motive). ## 🧩 Key arguments - The plural of majesty and Elohim's grammatical plurality both fail: the clause opens with a singular verb, so the plurality lives in the cohortative ("let us make"), which is ordinary "let's" address to a group. - The Trinity fails as authorial meaning by chronology — the framework develops from the late 2nd c. CE, centuries after composition — though canonical rereading is a separate theological register the video doesn't adjudicate. - The best-supported referent is the divine council, traceable across the Hebrew Bible and rooted in the Ugaritic pantheon (El, Athirat, their 70 sons), whose gods were later demoted into the guardian angels of the nations (Daniel 10). ## 🗒️ Notes — Literature atoms ### Genesis 1:26 plural addresses the divine council > [!quote] > The majority of scholars agree that what's going on here is that God is speaking to the other gods of the divine council - **Where**: ~1:54, immediately after eliminating the Trinity reading - **Why**: The load-bearing positive claim, consensus-level — kept distinct from the contested second-tier-Yahweh reading. ### Cohortative grammar marks one deity addressing a group > [!quote] > it's one deity speaking to other members of a group of which they are a part - **Where**: ~0:48, the grammatical core (singular "Elohim said" + first-person-plural cohortative) - **Why**: Severs the plural-of-majesty and Elohim-is-plural inferences in one move; reusable against any grammar-based proof-texting. ### Author restricts actual creation to the singular deity > [!quote] > the author does not want those other gods participating in the actual creation of humanity - **Where**: ~12:17; creation announced plurally in 1:26, executed with singular verbs in 1:27 - **Why**: The monotheizing redactional move — council acknowledged as audience, excluded as agent. The singular-verb observation is data; the "jealousy" motive on top is conjecture. ## 🔖 Permanent candidates - Doctrine dating bounds what a text's author could mean — A conceptual framework that postdates a text's composition cannot be that text's authorial meaning, only a later rereading (holds for authorial-intent claims; does not by itself rule out canonical/theological rereadings, which claim a different kind of validity). ## Links - [[Faith & Theology MOC]] — home MOC; a worked example of data-over-dogma method applied to one of the most-proof-texted verses in Christian theology - [[Divine-Revelation Translation Claims Immunize a Work From Scholarly Critique]] — same anachronism/data-over-dogma pattern: distinguishing what a text could historically mean from later doctrinal claims layered onto it - [[Two-Tier Use of Authoritative Texts Reveals Implicit Theology More Clearly Than Explicit Statements]] — connects on how proof-text handling (Gen 1:26 as "Trinity in Genesis") exposes a reader's implicit theology ## ✅ Processing checklist - [x] Claim atoms carried from deep-read analysis - [ ] Permanent candidates reviewed for promotion - [ ] Version History Diff check