What is the meaning of the image and likeness of God?

A:Genesis 1:26: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness ..." This use of the plural is interesting, because this chapter was written during the Babylonian Exile, when Judaism is generally regarded to have become firmly monotheistic, which should rule out references to the other gods mentioned elsewhere in the Old Testament alongside God. Making man in God's image does not necessarily mean that God was still thought of as anthropomorphic as in earlier times - it is simply saying that in some spiritual way, man is like God.

Leon R. Kass (The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis) says that in this, the first creation story, man is made directly in the image of God (1:27), whereas in the second story (Genesis 2:4b-3:24) he is only becomes god-like at the end - "now the man is become like one of us" (3:22) and only in transgression.