Intertestamental Judaism was the first to speculate about the use of the plural in Genesis 1:26, and it is there that we find the two most popular solutions already being propounded, viz. the idea that God was communing with Himself25 and the idea that He was speaking to angels.26 From this period too, come the first hints that the image was diminished after the Fall of man. The Old Testament never suggests anything of this kind, and modern scholars agree that Genesis 9:6 points to man’s retention