What is that image (God's) that man is made of? Is it a physical one? If not, why are you trying to interject that physical image has anything to do with it?
The physical is only part of it (meaning Adam and Eve's physical creation was unique and separate from animals) - and as they were imbued with certain attributes that God has and all animals do not. They were created to be eternal beings. And Scripture states Adam was made uniquely and separately from ALL of the animals. It reveals that Adam and Eve had no father but God. And Eve not only had no earthly father or mother, but she came FROM a portion of ADAM (his rib), used by God in her creation.
The text makes sure to point out a completion of all of the animals before God miraculously and instantly creates a new creature (man). So, one either believes what the text says or not. If, as a Christian, you reject this understanding, I'd say it's only because of one's belief in evolution. But my what a slippery slope you step onto whenever you dismiss the plain language meanings of their creation. Now, that is certainly not the case with everything in Scripture. But one must necessarily read into the text something quite different from what it expressly says, if one wants to believe that Adam sprang from a hominid line.
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
Note that the text doesn't say, "Let's now take an animal or hominid and WE will change him into a man, transform it into Our image." And the use of the word "Then" implies what came next in a sequence (you Hebrew scholars may weigh in on this). The use of "then" is inserted after the creation of the animals and before the creation of Adam. And it is also used a second time when it picks up the creation of man again, in Genesis 2:
"
then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man
became a living creature."
I think it is interesting that the text indicates that Adam's body was created - as his nostrils existed BEFORE he received the "breath of life." This would seem to indicate that Adam's body existed BEFORE he was ever a living being - and to me, this rules out that he was previously some type of hominid/result of evolution that God embellished with soulish attributes (in His image). And the use of the word
"became" would also seem to indicate that Adam had not previously been a living creature, but BECAME one.
"So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man."
Here we apparently have man's first anesthesia and operation. Did this happen or not? Was Eve created from Adam's Rib or not? And if Eve was not taken out of Adam's body, why does Scripture reveal in the first known human declaration:
Then the man said, “This at last is
bone of my bones and
flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman, because
she was taken out of Man.”
Note that "she was taken out of MAN," not out of a woman. And her bones are of "my bones" (of Adam's bones).
So, if this is all some wild fairy tale, or is it true? Why some crazy allegorical story about something so crucial as man's origins?