Whatever is the Being of God is therefore the Being of Jesus. Genesis says the image of God is male and female. It does not seem to mean that God's Being is male and female, however, as those are human constructions. God's Being could no more be male and female than it could be Jewish, brunette, or freckled. Rather, God's "image" is how we perceive God. Think of your own image - simplified manifestations of your self like your reflection in a mirror, your impression on a photograph, or your silhouette of your shadow in the ground. Likewise the Image of God implies the the impression left by God on us mere mortals, things like Creation, God's actions, and God's word through the prophets. Creating the Universe was both an act of the female who gives birth and the male who inseminates. God's comfort reminds us of the feminine and God's destruction of the masculine. God portrays God's Herself and Himself as both a seamstress and a warrior. These are all minor images, minor incarnations, of God.The difference between image and incarnation is slight at most. If an artist was to create a human sculpture, she could either compare her medium with her model and visually shape one after the other or picture the model already within the medium whom she must dig out. In either case, the model is transposed to the medium.


    In the Incarnation, the Image, we expect God's finest work. God incarnates God's self carefully, mindfully creatively, and authentically. Whereas God partially manifested into Scripture, we expect only the best of the Incarnation. Whereas a priests and prophets were markedly human with God's influence, The Incarnation was fully human and fully divine. Thus if Jesus was truly the full Incarnation and full Image, I can see no other way than that Jesus was male and female.
    We can test this theory the same way we test the gender of God's image. Justin Tanis analyzing the masculinity and femininity of Jesus. Using Second Testament actions and words of Jesus, Tanis compiled as many feminine attributes and masculine attributes of Jesus as he could and lines them up in columns. It will not surprise anyone they come out equal in length.
    This prompts two questions: How was Jesus both male and female? and Why is Scripture silent? The first question first.
    A few inquiring Sunday school attending kids have asked why Jesus was a man at all and not a woman. At least in my generation, Christians dealt with this consistently explaining that Jesus had to be one or the other and had God become a woman, She would have no respect. I see now the problem in this premise: God did not have to choose. If God could combine human and divine, surely combining female and male is easy! Nature combines them all the time in normal intersex and trans people. Artists and storytellers combine them in their arts in the form of hermaphrodites. Which could Jesus have been?
    I have heard proposed casually that Jesus was not a regular male, but born an XXY (Klinefelter's syndrome) intersex person thus being both female and male. People with Klinefelter's appear male anatomically with some minor and almost negligible physical differences. This would explain our second question easily as Klinefelter's Syndrome wasn't discovered until recently. I dislike this, and the intersex idea in general because it seems a cop out - Jesus is technically female but God hid it for only the Trinity, some angels, and gender theorists to find out. It contradicts the whole idea of the Image of God which is visible. It also leaves us nothing to struggle with and Jesus made conservative people quite uncomfortable. Besides, intersex people are fully female and fully male, only part of each. Likewise, I doubt Jesus would be a regular trans person either for all the same reasons except it has the advantage of still making some people uncomfortable.
    Jesus as a hermaphrodite seems thoroughly convincing to me. A hermaphrodite is defined as a person fully female and fully male. That means vagina, clitoris and/or penis, scrotum and/or labia, breasts, and facial hair. There's nothing more uncomfortable or wonderfully paradoxical than mixed genitals on a regular person, let alone your God.
    I anticipate that at this point you're offended. Go take my advice in the prologue. If you're calm then we can continue.
    If my original premise, that Jesus is female and male because the Image of God is female and male, I have a second motivation as well. The traditional understanding that Jesus was only male is downright sexist. If God manifested God's self as male and only male, I would have to conclude that God is more masculine than feminine and thus men are more like God than women. If Jesus, the subject of our adoration and prayers is male and only male, I would have to conclude adore men more. If Jesus, our ultimate role model and archetype is male and only male, I would have to conclude God desires all people to strive for manhood and reject womanhood. However, these do not sound like God's character at all, but they sound remarkably like the pride of men desiring to be like God, to be adored by women, and hold all womanhood and anything different than themself in xenophic contempt. Men have monopolized an interpretation of Jesus long enough and I won't submit.
    Now, my second question, Why is Scripture silent?
    Make no mistake, Scripture presents Jesus as a man. "Jesus," so far as I know, is a man's name and Scripture used male pronouns and titles. Only once, two gospels, is there an explicit mention of Jesus' femaleness:


    That's only an analogy and not sufficient for any proof. However, my ears tingle at the slightest hint of something trans and I have never, ever heard a non-trans man refer to himself using a female analogy as Jesus does here (except in jokes or insults).
    But the absence of evidence is not proof of absence. There are three possible reasons: the gospel writers didn't think it worth mentioning; the writers wanted to ignore it; the writers didn't know. Or, a bit of all three. First, it is customary to refer to trans people with masculine language because you have to choose one or the other. Hebrew and Aramaic had no neuter tense or pronouns. Eunuchs were always referred to with masculine language despite their lack of masculinity. God, in the First Testament, was almost always given male language despite every Hebrew's admission that God had no penis.
    Second, the writers chose not to write much about the feminine side of Jesus' gender. Note they do not spend much time on Jesus' masculine side either. On the four aspects of gender, they don't write at all about Jesus' sex, gender identity, or gender expression and concerning Jesus gender roles, Justin Tanis shows Jesus was remarably transgender (relative to the culture). The only gender markers the writers give are pronouns (he or she), titles (son, brother, king), and calling Jesus a man. So if the writers new about Jesus' sex, why not use feminine and masculine language? That sounds easy, but it's not. I tell everyone they can use any pronoun for me and they always choose one and stick to it. I've tried to use both feminine and masculine pronouns for God, but it's just too hard for me. And I'm an enlightened trans person! I stick to avoiding pronouns altogether. Imagine Peter who doesn't even want a woman touching Jesus trying to understand multiple genders! Besides their own inability, I could understand if the apostles thinking Jesus' gender would be a distraction from Jesus' message. Jesus is controversial enough with all that "be birthed again, cursed is the rich, drink my blood" and implying divinity without having to worry about Jesus' unmentionables too.
    I don't think either reason is why because I find this last possibility so convincing: the writers didn't know. Jesus was awfully mysterious and still is. The apostles couldn't even understand many simple things like, "They will . . . kill Him [the Son of Man], and three days later He will rise again." (Mark 10.34) If Jesus said to them, "guys, I'm the Daughter of Woman too; I've got a womb and everything." You think they'd understand? I have friends who have spent hours with loved ones trying to explain without any success. One friend has so far come out to her dad four times and he just doesn't realize.
    Besides that, when most people see a hermaphrodite, they think they're a male. It's a lot to explain, but to summarize, people who see someone with both female, feminine, male, and masculine features will ascribe a male gender to the person. Female gender attribution comes only if no male attributes are present. Thus if Jesus had a perfectly androgynous face, breasts, wide hips, short, and a beard, almost everyone would interpret Jesus as male without question. That's why you've probably never recognized a female-to-male transexual - it's so easy to convince someone they're a man.
    A new understanding of Scripture, if done right, not only deepens understanding but should explain something that didn't make sense before. Before the Crucifixion, Jesus' mind was "perfect" (for lack of a better word) but Jesus' body was limited. Jesus got tired, thirsty, hungry, and was mortal. At the resurrection, Jesus' body changed remarkably. Jesus could walk through walls and disappear entirely while the gospel writers emphasize that Jesus was still physical. Something else is odd about Jesus' body: people don't recognize it. Mary Magdalene, the first to see Jesus, does not recognize Jesus even she's looking for Jesus (John 20). Secondly, Jesus appears on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24) and is not recognized even though Jesus is talking about why the Messiah must die and resurrect and they still don't recognize Jesus. Thirdly, Jesus appears  to two other disciples walking to the country in Mark 16. The Mark passage is interesting because it records "Jesus appeared in a different form." Not recognized once is odd, twice is a coincidence, and three times holds a meaning. There's also the apostle's strange behavior at the beach when they see Jesus for the first time.
    What is the "different form"? Isaiah says Jesus was not much to look at; maybe the resurrect made Jesus better looking, but I doubt Jesus has such a standard of beauty. Perhaps Jesus' face had a huge scar which the resurrect removed. Possibly, though unconvincing. And wouldn't the apostles recognize Jesus' voice, too? I have encountered only one explanation that makes sense of the confusion and the gospel's lack of explanation: Jesus' gender changed. Perhaps Jesus' body pre-resurrection was imperfect regarding sex, only expressing maleness and the resurrection perfected that attribute of Jesus body as well; the resurrection created a femaleness to Her including, of course, Her voice. Perhaps Jesus was a hermaphrodite all along but He expressed the female much more strongly post-resurrection.
    In either case, Jesus' transgender status helps understanding a gospel mystery and complements well the frequent pairing of opposites in Jesus' life: life through death, victory through peace, richness through poverty, strength through weakness, humanity meeting divinity, and male meeting female. Male combined with female should be the least challenging! As important as gender is to us, we wealthy Americans should rather be offended at Jesus' scandalous call to poverty.




"He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, 'Show us the Father'? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me?"  John 14:9b-10a NASB
 
For this reason he had to be made like his brothers and sisters in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. (Heb 2.17 TNIV)