B'tzelem Elohim is doing heavy lifting in Jewish ethics, and the rabbis extended it aggressively: the Mishnah reasons from a single created ancestor to the conclusion that no one may claim superior descent, and that each person is obligated to say "the world was created for my sake" — meaning the obligation, not the entitlement. The claim is not that humans are divine but that they bear a likeness that makes contempt for any person a theological error. It grounds the tradition's positions on dignity, on the treatment of the dead, and on capital cases.