In Sahīh al-Bukhārī, Abū Hurayrah said:

“The People of the Book used to read the Torah in Hebrew and explain it in Arabic to the Muslims. The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said: ‘Neither believe the People of the Book nor disbelieve them, but say, “We believe in Allah and in what has been revealed to us and what has been revealed to you”’—to the end of the verse.”

In light of this, it is clear that Ibn ‘Abbās could not have relied on information taken from the People of the Book when speaking about the attributes of the Lord. The only remaining possibility is that he learned this from the Companions who had learned it from the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him.

All these arguments, besides invalidating the view of those who take the pronoun in his words to refer to Adam, independently establish that Allah Most High created Adam in His own image. This also answers the objection concerning al-A‘mash’s practice of tadlīs (concealment in transmission): he proceeds to narrate a hadith of this kind, scholars receive it from him, and al-Thawrī and other scholars likewise narrate it from that very same teacher.