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The Babylonian Creation of the King describes a goddess forming a king with a perfected form and divine gifts. Genesis uses similar language for the creation of humanity, with God creating humans in his own image and giving them dominion.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
The Creation of the King
VAT 17019
Ancient Near East
Ea opened his mouth to speak, saying to Belet-ili: “You are Belet-ili, sister of the great gods; it was you who created man, the human. Fashion now the king, the counsellor man! Gird the whole of his figure so pleasingly, make perfect his countenance and well-formed his body!” And Belet-ili fashioned the king, the counsellor man. The great gods gave the king power in battle. Anu gave him the crown. Enlil gave him the throne. Nergal gave him the weapons. Ninurta gave him glittering brilliance. Belet-ili gave him a beautiful appearance. Nusku gave instructions, gave advice, and was at his service.
Date: 600 B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Genesis 1:26
Hebrew Bible
25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the cattle according to their kinds, and all the creatures that creep along the ground according to their kinds. God saw that it was good. 26 Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness, so they may rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move on the earth.” 27 God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them. 28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply! Fill the earth and subdue it! Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and every creature that moves on the ground.”
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Notes and References
“… That the concept derives from the royal domain is now the consensus view among investigators who are historically and comparatively driven; it is also the first of three important contextual insights about the image of God. In truth, however, the comparative material is not uniform. It clusters around two loci: (i) the monarch as the image of a god and, in Mesopotamia, (ii) the monarch’s use of his own image especially in statuary. The first locus is manifest in the way the king could be described as, for example, “the image of (the god) Bel” in Mesopotamia or, in Egypt, the way the pharaoh could be called “the likeness of (the god) Re” or even, via proper name: “the living image of (the god) Amun” (the meaning of Tutankhamun). …”
Levin, Christoph
"Genesis in Form and Tradition Criticism Today" in Arnold, Bill T. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Genesis
(pp. 216-217) Cambridge University Press, 2022
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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