Royal son

Undoubtedly, the biblical author was familiar with the mythological literature of his day, but what his sources of influence contained, whether they were written and/or oral, the delineation of these sources within the present text of Genesis 1, and their place of origin—whether Egypt, Mesopotamia, Canaan, and/or ancient Israel—is, regrettably, beyond our present knowledge. What we can say with reasonable certainty is that the author was familiar with Near Eastern creation and royal traditions and that he incorporated selected aspects of these traditions in writing his own distinctive account of creation. The result was a text that, unlike other creation accounts from the ancient Near East, presented the creation of the world in a seven-day schema, which credited Elohim alone with the creation of the world, and which described humankind, on some level, as like a “royal son” of God.—The "Image of God" in the Garden of Eden, page 181