Creation Myths
Creation Myths
From ancient times of looking up at the firmament and puzzling over what was going on and how it all came to be, and how all those tiny little lights got on the dome, and what happens to the greater light every night, most every society and culture has its creation myths. I enjoy going online to download and read some of them. With common very ancient origins, most all of them have similarities, including likenesses to ours (the Jews’ actually) of Genesis One and Two. Interesting is the ancient Egyptian Creation myth, which features the god Nu, neither male nor female, with his all-seeing eye. There are a couple of stories, slightly different. In one, Nu who comes into being by his own will, mates with his shadow to create a son and a daughter, and everything goes from there. The Egypt stories are more sexually provocative than our Jewish prudes until one starts reading between the lines in Eden, and then the chortling begins.
Our stories are especially different in that YHWH (Genesis 2, the older story) or Elohim (Genesis 1) creates human beings as the center of the story and partner with the Creator. This is different from the pagan myths, including the Egyptian Creation mentioned above and the Babylonian myth Enuma Elish, in both of which humans are created as servants, slaves whose role is to serve and worship the gods so the gods don’t have to work but can party noisily all night and then sleep in the next day. Our stories, to me especially Genesis One, seem like rebuttals of Enuma Elish, and perhaps also a refutation of Canaanite and Philistine pagan nature myths and practices that the priests found in place back home after their return from exile.
Even if I understand the Garden of Eden as originally for the humans to raise fruit and vegetables for the heavenly table, I like our stories in which God loves and cherishes us in so many ways, visits with us, cares for us, leaves us in charge, and looks after us as God’s own. When we break faith with him he is brokenhearted and may become angry and punish. But this is a God who is such a lamb that he always forgives, and loves me, and whom I can love.
What I do not love is that much of religion is so backward, instead of loving the stories as heilsgeschichte, humanity’s awesome holy history with a loving, indulgent and forgiving Creator, insisting that fantasticalistic stories be taken dogmatically as though we were too blind to see beyond the firmament. It is appalling that so many of these folks think they should be president and that so many of us think so too. God forbid; truly, verily, amen.
W+
From ancient times of looking up at the firmament and puzzling over what was going on and how it all came to be, and how all those tiny little lights got on the dome, and what happens to the greater light every night, most every society and culture has its creation myths. I enjoy going online to download and read some of them. With common very ancient origins, most all of them have similarities, including likenesses to ours (the Jews’ actually) of Genesis One and Two. Interesting is the ancient Egyptian Creation myth, which features the god Nu, neither male nor female, with his all-seeing eye. There are a couple of stories, slightly different. In one, Nu who comes into being by his own will, mates with his shadow to create a son and a daughter, and everything goes from there. The Egypt stories are more sexually provocative than our Jewish prudes until one starts reading between the lines in Eden, and then the chortling begins.
Our stories are especially different in that YHWH (Genesis 2, the older story) or Elohim (Genesis 1) creates human beings as the center of the story and partner with the Creator. This is different from the pagan myths, including the Egyptian Creation mentioned above and the Babylonian myth Enuma Elish, in both of which humans are created as servants, slaves whose role is to serve and worship the gods so the gods don’t have to work but can party noisily all night and then sleep in the next day. Our stories, to me especially Genesis One, seem like rebuttals of Enuma Elish, and perhaps also a refutation of Canaanite and Philistine pagan nature myths and practices that the priests found in place back home after their return from exile.
Even if I understand the Garden of Eden as originally for the humans to raise fruit and vegetables for the heavenly table, I like our stories in which God loves and cherishes us in so many ways, visits with us, cares for us, leaves us in charge, and looks after us as God’s own. When we break faith with him he is brokenhearted and may become angry and punish. But this is a God who is such a lamb that he always forgives, and loves me, and whom I can love.
What I do not love is that much of religion is so backward, instead of loving the stories as heilsgeschichte, humanity’s awesome holy history with a loving, indulgent and forgiving Creator, insisting that fantasticalistic stories be taken dogmatically as though we were too blind to see beyond the firmament. It is appalling that so many of these folks think they should be president and that so many of us think so too. God forbid; truly, verily, amen.
W+