Creation Stories
10/18/99
Gal Sivan
English Essay about Creation Stories
Where do we come from? Why are we here? What happens when you
die? Why are things the way they are? In this essay I am going to
try to answer these questions by showing... Okay, enough jokes,
many smarter and better than I tried to answer these questions.
Did they succeed? Well, that depends on what religion (if at
all...) you subscribe to. These questions lie in the subconscious
of every human being, anywhere (from Antarctica to the moon).
Religions sprung up from these questions. They attempted to
answer all these questions with stories of gods and goddesses and
other supernatural forces that were beyond the understanding of
humans. Magic, in its essence, were the powers wielded by these
superior beings that caused the unexplainable to happen.
All of the religions have their own creation stories, of which
many are strikingly similar. These similarities occur in
civilizations not only far from each other but also in cultures
separated by seemingly impossible to traverse oceans of water.
Many of these similarities occur in the cosmological or creation
myths of the various religions.
I am going to discuss some general similarities I have found in
creation accounts of some religions (based mainly on my research
of the Vodun religion of the Yoruba tribe of West Africa, my
familiarity with stories of the Old Testament and our class
discussions about Gilgamesh). Many theories developed from
observing some general similarities. I will shed some light on
two of the more adventurous, therefore more interesting, theories
of why are some of these accounts so similar.
The first similarity between almost all religions is their
polytheistic nature. There are many gods and goddesses in their
folklore, and they behave like humans. They argue and cry and get
punished for certain deeds. There usually appears to be one
entity that is the main god of them all - the big chief - who is
in charge of judging and supervising all the gods. He is usually
their creator or father, sometimes along with a goddess.
The examples for that are numerous, but I would like to point out
a polytheistic aspect that I have found in the three monotheistic
religions known to me. The existence of the devil. Especially in
the book of Job in the Old Testament. The devil is presented
there as an equal counter-part of God (at least more than
anywhere else), making a bet with Him. What is monotheistic about
that? The existence of the devil and God may symbolize the
everyday struggles we go through in our souls as human beings,
between bad and good. So in a way, it's only natural to have an
entity such as the devil.
There are also some examples in the book of Genesis that may
suggest the development of the Jewish belief from polytheism.
There are the Cherubim, who are put by God to guard the garden of
Eden after Adam and Eve's deportation. At the beginning of Noah's
story of the flood the Nephilim are mentioned, and the sons of
God, "The Nephilim were on the earth in those days - and also
afterward - when the sons of God went in to the daughters of
humans, who bore children to them." (Genesis 6:4).
Another similarity we find is that humans are related to their
creators. In Genesis, "So God created humankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;" (there 1:27).
In the Vodun religion, all of the gods and goddesses are sons and
daughters of Olodumare, and the line distinguishing gods from
humans is very fine. Some gods, like Oduduwa (whose gender is
unclear) who supposedly created the earth (he may have been
cheated out of it by Orisa-Nla...), may have been human beings
who had an exceptionally strong personality, and were later
elevated to the degree of gods in the folklore. Then they had
gotten their credentials.
In the story of Gilgamesh, which is the oldest creation story
that survived, the gods are all related, being the sons and
daughters of the two serpents Lakhmu and Lakhamu, who were born
to Aspu and Tiamat. The descendants of these "husband and wife"
brought human beings, and Gilgamesh, who's half god half human,
to the world. It's much easier to believe in something that is
related to us, it makes more sense in our human brains. We feel
closer to the creator if we were created in his image, or if we
are actually the descendants of him. The polytheism also makes it
easier for us to identify with gods, because then it is much
easier to personify them. They can be joyous, can have feuds and
mishaps.
The next phase which is similar in some religions is the
occurrence of a big destruction, usually by a flood. The
characteristics of flood stories are very similar. The human race
(or the race of lesser gods) disturbs the gods, either in their
sleep (like in the story of Gilgamesh) or by sinning in some
unclear fashion (like in the Old Testament).
The punishment is almost total destruction. A human survivor and
every kind of animal are chosen, also for unclear reasons, to
keep the race. Then the gods feel remorse about their actions,
and they swear never to do it again. A few questions come to mind
about these similarities. What really evoked the destruction?
What were the criteria for becoming a survivor? Why is there
remorse in the gods? Why couldn't they destroy everything and
start all over from scratch, as opposed to sampling from every
kind?
There are two interesting theories about the similarities of
different religions, one tries to explain these internally, and
the other externally. The first one belongs to Carl Gustav Jung,
a leading psychologist and contemporary of Freud, who came up
with a theory involving the collective unconscious of a person's
psyche. The collective unconscious, according to Jung, is made up
of what he called "archetypes", or primordial images. These
correspond to such experiences such as confronting death or
choosing a mate and manifest themselves symbolically in religion,
myths, fairy tales and fantasies.
I believe that major events did happen in Earth's history, that
were witnessed by human beings. Events of destruction that had no
logical explanation, the last ice-age that occurred when human
beings were around already. These things happened globally, and
had to be accounted for. This is where Jung's theory fits, people
would react generally the same way to such big events. This is
how evolution stories developed.
Erich von Daniken's theory, presented in his infamous book,
"Chariots of the Gods", is a little more far-out. He believes the
gods that most folklore stories are referring to are really
astronauts from other distant, more advanced civilizations. He
cites many places in the Bible and in other creation stories of
many distant and different religions. He uses archeological
discoveries and historical landmarks like pyramids and Stonehenge
to facilitate the main theme in his theory that is basically, how
could all of this been possible without some external help?
Naturally similarities of the kind discussed above are referred
to time and again in his theory.
At some point humanity will probably have the means to find out
what exactly happened, and why all these stories are so
reminiscent of each other. I can only try to imagine what these
means would be, from special chemicals that will restore more out
of archeological debris, through advanced mathematics and physics
which would enable the other sciences to make perfect recreations
of the past, to maybe time-travel, which will enable witnessing
of the creation (however, then we get into a whole new ballpark
of hypotheses, because time-travel by definition is already
interference with history, and that would mean that at other
dimensions there are other worlds just like ours with different
creation stories and traditions, and that we are just one of
infinite versions).
Indeed, until then, these things will remain unexplained, and I
think it is magical and beautiful.