Perspectives on Creation: An Analysis of the Various Creation Myths of the World
...wish version, they mention the forces of good and evil, or “ying and yang” as the Japanese would refer to it as. However, they seem to fail to go into anymore depth into this area of creation. The creation myths of the Philippines all contain pretty much the same themes. However, unlike that of the Japanese, most of these give credit to one or more than one Supreme Being. One story entitled “The Story of Creation,” states “in the very beginning there lived a being so large that he cannot be compared with any known thing. His name was Melu, and when he sat on the clouds, which were his home, he occupied all the space above” (http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/creation-phil.html). According to the rest of the story, Melu created Earth, and he was pleased with his work, so he created human beings. Like that of the Creation Story in the Book of Genesis, Melu created “two beings like himself, though smaller, to live on it.” However, this story makes a sudden twist. Unlike the Christian Creation Story, Taun Tana from below the Earth, who most likely represented the devil, came to help Melu just before he was ready to add the noses to his newly created humans. Taun Tana “made the noses which he placed on the people upside down.” The human beings were then sent to Earth, but “one day a great rain came, and the people on the earth nearly drowned from the water which ran off their heads into their noses. Melu, from his place on the clouds, saw their danger, and he came quickly to earth and saved their lives by turning their noses the other side up.” Melu then noticed that they were lonely and created them female companions. This unexpected and interesting addition to the story of creation conveys a big difference between the creation story of the Philippines and that of the Christians. In the Christian story, the devil does not help God in his creation of the human beings, but instead evil is brought into world through a snake that tempts Eve to eat the forbidden apple. In another Filipino creation story entitled “In the Beginning,” Melu and three other gods make human beings out of wax instead of using the remains of the material used to build the Earth. The tellers of this story most likely believed that their gods looked at human beings as more important than the dirt that most other gods in pagan creation myths had done. Another group of creation stories came from the Native American Indian Tribes. As a matter of fact, one of the biggest contributors of creation myths was that of the tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy. One of their most popular creation stories is that of “A Tale of the Foundation of the Great Island, now North America: -- the two infants born, and the Creation of the Universe.” In this version of the creation story, a woman is pregnant and is giving birth to twins, Enigorio, who is good, and Enigonhatgea, who is evil. While she is giving birth, Enigonhatgea kills the mother. After the mother dies, Enigorio pays homage to her by creating the sun and the moon from the head and the body of his mother. The fact that only the mother is mentioned in the story shows how important the female species is to the future of creation, especially since it is them that give birth. As matter of fact, most, if not all, Iroquois creation stories contain a woman or mother-like figure that has a major role in the creation of the earth. In addition, the good twin forms images from the earth’s dust and breathes life into them. According to the Iroquois, this is the way human beings were created. Life the Christian or Jewish version of creation, dust from the earth was used to create human beings as well. Unlike the Christian version, however, human beings were portrayed as the creators in this story rather than a single Supreme Being. This is a very creative addition in the part of the Iroquois Indians because it shows that even the creator of the world was not perfect. According to the creation stories of the Bible, both the Christians and the Jews look up to God as if he was perfect. The fact that the Iroquois used human creators in their story could be considered a way of explaining why there are so many imperfections in our world. However, there is a discrepancy in this story. Since this is a creation story, there is not yet any existence of human kind. If this is true, how does the pregnant woman exist? The first line of the creation stories told by the Apaches, another Native American Indian Tribe, is very similar to that of other creation myths already discussed: “In the beginning nothing existed—no earth, no sky, no sun, no moon, only darkness was everywhere” (http://www.indians.org/welker/creation.htm). However, as the story goes on, the reader may realize that the Apache are more supernatural than any other group discussed and this is strongly shown in this creation story. The Apaches believed that in the middle of this darkness, a thin disc appeared in which was sitting a small bearded man. The name they gave this man was “Creator, the one from above.” Just by looking in the darkness, this man caused light to appear above him. He looked every which way and colors started to appear. After this, he created stars and clouds. As the story progresses, it starts to become more and more similar to the other creation myths as “the Creator” began to create living things. Many of the most interesting creation myths come from the ancient civilizations, such as Greece. The Greeks have several creation stories; some of them even contradict each other. In addition, they explain how both the world and the universe were created. The word that the Greeks use for their creation myths is “theogenia.” Since the ancient Greeks were polytheistic, or believed in more than one god, their creation myths also involved more than one god. Many of these myths were written by an eighth century B.C. Greek poet named Hesiodus. As a matter of fact, the stories that he contributed were the oldest known records that Greeks had to show how they viewed the world. According to his writings, everything came from Chaos, or the empty void that is always at the beginning of creation. According to The Hellenism Network, a website that discusses much about Greek myths, Chaos comes from five elements, which are Mother Earth, Tartarus or the Underworld, Erebus, which is the darkness of Tartarus, Eros, and Night. Each of these elements are conveyed in the ancient Greek creation myths. According to the story, Mother Earth had a son, which was the sky. In ancient Greek culture, only gods could marry within the family, wh...