In all of the creation stories, there is the belief of a deity that is responsible in creating the earth and man. However, unlike the Hymn to Aten and the excerpts from Genesis, the Yoruba religion starts off the creation stories with the belief that the god of creation, Obatala was sent by the highest God, Oludumare to create the earth. This I thought was significant because both the Hymn to Aten and Genesis seem to find the creator of the world to be the almighty and highest being, emphasizing the value of monotheism, while Yoruba shows polytheistic views. However, Obatala does play a large role in this creation, as “he placed the corn on the water, spread the earth over it and placed the cock on top…and thus the land spread far and wide” and “gives shape to the new babe in the mother’s womb (392). Oludumare was responsible for sending Obatala and also breathing life into his creations: “Obatala made man out of earth. After shaping men and women he gave them to Oludamare to blow in the breath of life” (392).

Another interesting aspect in these creation stories is the value of animals in the culture. Throughout the creation stories a rooster, a chameleon, a spider, a goat and a sheep were all mentioned. The cock or rooster is seen as assisting in the spreading of the earth in Obatala’s creation: “The cock immediately started to scratch and thus the land spread far and wide”. I don’t know exactly what role the chameleon plays but he is mentioned to have “found a human pair in his fish trap… (and) reported his discovery to Mulungu.” The spider however plays a large role as it “spun a thread up to the sky and down again…And Mulungu ascended to the sky on the spider’s thread to escape the wickedness of men.” The sheep and the goat are sent as messengers from God to humans about life and death: “God sent the sheep with eternal life and a gift to men. But the he-goat ran on ahead and gave them death as a gift from God.” So in a way the sheep and goat may have been seen as symbols of life and death in their culture.

Also, there is a negative view on the role of women during this time. In the creation stories, women were seen as responsible for separating man from God, as stated, “In primeval times, God had familiar intercourse with men and gave them all they needed. This state, however, came to an end when some women who were grinding their food became embarrassed by God’s presence and told him to go away…” (393)

Based on these aspects, we can infer that the Yoruba people were polytheistic and held a value for animals in their culture. From the portrayal of women in their creation stories, one can infer that they had a patriarchal society. They also had their own ways of explaining the phenomena in the world, such as how the earth was created, why man is separated from God, and the origin of death.

It’s kind of shocking how much our view on a God or someone/something that is responsible for everything that is occurring has changed over the years. In “The Great Hymn to the Aten” the focus is on the sun god. The story is about how the sun god is the all powerful being, and how the world wouldn’t run correctly without his rule. Reading this during that time period would have seemed logical just because of the lack of information, but knowing what the sun is and what its role is in the universe you start to look back at readings like this and wonder what they would have assumed this ball of light in the sky was actually doing. Where did it come from? What was its purpose? What stuck out to me is that the Egyptians seemed to have this belief that Aten the sun god was the sole creator of everything. That without him nothing would happen, almost as if life would end or stop in time. ” Every lion comes from its den, All the serpents bite.” (20-21)  Aten by the views of the Egyptians is the sole reason that life goes on, that creatures and man are able to do their work. “You set every man in his place, You supply their needs; Everyone has his food, His life time is counted.” (72-75) The Hymn shows that Aten is a creator, he is life and death. He created man, gave him what he needs to survive and live but at the same time he knows when they will die. They view him as the one to start it all, created earth and all its inhabitants. The Hymn shows a little peak into what life was like, Egyptians looked at the sun almost like a start button. When the sun was up life started but when it set life took a pause. “All labor ceases when you rest in the west.” (117) I wonder what the Egyptians would say if they knew what the sun was actually all about? and at the same time I want to know what they thought of the moon? How did the moon fall into this worship of the sun? Maybe the moon was a god too.

The reading which I chose was the two creation stories from Genesis, found in the Old Testament, or the Hebrew Bible.  One main reason I am choosing to this is because for most of my life, religious education was always a school subject. I always had to take everything at face value. This time, however, I can remain objective and read the stories I’ve been studying as an outsider, looking more at the compositing than the faith value.

One obvious standout between the two stories is differing accounts of the creation of the universe and of the creatures that dwell in it. The main difference between the creation story from the first chapter of Genesis and the second chapter of Genesis is thus: In the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, God creates everything in six days, starting with light and darkness, and then ending with creating man and woman both on the sixth and final day, then resting on the seventh. The second chapter of Genesis has God creating man first, and giving him the companionship of the animals of the Garden of Eden, then taking a rib to create Eve.

As someone who has read a good bit of the Good Book, this happens a lot, especially in the New Testament, where the stories focus on different areas to appeal to different groups of people, so the two creation stories exist probably for this reason. The feeling I have from the first Genesis story is it is a little more straightforward. What I mean is that I see it as a bullet-pointed list. The feeling I have of how these people saw God is somewhat detached, that is, not active all the time with the Earth. In this story, God creates everything a little at a time and either “saw that it was good” (Norton 158) or tell the living creations to “be fruitful and multiply” (Norton 158).  God then rests on the seventh day, which compared to the second creation story, is very much more hands-off.  The first story seems to portray a loving but distant God. After each creation, he “sees that it is good” and is proud of the work done, and God tells man and woman “I have given you every seed bearing plant on the face of all the and every tree that has fruit bearing seeds will be for food” (Norton 159). This shows how much he cares about his creation, and treats them well enough by giving domain over the rest of creation, but God isn’t constantly there, he rests on the seventh day, unlike the God portrayed in the second Genesis story.

In the second Genesis creation story, Adam is created first, and is placed into the Garden of Eden, which was not mentioned in the first story.  Also, in the first story, Adam and Eve were created on the same day. In the second creation story, Adam is made first and Eve is then taken from Adam’s ribs “This one at last, bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This one shall be called Woman, for from man was this one taken” (Norton 160). Most importantly, I believe that this story reflects a people who believe God was more vengeful.  Firstly, in the first Genesis story, God gave man and woman “every seed bearing plant” but in the second story, God restricts them form eating from the tree of knowledge, “from the tree of knowledge , good and evil,  you shall not eat” (Norton 158-159). Also, they see God as vengeful because at the end of this creation story, God punishes all those involved “to the woman he said ‘I will terribly sharpen your birth pangs, in pain you shall bear children…’ to the man He said ‘Cursed be the soil for your sake, … by the sweat of your brow shall you eat your bread till you return to the soil’” (Norton 161).  This seems to be a way for people to come to terms with the terribleness of the world and all the pain and suffering people have to deal with every day.

I believe that the Yoruba creation stories, The Creation of Land and The Creation of Man, have a similar/different relationship to each other.  They both lead to an order of creation such as the land first and then the humans.  I notice that there are no restrictions in the creation of the dry land; however, I wonder why there is a limit on the creation of people?  It can be seen in the middle of the second passage: “One day Obatala drank palm wine.  Then he started to make hunchbacks and cripples, albinos and blind men.  From that day onwards hunchbacks and albinos and all deformed persons are scared to Obatala.  But his worshippers are forbidden to drink palm wine.” (392) I thought that worshipping him would be a good act of respect towards him including drinking the wine.  Unless the wine serves as a forbidden drink to humans; only the creation God can have the wine due to his creation work on earth.  I believe that this text can be comparable to The Forbidden Fruit passage of the Myths on the Origin of Death.  God makes a commandment to Ba-atsi about the prohibition of eating off the Tahu tree; likewise, people cannot drink from the palm wine.  I would hint that the punishment of death would be the same for both cases.  These two passages show that there must be obedience to a certain God.  The Gods have the ability to create humans; therefore, they are able to establish rules.

I also find the story, Man Chooses Death in Exchange for Fire, interesting.  Once men were old, God made them young.  Then the greedy men decided to beg God for fire and in return his message stated they will receive fire if men will die.  The author mentions “The man took the fire from God, but ever since then all men must die.” (393). I question how can men not have a fear of death or are they avoiding it?  This shows the high level of greed for an object, including material goods, that leads to people’s risk.  The men always take God’s gifts, but never return favors or show acceptance/appreciation.  In fact they have selfish attitudes toward God.  In a worse case these men have full knowledge of their intentions regardless of the serious consequences.

Finally, I would like to mention about the Song of Creation by Rig Veda.  There was nothing before existence until The One made its presence and created the world through impulse, desire, wisdom, etc.  Hindu religion has beliefs on reincarnation, endless worlds, and multiple times of creation and destruction.  The end of the song plays “But, after all, who knows, and who can say whence it all came, and how creation happened? The gods themselves are later than creation, so who knows truly whence it has arisen?….” (lines 21-28).  I am curious about the identity of The One as a God or someone else and whether it truly created the world.

In ancient times, creation stories serve as a time capsule from different regions; they serve to teach the following generations, and often laid the foundation of religious beliefs. In ancient Egypt, King Amenhotep IV began a religious cult built around the idea that the sun god, was the sole creator of all. Atenism was a new theory based on monotheism, which was a new concept for ancient Egyptian religions. It places an emphasis on the life of the living in contrast to death and afterlife.

The theme in this writing that stood out to me the most was the idea that Aten was responsible for the creation of everything. “You made the seasons to foster all that you made, winter to cool them, heat that they taste you. You made the far sky to shine therein, to behold all that you made”(lines 97-100). This leads me to believe that the King did believe that the sun god is the world’s creator, but I wonder if he believes that there are any other gods. Like I previously stated, monotheism wasn’t the norm for Egyptian religions, so this religious cult of Atenism may have believed in the existence of other gods, but that Aten was the sole creator.

The hymn also reflects the value of the living. The sun god is a symbol of life and rebirth, every morning is celebrated as a new beginning. “Earth brightens when you dawn in lightland, when you shine as Aten of daytime; as you dispel the dark, as you cast your rays, The Two Lands are in festivity. Awake they stand on their feet, you have roused them” (lines 25-30). Daytime is describes as a type of rebirth, and a time for work and productivity. Whereas nighttime is described by the line, “Earth is in darkness as if in death”(14). The juxtaposition of day and night shows how there is a belief that evil comes out at night, so it is best to sleep through the night.

I enjoyed this particular text because it made a lot of sense to me. Many creation stories, like the Genesis, are about a human god who created the world and people and then was worshiped for it. The sun god is interesting to me because it does give life to all living creatures and seems to be something that should be praised for the good it does.

The creation story that most stood out to me was “The Song of Creation” from the Rig Veda. I think that this creation story is really different from the rest in the sense that it addresses and ponders the existence of nothingness before the existence of anything through the entire song. In my opinion, addressing this intrigues us with the universal dilemma of why we exist and how exactly did we come to be; something that has no definite answer. It raises questions and makes us wonder about our origins and the beginning of life as a whole which, in comparison to the mythic/ fantastical nature of the other stories, makes it feel much more real and historic. This, in conjunction with the the ambiguous nature of the whole song, make  “The Song of Creation” really interesting.

Particularly, it’s very interesting because there are no specific details or explanation given for the creation. For example, there is no specific god or creator mentioned, in contrast to some of the other stories, except for “The One”, who is only mentioned vaguely in a few lines, and who I believe managed to coexist with the nothingness (line 7) as probably the creator of the world and life—but it is never stated. It is also really interesting to me that I directly correlated the line “arose at last born of the power of heat” (line 12) to the Big Bang; possibly because of relating heat to an explosion. Even though I don’t think the allusion was intentional, it is still interesting how a line like this could be interpreted as a real event.

All in all, I think it’s very interesting how peculiar and different this song is in relation to other creation stories. There is a certain comfort in the ambiguity but also a slight frustration that arises from not knowing the answers. However, I think the vagueness of the text allows for more interpretation and helps the song avoid falling into any type of specific religion or culture, since it isn’t that specific in terms of beliefs or gods, making it very accessible.

The existence of nothingness in the Rig Veda is very intriguing and is what sets it apart from the other creation stories.  Genesis already starts with the earth existing albeit it “was welter and waste and darkness over the deep,” it still exists (158).  In the very beginning of the Yoruba proverbs “everything was water,” and that makes sense to hear as an early creation story (392).  Many early creation stories start with a great ocean or some sort of land and sky existing or even a giant floating turtle, like early Native Americans believed.  The point of this is that the land, the water, a turtle are all things that physically exist.  The early peoples could see these things they could imagine them in their heads.  Nothing however can’t be seen nor can it be imagined.  Seriously try right now to imagine nothing and then describe what you are imagining.  It makes tons of sense that these early people didn’t start their creation stories with “first there was nothing” because they have no idea what nothing looks like.  However the Rig Veda does exactly that.  In fact it’s the third word in the whole song.  Not only that but later down in the song nothing is mentioned again “That One which came to be, enclosed in nothing” (Rig Veda).  Now, maybe the people who wrote the Rig Veda meant The One was naked and was wearing nothing at all.  This would make a lot of sense because certainly the people who wrote the Rig Veda have seen someone not wearing clothes.  However why wouldn’t they, or the people who translated the text, use another word which would mean a similar thing such as, naked, or nude, or plainly not wearing anything at all?  Why would they willingly use a word they have already used in the text, to set the grand scene of creation, to now describe The Ones lack of clothing?  Maybe that analysis is going too far with the idea and maybe it really does mean The One wore nothing.  Nonetheless I am thoroughly impressed that a piece of writing that came out sometime between 1500-1200 BCE had the idea of nothing when other creation tales that came out before or after it did not.

For centuries, multiple stories have been created by different religions explaining how the world was created. Some religions and cultures believe in multiple gods (polytheism) while other religions believe in only one superior being (monotheism). Religions such as Catholicism are monotheistic and believe that the story of   “Genesis”, (that’s comes from the sacred book: The Bible) explains the origin of our world.

In “Genesis” chapter 1, God created the world and everything in it. He created the seas, land, heaven and earth, light and darkness, living creatures and humans, the male and female in his image. In chapter 2 and 3, God rested and ceased on the seventh day from creating the world. He also gave humans life and created woman from the ribs of the first man created. This represented the bond between husband and wife. God also commanded that humans should not eat from the “tree of knowledge” or they would die. Then the serpent “ … most cunning of all beasts of the field that the Lord God had made.”(Genisis:3), tricked the humans into eating the fruit from the tree by granting them wisdom and power of a God. Then God punished the serpent by permanently making it travel on its belly, the woman had to go through pain when giving birth and man’s punishment was labor.

I found the story of “Genesis”, very interesting but it left me questioning the symbolic importance of certain characters and their actions. Why was the serpent considered the “… most cunning of all beasts of the field…”(Genesis: 3)? Are there other religions and cultures that share the same point of view on these creatures?

I also found it interesting that both humans realized that they were both naked after they ate the fruit off the tree of knowledge and instantly clothed themselves with leaves. Was this action a form of embarrassment? Why did God keep them from seeing the truth? I believe this symbolizes our world today and human behavior. Humans are constantly judging each other consciously and subconsciously, which sometimes effects our perception on things. This behavior of ours, sometimes prevents us from seeing the actual truth.

I also saw a change in God and his behavior from “Genesis: 1”to “Genesis: 2 and 3”. In “ Genesis: 1” I saw a more superior powerful being that had control over everything and himself. Then in “Genesis: 3 and 4” I saw a God with more human like characteristics. I saw a God that was angry and filled with emotions. God used words such as “Cursed be you”(Genesis: 3) and “I will terribly Sharpen your birth pangs, in pain shall you bear children” (Genesis: 3) showing his emotions toward the situation. Overall, this story was very interesting but had many gaps that left me confused and wanting more details.

One of the most unique aspects of history is that pieces of various civilizations can live on to the modern day through what they choose to leave behind. This is evident, in the fact that we have a large understanding of many cultures and their beliefs based on what they have left behind for us to learn from. One culture that has been able to be studied to great lengths because of the pieces of history they have left behind is the Egyptian culture and one of the oldest pieces of literature left behind was The Great Hymn to Aten.

The Great Hymn to the Aten is the longest form of one of a number of hymn-poems dedicated to the Egyptian god Aten. The hymn itself was written by the king of Egypt, Amenhotep IV, and its content not only praises the god Aten but emphasizes the close connection between Aten and Amenhotep IV. The hymn specifically extolls Aten for the blessings Egypt receives and describes the good provisions made possible for the human world because of Aten.

What interests me about this piece is the historical circumstance that surrounds the religion and the great insight into Egyptian culture that is given. In this piece, we receive a slight glimpse into Egyptian culture and their views on God, the universe and the world around them. Based on the summary given before the actual piece, we learn that this religion was created through political and religious revolutions. So when Amenhotep IV died, his successor quickly abolished the religion in favor of the more traditional and conservative religion. But during Amenhotep’s rein we can make the argument that the Egyptian people believed in what seems to be a monotheistic religion. In this religion, Aten the sun god, is intertwined into all of the Egyptians lives. This is demonstrated in the hymn when it states, “ Those on earth come from your hand as you made them, When you have dawned they live, When you set they die”(Lines 111-113). Not only does this piece emphasize their views on how the world works, but it demonstrates how people viewed the king in relationship to Aten. This piece strongly indicates that the king has a close connection to Aten. In the final lines of the hymn it states, “There is no one other who knows you,Only your son, Neferkheprure, Sole-one-of-Re, Whom you have taught your ways and your might” (Lines 108-110). The lines from 108-110 strongly indicate a social hierarchy in which the pharaoh remains closest to the Gods.

As indicated by the summary provided before the actual reading, when Amenhotep IV died his successor abandoned the new religion in favor of a more traditional and conservative one. Not only did the Egyptian society abandon the new religion, they dismantled the new capital city created by Amenhotep IV and attempted to destroy any evidence of his kingship. This only reinforces the idea, that history keeps things once forgotten alive.

Questions
1.) Where did this belief of monotheism come from?
2.) Is this new religion monotheistic?
**In Egypts polytheistic religion, there was a sole God responsible for the underworld that was mentioned in the hymn**
3.) Does the Queen share an equal relationship to Aten when compared to Amenhotep IV?

In the Genesis creation story, I noticed how the writing portrayed God as an almighty being who brought life and prosperity to a place where there was “welter and waste and darkness over the deep”. God brought life and order to a blank space, such as dividing the light from the darkness. Every day for 6 days, God would add more to this “darkness over the deep” to make it a better life for all living things. He provided “grass, plants yielding seed…fruit of each kind.” He provided plants that would bear fruits and seeds so humans could harvest the seeds, and then humans and animals could eat the fruits that grew from the plants. This text portrays God as loving and caring toward his creation, especially toward humans. God says, “’Let us make a human in our image, by our likeness, to hold sway over the fish of the sea and fowl of the heavens and the cattle and the wild beasts and all the crawling things that crawl upon the earth.’” He states that created humans using the same physical features as him, and humans will be rulers of all the animals. This shows God’s love and compassion to humans, who seem to be his greatest creation.

Chapter 2 talks about how God created man and gives him directions about what to do in the Garden of Eden, he may eat from any fruit in the garden, except the tree of knowledge. God gives the man instructions that if he eats from it, “[he] is doomed to die”. In chapter 2, it states “And the two of them were naked, the human and his woman, and they were not ashamed.” This states that God gave them the power to not be ashamed of their nudity. Then, in Chapter 3, directly after they ate from the tree, they realized they were naked, which was a consequence for listening to the serpent. God became angered at both Adam and Eve and punished them and their future generations. For women, God created pain for them during childbirth, and “your man shall be your longing, and he shall rule over you.” For men, God said that they will have to work and sweat for their food. This is why the world is set up where everyone has to work in some fashion. As a result of disobeying God, death and sin enters the world. Adam and Eve, and all other humans that follow them must undergo aging and eventually endure death of their physical bodies.

Why did God create the serpent if he knew it would trick the man and the woman?