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.