Other stories about the beginning of times

In the previous chapter we discussed that in certain cultures people talked about the beginning of time about gods who actually are not creators but created beings! These gods do not exist forever but found somewhere a beginning and their genesis is usually contained in stories. In those stories we can see that their ‘agents’ themselves are not real gods, but rather the “substance” from which they arose: a primordial sea, a primary principle, a primal matter.

This way of thinking whereby that once the gods appear on the scene, those rudimentary elements resigning or going back to the the foundation of the cosmos (the ordered world) are not exclusive to the times of Mesopotamia. One can also find Oriental beliefs that sometimes speak of a primitive or rudimentary egg. When the egg bursts there comes a god out of it who makes the halves of the eggshell until heaven and earth.

Many scientists think that the universe came to being by a big bang but a year after the break through discovery, proving the “Big Bang,” astronomers have now retracted their claims and admitted that the findings were not proof of the Big Bang after all.

By the Greeks all began with “Chaos” (disordered); here is how the “Earth” and the “Abyss” and “Love” started to come to existence. In the Bible there is also indicated that all began out of disorder or chaos in a “foreign” or “empty” space, the void. By the Greeks the Earth brought ‘Heaven‘ and ‘Sea‘ in the picture. From the marriage of Heaven and Earth arose ‘Time‘. In a next generation arose then finally the actual gods who drove their predecessors away and took over the government. Again we see that the origin is at deified concepts, partly abstract nature and partly primeval matter. It is only later in the development that the gods become worshipped. As mentioned earlier, these gods themselves are not creators. They also do not appear to have everything, to be all connoisseurs or to have all power. The rule has been obtained through struggle.

Also in the Norwegian-Germanic mythology we can find such elements. As in the Greco-Roman mythology we find in the background something like a fate that ultimately determines the course of history and the fate of creation and creatures, which even the gods can not escape.

To the left the armed Oden (Odin), in the middle Tor (Thor) and to the right a god of the Byzantium. A dog is sleeping in the background. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

All these stories breath the spirit of a speculative thinking human. Man sets himself gods as himself, only better or more powerful. As he has a beginning, the gods also need to have a beginning. And if he tries to think further back he comes to face primeval concepts, rudimentary abstractions that are not really beings.

The gods must conquer their rule, sometimes by wiles. They are, as in the most primitive animism (the belief that all the places and things in nature can be considered as inspired by “spirits”), still connected to nature concepts such as sky, sea, earth, storm, earthquake, etc. Only they now rule on that, or do they use these natural phenomena instead of being those things. This also explains their plurality. So there is no essential difference between such views and a primitive nature religion. there is offered to us no real explanation for how and why the creation of the world happened. The stories of the gods do not explain really, life on earth and the purpose thereof, or the measures we need to build. And that is still the case. Although the religious thinking outside the Bible has freed itself further and further from nature, it has not fundamentally changed. This is because the whole is based on speculative thinking.

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Preceding article: Creation Creator and Creation

a Dutch version: Gods vergeten Woord 11 Schepping 3 Andere ontstaansverhalen

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Additional reading:

1. Are Science and the Bible Compatible?
2. Science and Religion Harmonized (Once and For All…)
3. Blackness, nothingness, something, void
4. “Before” and “after” the Big Bang
5. Creation of the earth out of something
6. The very very beginning 1 Creating Gods
7. The very very beginning 2 The Word and words
8. The World framed by the Word of God
9. Genesis – Story of creation 1 Genesis 1:1-25 Creation of thing
10. Genesis 1:26 God said “Let us make”
11. How Many Persons Created the Heavens and the Earth?
12. Scripture about Creation and Creator Deity
13. Trusting, Faith, calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #3 Voice of God #1 Creator and His Prophets
14. Creation Creator and Creation
15. God, the Father, the Sole Creator of Heaven and Earth
16. A viewpoint on creation
17. Creator and Blogger God 1 Emptiness and mouvement
18. Creator and Blogger God 2 Image and likeness
19. Cosmos creator and human destiny
20. Cosmogony
21. Creation gift of God

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