Review of Literature: Origin Stories Across Cultures
Origin stories have been prevalent for centuries and even before the religion of Christianity. Jerimiah Curtin defines origin stories as “the detailed and circumstantial account of the world and all the things and creatures contained in it” (Curtin ix). However, the Christian Bible is a primary source for it has similar correlations to many origin stories and is well-known around the world. The book of Genesis is the first of the Christian Bible and contains the creation story to compare and contrast with other origin stories from Mesopotamian, Native American, and Greek myths.
To begin, the Native American culture is vast and has a variety of subcultures, but the primitive tribes that …show more content…
Similar to the mysteries of Native American creation myths, the creation story in Genesis was written by Moses, but it is unknown how he received this information. Since many creation stories were previously oral, many of the stories are illogical, such as in the use of the Wintu tribe, who describes their creation of the world as beginning with a void and the first Native Americans having the capabilities to metamorphose and create the world around them. In relation to Genesis, the Christian God creates the heaven and the earth by speaking, and they appeared (Richards 2). Yet, the Cherokee’s believes that the land was a ball of water and the sky was beginning to become too crowded. Then the water beetle and buzzard volunteered to explore the earth, while they investigated these two animals began forming the planet unknowingly, and the remaining animals of the sky quickly inhabiting earth making their new home in Cherokee land (cite). However, there is another creation story of the Cherokee tribe, and it is similar to the first except, a spider is the main …show more content…
Regardless, Edith Hamilton’s novel, “Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heros” and Guy Darshan article, “ The Origins of the Foundation Stories Genre in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Eastern Mediterranean” pair well together for they combine many other ideas of the Bible, Greek, and Mesopotamian cultures fairly well. Hamilton’s book of myths includes the believed origin story of the Greek’s began with the void where Darkness, Chaos, and Love dwelled. Suddenly, Mother Earth (Gaea) and Father Earth (Ournos) are considered to be the first with life. Gaea and Ournos first children were monsters such as cyclops and the Titans, and they roamed the earth. However, Gaea and Ournos produced a second set of children pertaining some of the Greek gods including Zeus, and these children created the balance of good and evil (Hamilton 65-70). Correspondently, Darshan’s article discusses “as-yet-undiscussed parallels from ancient Greek and Mediterranean texts” in correlation with the Bible with two perspectives (Darshan 689). The first perspective correlates Genesis from the beginning with the Israelite children to the Greek mythology that parallels the stories. The article concludes that the Mesopotamian literature has become prevalent due to the reign of kings over the first century B.C.. Darshan states, “I have presented two of the principal models of foundation narratives prevalent
Origin stories have been prevalent for centuries and even before the religion of Christianity. Jerimiah Curtin defines origin stories as “the detailed and circumstantial account of the world and all the things and creatures contained in it” (Curtin ix). However, the Christian Bible is a primary source for it has similar correlations to many origin stories and is well-known around the world. The book of Genesis is the first of the Christian Bible and contains the creation story to compare and contrast with other origin stories from Mesopotamian, Native American, and Greek myths.
To begin, the Native American culture is vast and has a variety of subcultures, but the primitive tribes that …show more content…
Similar to the mysteries of Native American creation myths, the creation story in Genesis was written by Moses, but it is unknown how he received this information. Since many creation stories were previously oral, many of the stories are illogical, such as in the use of the Wintu tribe, who describes their creation of the world as beginning with a void and the first Native Americans having the capabilities to metamorphose and create the world around them. In relation to Genesis, the Christian God creates the heaven and the earth by speaking, and they appeared (Richards 2). Yet, the Cherokee’s believes that the land was a ball of water and the sky was beginning to become too crowded. Then the water beetle and buzzard volunteered to explore the earth, while they investigated these two animals began forming the planet unknowingly, and the remaining animals of the sky quickly inhabiting earth making their new home in Cherokee land (cite). However, there is another creation story of the Cherokee tribe, and it is similar to the first except, a spider is the main …show more content…
Regardless, Edith Hamilton’s novel, “Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heros” and Guy Darshan article, “ The Origins of the Foundation Stories Genre in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Eastern Mediterranean” pair well together for they combine many other ideas of the Bible, Greek, and Mesopotamian cultures fairly well. Hamilton’s book of myths includes the believed origin story of the Greek’s began with the void where Darkness, Chaos, and Love dwelled. Suddenly, Mother Earth (Gaea) and Father Earth (Ournos) are considered to be the first with life. Gaea and Ournos first children were monsters such as cyclops and the Titans, and they roamed the earth. However, Gaea and Ournos produced a second set of children pertaining some of the Greek gods including Zeus, and these children created the balance of good and evil (Hamilton 65-70). Correspondently, Darshan’s article discusses “as-yet-undiscussed parallels from ancient Greek and Mediterranean texts” in correlation with the Bible with two perspectives (Darshan 689). The first perspective correlates Genesis from the beginning with the Israelite children to the Greek mythology that parallels the stories. The article concludes that the Mesopotamian literature has become prevalent due to the reign of kings over the first century B.C.. Darshan states, “I have presented two of the principal models of foundation narratives prevalent