RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Creation and Preservation
with those most closely related to the Old Testament account. , , . ,
According to the Persian myth in the Bundahishn, Ormuzd, with the Amshaspands, created the world in six periods by his word (see Zoroastisr, Zokoasthianism). The usual order is the heavens and the light, the water, the earth, the trees, the animals, and men as descendants of the archetypal man Gayomart. The division of the process into definite periods of one thousand years is apparently later, but in both earlier and later sources an absolute creation out of nothing is affirmed. Still more definitely the traditional story of the Etruscans seems to point to an original connection with the Old Testament. The world is here said to have been created by God in six periods of one thousand years — first, heaven and earth, then the firmament, the sea and other waters, the sun, moon, and stars, the animals, and lastly men. As the earliest authority for this belief is Suidas (s.v. Tvpp7ivLa), it is hardly possible to avoid the conclusion of Jewish or Christian influences in the account. Much fuller of obscure mythological elements are the cosmogonies of several peoples of Western Asia. In the Old Babylonian, according to Berosus (about 300 B.C.), the primitive chaos was dominated by the seagoddess Markaya or Homoroka, i.e., the ocean; then the supreme god Bel-Zeus split her in two and out of one half made the heavens, out of the other half the earth; then Bel had his own head cut off, and men were formed out of the blood which flowed from him, mixed with earth (see Creation, Babylonian Accounts). Some confused similarities to the Old Testament account, with a large admixture of theogonic myths, are found in the Phenician legends, as given by the somewhat doubtful authority Sanchuniathon. According to this, the spirit which, as a dark wind, brooded over the primeval chaos was in some way united with the matter of this chaos; and out of this union, which is called Desire, originated first a fertile watery slime in which lay concealed the seed of all things; then the heaven, in the shape of an egg, out of which came the sun, moon, and stars, the air and the sea, the clouds and the wind, thunder and lightning; and finally, awakened by the thunder, intellectual beings of both sexes. In the cosmogonies of the Greeks and the Egyptians, partially related to these, the gods originate together with the forming world. According to the oldest Greek legend in Hesiod, out of chaos proceeded first Gaia, Tartaros, Eros (the earth, the depths, and love); next the pair Erebos and Nyx (darkness and night), who produced Aither and Hemera (the light of heaven and the day). Gaia then brought forth at intervals other cosmic powers and the Titans from whom Zeus, the other gods of Olympus, and men were descended. A somewhat similar cosmogony, though rather more influenced by Eastern myths, is found in Aristophanes.
According to the Egyptian cosmogony, as given by Diodorus Siculus, the elements originally mixed in chaos were separated by a self -originating movement of air; the heavier ones sank and gradually separated into land and sea, under the continuous impulse of this movement. Out of the earth.
while it still retained a half- fluid character, the heat of the sun generated animals. The older Egyptian mythology is more monotheistic. Amun, or Chnum, or Thoth appears as the supreme creative god, who produces the heavens, earth and its vegetation, animals, men, and gods. Here also there are several remarkable reminders of Genesis.
In the oldest religious literature of India, as in the Rig- Veda, there are also traces of monotheism. The much later book of Manu is more fantastic. According to it the universe was once a confused chaotic darkness; God, the great originator of all things, appeared and drove away the darkness by his light, creating first water, and in it the seed of light. Out of this seed developed a golden egg, in which Brahma sat a whole year in calm meditation, finally breaking it and making heaven and earth out of its halves. A similar process is described in the Mahabharata and generally in the later sources of Indian mythology, some of which go more into detail, as in deducing various elements from the different parts of Brahma's body. The notion of the primeval egg is found in other mythologies, such as the old Chinese, the Japanese, the Finnish (in the ancient epos Kalewala the formation of heaven and earth from the two halves of the egg is described just as by Manu), and even that of the South Sea Islands. Again, the story of the origin of different parts of the world from the severed limbs of a gigantic primitive man or anthropomorphic god is found also in the old Germanic and Scandinavian cosmogony.
As common traits of all these mythological cosmogonies may be mentioned the development of the process of formation from less perfect to more perfect, or from original chaos to the final creation of man; the predominance of water in the original condition of the earth; the evolution of a luminous or spiritual principle which reacts on this primeval water; and finally the emphasis laid upon the godlike origin of man, or his mediate relation to the Deity, as a ground of superiority over the animals generated from the earth by elementary forces.
2. Cosmogronic Notions in Ancient, especially Greek, Philosophy: The philosophy of both lonians and Dorians is essentially a natural philosophy, and thus largely cosmological. The Ionian philosophers searched for the material principle of things, which they defined variously. Thales found it in water or abstract moisture; Anaximander in the apeiron, i.e., infinite and indefinite primeval substance; Anaximenes in the air; Heraclitus in ethereal fire; Anaxagoras in the seeds of things, once inextricably intermingled in chaos, then disentangled and formed into a wellordered cosmos by the divine spirit, the absolutely simple, indivisible, impassible nous ; Leucippus and Democritus in the atoms, those indivisible, infinitely small bodies which are distinguished from each other not by their qualities, but only geometricafly by form, position, and arrangement, and whose sum constitutes abstract fulness in contrast with the other primeval principle of emptiness or nothingness. The Doric philosophers in Magna Grtecia and Sicily directed their attention toward
Creation and Preservation