Perspectives on Creation: the Book of Genesis and the Popol Vuh - Essay Example

Perspectives on Creation: the Book of Genesis and the Popol Vuh The creation myths expressed in the Biblical Book of Genesis and the Quiche culture’s Popul Vuh come from two completely different cultures on different sides of the globe, but share a number of interesting elements. [parallelism] The similarities, however, are not as strong as the differences, suggesting that the two accounts do not share a common origin. Both texts originated in the oral tradition, as do most creation myths not invented by L.

Ron Hubbard. The Bible’s origins are murky, with the earliest known texts dating from well after its composition, and scholars divided on how it might have been composed, whether from fragments of other texts or a single account. The Popol Vuh, on the other hand, survives almost entirely due to a single written account taken in the early 18th century by friar Francisco Ximinez. (Popul Vuh) Without that account, given the literal and cultural genocide of Mesoamerican peoples, the myth might have been completely lost.

The Book of Genesis is the Judeo-Christian creation myth, in which God creates the heavens and the earth, separates the land and sea, peoples the world with various plants and animals, and winds up creating humans for his grand finale. Then, we are told, “by the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.” (New International Version 2:2) The rest of the book concerns itself with humanity’s rebellion and expulsion from the paradise God had made for them, the corruption of the world by murder and sin, God’s wiping out humanity with a flood, and finally the introduction of Abraham, father of God’s chosen people.

The Popol Vuh opens as Genesis does with the creation of the world from pre-world materials, in this case rather dramatically: “Like the mist, like a cloud, and like a cloud of dust was the creation, when the mountains appeared from the water; and instantly the mountains grew.” (Popul Vuh 1:1) The creators in this case are Tepeu and Gucumatz, and once the world is properly created, they set about peopling it. Initially, they create humans out of wood, but these “did not think, did not speak with their Creator, their Maker” (Popul Vuh 1:3) and for this reason are wiped out by a flood.

There is then a lengthy section about the adventures of various pre-human heroes and mythic figures, before humans are finally created in Part 3. Once created, they spread out and people the earth, beginning a lineage that continues up until the Spanish conquest. The temptation, reading these two myths, is to focus on the parallels between the two accounts, with earth being shaped from formless void and waters, and humanity wiped out by a flood. The thought that they might be linked by some common origin provides a pleasant feeling of global community, and additional credence to those who might want to consider one account or the other literally true.

However, the differences are much deeper than the similarities. The flood story in Genesis focuses very strongly on Noah and his family, to the point that that is how it is dated: “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened” (New International Version 7:11). Noah and his family represent the good in humanity, the tiny portion worth saving. [Personification] By contrast, the beings wiped out by the flood in Popol Vuh aren’t even human.

“It was merely a trial, an attempt at man” (Popul Vuh 1:2). They’re like a bad first draft that has to be discarded completely. [Simile] Even greater is the difference in structure. God in Genesis gets humans created on the sixth day before knocking off for the weekend (New International Version 1:27), but much of the middle of Popol Vuh is concerned with the adventures of Hunahpu and Xbalanque and their various families, enemies, and supporting cast, all of which comes before the creation of humans.

The event that comes in the first chapter of Genesis has to wait until the third book of Popol Vuh, which begins: “Here, then, is the beginning of when it was decided to make man” (Popul Vuh 3:1). This isa deep and fundamental difference in the way the story is set up, even conceived. If the stories shared a common origin, one would expect them to at least share certain broad similarities in structure, which are simply absent. Reading the more polytheistic creation account of Popol Vuh, I was reminded of a comment I once heard about the credibility of various religious cosmologies, which argued that polytheistic religions don’t suffer from the proverbial “problem of evil.

” [Allusion] A universe created and run by an omnipotent and omnibenevolent deity ought not, we imagine, resemble the difficult vale of tears in which we live. [Irony] A universe created and run by a bunch of quarrelsome, petty, and unreliable superbeings, on the other hand, could be expected to look pretty much like what we’ve got. Works Cited New International Version. "The Bible." 15 May 2011. Bible Gateway. 15 May 2011 . Popul Vuh. "Popol Vuh." 27 October 2010. Meta Religion. 15 May 2011 .