Page 102 - Encyclopedia Of World History

452 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme
Being in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation
of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. • Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)

Where? In whose protection? Was there water, bottom- able guide to reality and much of what they say fits in
lessly deep? There was neither death nor immortality well with commonsense experience.This does not mean
then. There was no distinguishing sign of night nor of that creation stories are necessarily treated uncritically by
day. That one breathed, windless, by its own impulse” insiders—it is always possible to argue about details of a
(O’Flaherty 1981, 25). Such language hints at the para- creation story or express skepticism or even confusion
dox present in all stories of ultimate origins—how can about certain aspects of the story. As Griaule comments
something (whether a god or an entire universe) come of Ogotemmeli, “Ogotemmeli had no very clear idea of
out of nothing? what happened in Heaven after the transformation of the
Third, all creation myths are more complex than they eight ancestors into Nummo” (Sproul 1991, 59). But it
may seem at first sight. Because they deal with ultimate does mean that familiar creation myths are felt to be the
realities, with truths so complex that they can only be best available guides to reality and therefore to conduct;
referred to using richly metaphorical or poetic language, in some sense, they hold society together.And this makes
their tellers are usually well aware of their paradoxical, them extremely important, not to be told lightly or care-
even provisional nature.At one point, Marcel Griaule was lessly, and to be treasured and passed on with care by
puzzled by a detail in Ogotemmeli’s story, according to those who keep the knowledge they contain. Creation
which large numbers of creatures appeared to be stand- myths contain potent information, which is why Ogotem-
ing on a single step, only one cubit deep and one cubit meli lowers his voice when discussing the first blunder of
high. How was that possible? Ogotemmeli replied: “All the God Amma.
this had to be said in words, but everything on the steps
is a symbol, symbolic antelopes, symbolic vultures, sym- Similarities and
bolic hyenas.Any number of symbols could find room on Differences
a one-cubit step.” Griaule adds that the word Ogotem- This partial list of the features of traditional creation sto-
meli used for symbol literally meant “word of this (lower) ries suggests some of the main similarities and differences
world” (Sproul 1991, 64). between creation myths and modern, “scientific,”
Fourth, embedded within cycles of creation myths accounts of the past. Both modern and traditional ac-
there is generally much hard empirical information about counts of origins play an important educational role be-
the real world, information about animal migrations, cause, as we have seen, traditional creation stories also
about technologies of hunting and farming, information contain much carefully tested information about the real
that younger members of society needed to learn. Such world. Like creation myths, modern accounts of the past
information is often of little interest to outsiders, who can also be passed on best in narrative form, which is still
may thereby miss the practical, empirical nature of most the dominant form for history-writing and much popular
cycles of myth, but it helps explain their fundamental role science. Modern accounts of origins also struggle with the
in informal systems of education. Ogotemmeli’s story, for problem of ultimate origins, something that is clear in the
example, contains a long list of important animals, much case of modern big bang cosmology, which can say
lore about procreation and sexuality, details of the major nothing precise until just after the moment of creation.
grains farmed in his region, and symbolic accounts of Indeed, like many traditional creation myths, modern
human anatomy and the world’s geography. physics sees non-being (the vacuum) as a state of poten-
Finally, partly because they contain so much familiar tiality, a realm of emptiness out of which things can
information, creation stories have the feeling of truth for appear. Further, when the epistemological going gets
insiders, just as modern science does for those educated tough, even modern science has to fall back on complex
in the early twenty-first century.To those brought up with and paradoxical concepts whose full significance may
them, particular creation myths represent the best avail- remain somewhat obscure. In this sense, concepts such as