“Who knows from whence this great creation sprang?
He from whom all this great creation came.
Whether his will created or was mute,
The Most High seer that is in highest heaven,
He knows it – or perchance even He knows not”
― Rig Veda (10:129)
(English Version by Max Muller in his work, A History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature)
In the Beginning
Some 3,000 years ago, Jewish desert dwellers, sitting around campfires, shared a story about the creation of the universe. That story was weaved against the backdrop of their tedious lives in a dry and dusty desert and their sweet dreams of an oasis-like garden filled with flora and fauna. So, their story on creation had the first man Adam fashioned out of the dust of the Earth and put into a beautiful garden full of flowers, fruits and foliage. Then the Creator made Eve as Adam’s companion. They lived happily in the paradise of the Garden of Eden. But those storytellers knew that the generation that followed have lived a hard life. So, they explained the fall of man from paradise by introducing the story of the forbidden fruit. These stories were orally passed on to the generations that followed… Centuries later and hundreds of miles to the east of the sites of those Jewish campfires, (most likely in the present day Iraq), an enterprising, learned and devout Jewish writer, (probably a Jewish Priest whose name we do not know) took up the ambitious task of constructing an account of the history of his people. This writer had apparently relied on at least two pre-existing texts that had its origin in different times at different locations. The more recent of those texts had called the divine Creator by the name “Elohim”. The other text had named him in Hebrew as “YHWH” (translated “Jehovah” in English).
This priest carefully wove the two texts together avoiding repetitions and making changes as required to prevent glaring inconsistencies. Some of the events the author described in his history are consistent with other historical records. But this cannot be said about events falling in the period before 1000 BCE. We must assume that, more than facts, it reflects the religious and political goals of the author.
The history thus produced portrays a divine Creator watching over his chosen people (Israelites), giving them commands through his prophets and meting out harsh punishments for disobediences. It carries dramatic accounts of persecution, escape, exile, exodus, sacrifice, suffering, wars, mass murders and wanton destructions. There are villains and heroes in this history. Prophet Moses, the Jewish patriarch who led the Israelites out of their slavery in Egypt (in 1446 BCE?) is presented as the greatest hero of the Jewish people. (There is a general belief among the faithful that Moses wrote this history. But evidences available suggest otherwise).
This history could not be complete without an explanation on how the earth, the stars, the seas, the plants, animals and humans came into existence. So the author had to put in a creation story. Since he had compiled the history based on two different texts from the past, (one of it from the times of Moses?), he had two creation stories that were not in agreement with each other. Yet, he chose to put both these into the history he compiled.
The Creator in the first of these stories (appearing in Genesis: 1) is more in the nature of a force than a personal being. It was a watery chaos to start with. This cosmic Creator just orders (or wills) and things emerged into existence. In this story, even human beings, male and female, were created in the image of the creator, just by means of commands. The whole exercise was finished in six days and the creator rested on the seventh day.
The second story of creation (given in Genesis Chapter: 2) has its roots in the stories that the Jewish desert dwellers told centuries ago around their campfires. In this version, the creator is a personal god with human-like emotions. The story opens in a barren landscape bereft of any shrub. Then the rains come to water the parched plains. Life originates. God then formed man from the dust of the Earth and breathed life into his nostrils. Eve followed. The story culminates in the eating of the forbidden fruit that ended their happy stay at the Garden of Eden.
Mythology as a Medium to Express the Inexpressible
The author of this Jewish history was not enumerating scientific facts. He was trying to find meaning to the awesome sights around him and the dark mysteries of the universe. It was imperative for him to believe in an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent being for his own and his people’s reassurance. Thus, the primary purpose of writing the history was spiritual. This ancient author, like many other wise men of the past ages, realized that mythology was the best tool to express the inexpressible and profound truths of existence.
But we often think that mythology is just superstitious rubbish. This misunderstanding has its origin in ancient Greeks, who classified their written texts as ‘logoi’ (Logos) and ‘muthoi’ (Myth). The texts falling under ‘logoi’ were factual or reasoned accounts related to disciplines such as Science or Mathematics. But texts classified under ‘muthoi’ were imaginary accounts mostly dealing with the realms of metaphysics. A classic example of ‘muthoi’ was the stories about Greek gods. Because of this Greek ancestry, mythology is often taken to be something made up and untrue, as the gods of the ancient Greeks.
But, myths have another dimension that the modern world tends to overlook. For instance, consider the classic long poem ‘Metamorphoses’ by Ovid, a Roman poet. It narrates how gods have been changing bodies into other bodies right from the beginning of the world. Metamorphoses is adaptation of Romanized Greek mythology. But its capacity to make us conscious of the mysteries and sorrows of our own nature remains intact even today, some two thousand years after Ovid wrote it. The reason is that it “is packed with insights about how humans still transform or metamorphose themselves by greed or self-love, hatred or lust.”
The strange paradox is that while we can still read those Greek mythological stories and find new dimensions and meanings relevant to our lives and times in it, those texts the ancient Greeks had classified as ‘logoi’ have long been rendered obsolete. The point is that factual discourses are superseded by new facts coming out of new knowledge while imaginative discourses or mythologies have enduring value for the reason that mythology does not deal with dead and static data but with living and dynamic human nature in its mysterious and myriad states.
The Narrative Formats of Mythology
In mythology, the writers use mainly two kinds of narrative formats viz. Allegory and Adaptation.
Allegory
Allegory is an attempt to express abstract ideas using known and familiar symbols. For example, Jesus says to a young man named Nicodemus, “You must be born again”. Nicodemus takes the words of Jesus in its literal sense and asks, “I am a grown man! How can I crawl back into my mother’s womb and be born again?” The spirit of what Jesus said was that people must discard their sinful nature and become pure in their hearts as a newborn baby. Imagine the disaster if the literalist leaders of the Church start asking people to crawl back into the wombs of their mothers, because Jesus had taught that people should be born again!
Another example of allegory or metaphor we come across in the Gospels is the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus says, “If you know the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would give you living water.” The woman, again a literalist, responds, “Man, you don’t even have a bucket!” Living water is the elixir of the thirsty spirit – an abstract spiritual concept, which the woman took literally.
Adaptation
In adaptation, the writer picks up some existing myths, legends and histories, and changes it to suit his purpose of conveying his own meanings and interpretations to the reader. A classic example is the extensive use of material from Hollinshed’s Chronicles by William Shakespeare to write his plays.
Thus, the story of creation appearing in the Book of Genesis was probably adapted from Mesopotamian or Babylonian mythologies. Irrespective of it, people continue to be impressed by the contemporary validity of its metaphysical implications. For instance, the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden is a poignant picture of how the power of discontent destroys human happiness. This is the spirit of the story. It is irrelevant whether the Serpent had really spoken to Eve.
The Dangers of Confusing Fiction with Facts
People often forget that their holy books are not meticulously maintained journals or storehouses of verifiable facts. As Richard Holloway puts it in his Introduction to the Anthology, ‘Revelation – Personal Responses to the Books of the Bible’, scripture is not to be read as ‘an information manual or a sort of users’ guide to the universe’.
Unfortunately, the Catholic Church had treated Bible as a compendium of scientific facts and true history. Millions were tortured and burned alive for questioning the literal understanding of the contents of the Bible. Church brutalities continued even in recent centuries. For example, the Church had insisted that Earth was the centre of the universe since that is what they understood from the Bible. But Nicholas Copernicus and Galileo Galilei used scientific methods to establish that Earth revolved around the Sun. The Church was furious. It banned their books and branded them heretics.
Copernicus did not face persecution for heresy since he kept his discoveries secret and died shortly after those were published. But Galileo was less lucky. He was tried for his sin of denying Biblical truths. On June 22, 1633, the Church handed down the following order: “We pronounce, judge, and declare, that you, the said Galileo… have rendered yourself vehemently suspected by this Holy Office of heresy, that is, of having believed and held the doctrine (which is false and contrary to the Holy and Divine Scriptures) that the sun is the centre of the world, and that it does not move from east to west, and that the earth does move, and is not the centre of the world.” Galileo had spent the rest of his life under house arrest. It took more than 300 years for the Church to admit that Galileo was right and the Church was wrong.
Christians continued taking the contents of the Bible as literal truths even in the twentieth century America. For instance, the Christian zealots could not stomach the Darwinian Theory of Evolution, which stated that human beings evolved from lower level organisms. This was against the theory of Creationism taught by the Church. In March 1925, the State of Tennessee passed the Butler Act that made the teaching of “any theory that denies the divine creation of man as taught in the Bible” a culpable offence. The first (and last) court trial for the violation of the Butler Act was the ‘State v. John Thomas Scopes’ trial which came to be commonly referred to as the ‘Scopes Evolution Trial’ or the ‘Scopes Monkey Trial’.
The Scopes Monkey Trial
On May 27, 1925, John Thomas Scopes, a twenty four year old Science teacher and football coach, was arrested for teaching the Darwinian Theory of Evolution to his students and thus breaking the Butler Act. It turned out to be one of the most famous court trials in US history.
The trial began on July 10, 1925, in the Rhea County Courthouse in Dayton, Tennessee, USA. The courtroom was packed with over a thousand people including reporters from a hundred odd newspapers. The premises were fitted out with the latest technology (available ninety years ago), to transmit the story to the world. It attracted headline coverage across the world and was the first ever court trial broadcasted live on the radio.
On the opening day of the trial, Judge John T. Raulston, a conservative Christian, read out to the grand jurors the first thirty-one verses of the first Chapter of the Book of Genesis (Genesis 1:1-31). He explained that he was calling attention to the Biblical account of creation since the defendant had violated the Butler Act by teaching his students the Darwinian theory of evolution that claimed that man had evolved from a lower order of animals.
The judge conveniently ignored the substantially different version of Creation appearing in the second Chapter of Genesis. The defence attorneys demanded that the Prosecution clarify to which of the two creation stories was the Butler Act referring. They argued that it was impossible to determine as to the violation of which of the two accounts of the “divine creation of man as taught in the Bible” would lead to the violation of the Butler Act. The Butler Act being unconstitutionally vague, the defence attorneys prayed for the acquittal of Scopes.
Prosecutor William Jennings Bryan could not supply any clear clarifications on the contradictory creation stories carried by the Bible. He simply kept reiterating that none of the issues raised by the defence had any merit and stuck to his view that, “The statute is brief and free from ambiguity”. He argued that the whole Evolution theory was ‘a slur on the Bible’. The judge was more than willing to side with the Prosecutor.
The trial ended on July 21, 1925. The jury deliberated for less than nine minutes to return the verdict of guilty. John Scopes was fined $100 (a substantial sum, 90 years ago). The verdict was later set aside on technical grounds by the state level appellate court.
Although Prosecutor William Bryan had won the case for the State, he was under enormous stress. Just five days after the Scopes trial ended, William Bryan died in his sleep. His tombstone carries the inscription, “He Kept the Faith”.
The Monkey Trial had a sobering effect. Most Americans became conscious of the need to separate the teaching of theology from scientific education. The State of Tennessee repealed the Butler Act and later brought another Act calling for equal time for teaching both the Theory of Evolution and the Biblical creation account. But this law was later declared unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court.
The manner in which scientists, teachers and intellectuals were made to suffer in the name of protecting the so-called Biblical truths should expose the dangers of taking the contents of Holy Books as factually and historically true accounts. I hope that the Church and the faithful would know that, going by the Biblical lineages, the universe was created in 4004 BCE (Oct 22, 4004, to be precise), as derived by none other than Archbishop James Ussher, the head of the Anglican Church, and presented in his most important work, “The Annals of the World”, published in 1650 CE. We all know that the Universe might have been in existence for some 15 billion years and the earth some 4.5 billion years.
Conclusion
Ancient religious scriptures are the outcome of the knowledge, understanding and creative imagination of highly intelligent and spiritual people. It comprises of myths, legends, true and imaginary history, and true and imaginary people and places. It is, therefore, necessary for sensible people to understand that these texts were not written as ‘information manuals or a sort of users’ guide to the universe’. These texts retain its contemporary relevance since these are, at least to a substantial extent, myths, metaphors and adaptations that carry the potential for different people at different times to discover different dimensions and different meanings with regard to the profound truths related to human existence.
Finally, St Paul in his second letter to Corinthians says, “… the letter kills, but the spirit gives life” (2 Corinthians 3:6). When we are dealing with ancient scriptures, going by the letter leads to serious evils and injustices. But an understanding of the spirit of the scriptures gives us life in abundance. “Whoso readeth, let him understand” (Matthew 24:15).
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The same Bible that created a 'mythological' story of creation also houses profound and deep versus like – Whatever is has already been,
and what will be has been before;
and God will call the past to account.
The book of Ecclesiastes also suggest the path for seekers and analytics of the truth- 'Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body'
Cheers
@Dann Thomas
Dear Kochu,
I fully agree.
Let me clarify that this article was not aimed to trash the scriptures that I believe in and practice. The objective was to highlight the dangers of killing the spirit to save the letter.
Thank you for sparing the time to comment.
Georgekutty
An interesting and useful article. I would only like to add one thing to your "Conclusion": The purer you become and the higher levels of spirituality you reach, the lesser is your need to rely on mind, logic, facts, to know the Truth. In other words, 'revelation' could become a common thing. As regards the question of which scripture is how much factual or imagination, it's essentially irrelevant in terms of its practical import. The entire gamut of spirituality is practice, which necessitates faith.
@HP
Yes Sir.
"The entire gamut of spirituality is practice". In other words, the proof of the pudding is in its eating.
Thank you very much.
Kutty
What is "myth'? If the connotation is as opposed to "truth or reality" there is a problem. Theory of creation and science (theory of evolution) can go hand-in-hand if one has the patience and vision to envision the deeper meanings beyond the scripts.Even the big bang theory is in sync with the Genesis. As a matter of fact every new testament author and also Jesus for that matter treated Genesis as literal history not myth. The integrity of the entire Bible is compromised once the literal and historical nature of genesis is questioned.
Mathew George
@Mathew
Dear Sir,
One of the dictionary meanings of myth is, “a traditional story accepted as history; serves to explain the world view of a people”. I was clearly not aiming at presenting mythology as some mumbo-jumbo “opposed to truth”. My objective was to present mythology as a tool to express the ‘truth that passeth understanding’.
For instance in his commentary of the Holy Geeta, Swamy Chinmayanada says, “The Kaurava representing the negative tendencies and the sinful motives in a mortal’s bosom, are born as children to the old king Dhritarashtra, a born blind prince, wedded to Gandhari who had VOLUNTARILY blinded herself putting bandages over her eyes!….
Mind is born blind to truth, and when it is wedded to an intellect which also has ASSUMED blindness, the negative instincts yoked with low motives can only beget a hundred criminals and sins.
When up on the spiritual field of self-development within (Dharmakshetra), the lower instincts and the higher ideal array under the guidance of his divine discriminative intellect, takes himself to a point of no-man’s land between the two forces for the purpose of reviewing the enemy lines, without identifying himself with either the good or the evil in him. And, at that moment of his introspective meditation, the egoistic entity comes to feel a morbid depression and feels generally incapacitated to undertake the great spiritual adventure of fighting his inner war with any hope of victory…” (Arjuna-Grief, Introduction).
But Arjuna, the great warrior, turns a “despondent, bewildered neurotic patient” on the sight of the massive forces he had to fight. The ‘Krishna-treatment’ for this psychological derangement is the Lord’s song in the Holy Geeta. The call was ‘to get up and fight’. In the end, Arjuna declares that “all delusions have ended”.
When I read the Holy Geeta with this perspective in my heart, I could discover within it, meanings perfectly suiting my own faith. I simply do not care whether the war at Kurukshtra was real or allegorical. The message of the Holy Geeta (and other scriptures) transcends times. The same way, Old Testament Bible is meaningful to me not as a compendium of scientific facts or historical truths. I do not believe that man was moulded by the divine from dust of the Earth in BC 4004. The story of the creation of man found in the Bible probably comes from the mythology of Prometheus. And the story of the great flood could have come from the Epic of Gilgamesh of ancient Mesopotamia. But that does not make any difference to me since I am more concerned with the spirit and not the letter. I believe that Christian faith would stay meaningful to the coming generations only if we make a switch to focus on meanings rather than on the letters. It is quite possible that I am wrong. But I always try to say what I believe…With more awareness, I might change my views.
Thanks & Regards,
Georgekutty