And the Waters Yielded Life

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was a formless void, there was darkness over the deep, and God's spirit hovered over the water." (italics mine)

Most of us in the West are familiar with a variation of this, the beginning of the Old Testament, and the story of how God created all things. But what many of us do not know is that a majority of the creation stories of cultures around the world are quite similar, and include the idea that water, often very "deep" waters, were involved. Even modern science promotes the theory that life crawled out of a primordial soup of water and chemicals necessary to life. Following are some of the stories, often called "myths," which have come down to us through the ages. (Note: stories are drawn from the text of Parallel Myths by J.F. Bierlein.)

The Big Water Stories

The creation story is presented twice in Genesis, which is the first book of the Jewish Torah (Five Books of Moses) which form the first part of Christianity's Old Testament. The first creation presentation is given in Chapter's 1 and 2. The second presentation is given in the 2nd Chapter, following the first creation story. The first version (quoted above) appears to describe an original state in which a vast amount of water existed even before God said, "Let there be light," and began the creation process. In the second version, it is noted that a "flood was rising from the earth and watering all the surface of the soil." Clearly, the Hebrews valued the role that water played in the beginning of all things.

But they were not the only ones to give water such a prominent place in antiquity. Take note of these wonderful tales:

• In India, the Hindu religions proclaims that in the beginning there was "Darkness" and all this was water. The Hindus believe the world is created over and over again, each time being destroyed and returned to a transition state as a watery chaos. No one knows how many times this has occurred, nor how many times it will occur in the future.

• To the Greeks, all things began in a vast chaos which was made of a great sea in which all elements were mixed together.

• Egyptians believed that before the "Great Ra" (the sun god) came into being, his father the "Watery Abyss" existed. Ra emerged from the Watery Abyss and then all things came into being out of the words of his mouth. (Note the similarity to New Testament proclamations about the role "The Word" had in creating our world.)
  The copyright of the article And the Waters Yielded Life in Water is owned by Linda Bond. Permission to republish And the Waters Yielded Life in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

  Go To Page: 1 2 3

  Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic