First Account Of Creation

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A Brief Analysis of “The First Account of Creation”
The myth “The First Account of Creation” describes the story presented in the Biblical book of Genesis, in which God creates the world (sky, water, land) and everything in the world, including plants, animals, and people. The myth is focused on several key ideas, primarily that God is the creator of everything and is responsible for dictating what his creation can do in order to survive (multiply; eat plants). This essay will briefly examine these key points in order to gain a basic understanding of this particular (and popular) creation myth.
The first and most important point of “The First Account of Creation” is that God is the absolute creator of everything, beginning with the heavens (presumably that means the sky) and the earth. God then proceeds to create both light and darkness, which he calls day and night respectively; by doing this, he has created the first day (REFERENCE). Following this, there is an interesting point during which God creates a vault in the waters in order to separate the waters into two. According to the myth, God calls the vault “heaven” (REFERENCE).
This is somewhat odd, because the very first line of the myth indicates that “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (REFERENCE), yet according to details later on in the myth, heaven – the vault – was not actually created until after a day had passed. God then creates land, vegetation, sea creatures, reptiles, and so forth, followed finally by people. All of these details indicate that God is, without any doubt, responsible for the existence of everything (at least, this is what the myth asks the reader to understand).
The next point of note is that God is shown to be not only the creator, but the figure responsible for distributing power. The myth states that “God blessed them, saying to them, ‘be fruitful, multiply . . . to all wild beasts, all birds of heaven and all living reptiles on the earth I give all the foliage of plants for food. And so it was” (REFERENCE). In essence, God is informing his creation what they may or may not do in order to survive, which begs the question: would the animals have not multiplied if God had not given them express instructions to do so? What would have happened if God had not given the animals the opportunity to eat the plants? Furthermore, it can only be assumed that eating meat was, at this point, forbidden; why? Does God not consider plants to be equal in importance to other living things? These are issues that would be interesting to explore utilizing additional resources.
The nature of God in this myth is somewhat confusing, as it appears that he is both a singular and plural being.
The myth indicates that, in the beginning, “God’s spirit hovered over the water” (REFERENCE). This creates the image of a singular being, a notion that is further emphasized when the myth refers to God as “he.” However, when God prepares to create people, he interestingly states “let us [emphasis added] make man in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves” (REFERENCE). This would seem to suggest that God is not a singular being, but has a dual nature, and this is reiterated when God “created them; male and female he created them” (REFERENCE). Thus, it can be assumed that God has both male and female aspects which he chose to reveal by creating both male and female
humans.
There is one last fascinating (and somewhat confusing) idea to consider in this creation myth, though it does not directly relate to the creation itself, but rather has to do with the sun and moon. God creates light and darkness (day and night) early in the creation process, and days are indicated to pass. However, God does not actually create the moon and the sun until the third day, at which point he decides that he wants to “divide the day from the night” (REFERENCE). This is somewhat confusing, because clearly day has already been divided from the night; entire days, after all, have passed. Why did God create the sun and the moon if there was already day and night? What did day and night look like for the first several days? This Biblical myth is presumably quite old, and perhaps something was lost in translation over the years, as this particular segment of the creation story makes little sense.
It is evident that “The First Account of Creation” is a creation myth which presents God as the powerful, dual-natured being who is responsible for the creation of everything, including people. Furthermore, God is indicated to be responsible for dictating precisely what his creation could do in order to survive. There are some odd components to this story, particularly the moon and sun somehow being separate from day and night, and it would be interesting to conduct further analysis on the Genesis creation story utilizing additional sources and alternative myths.