Myths vs Genesis

1.     Unlike the Greek myth, there are no beings in the Bible that are greater than man but lower than God (although, of course, there are many people today who believe in angels and demons).

2.     There is only one God in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

3.     Maimonides, who argued that God does not want sacrifices and only allowed it to appease the needs of people, would probably point out, as a difference, that Zeus wants the sacrifice in the Greek tale and is furious when he does not get it.

4.     Both emphasize the role of the woman in bringing misfortune to mankind. However, the Greek legend stresses that the god used her to hurt people and that the harm she brought was from a magical jar. In Judaism, the woman is not sent by God to punish Adam, but to be his helpmate. The Hebrew is ezer k’negdo, literally “a help by his side,” suggesting that she is an equal. The punishment for eating the fruit of the forbidden tree was given to both because both, not the woman alone, acted improperly. The misfortunes, Genesis makes clear, are not magical; they are part of natural law: pain in childbirth and difficulties in daily work.

5.     The legend ends in a pessimistic tone: there is no hope. As it began with powerless man, so it ends. It seems to suggest that all that people can do is sit back and suffer. No action will help feeble and incapable humanity. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam speak about humans improving themselves and society.

6.     The Earth was empty and a big ocean was on it. It was The lake Titicaca. The Sun came out from it and he made the stars and the moon.  He took the moon as his wife and made people   from rocks. The Genesis says that god created the world in 7 days, he created the man and from his rib created the woman.

7.     Navajo origin stories begin with a First World of darkness (Nihodilhil). From this Dark World the Dine began a journey of emergence into the world of the present. It had four corners, and over these appeared four clouds. These four clouds contained within themselves the elements of the First World. They were in color, black, white, blue, and yellow. The Black Cloud represented the Female Being or Substance. For as a child sleeps when being nursed, so life slept in the darkness of the Female Being. The White Cloud represented the Male Being or Substance. He was the Dawn, the Light Witch Awakens, of the First World. In the East, at the place where the Black Cloud and the White Cloud met, First Man, was formed ; and with him was formed the white corn, perfect in shape, with kernels covering the whole ear. Dohonotini is the name of this first seed corn,  and it is also the name of the place where the Black Cloud and the White Cloud met.

8.     In Genesis a single pair of humans was created from whom every individual and nation descended. Jewish sages emphasized that this teaches that all people are related. No one can say that he or she is a descendant of a superior ancestor. All humans share the spirit of God equally, no matter their religion or sex. This profound lesson is lost in the Egyptian Legend which maintains that the god created many humans simultaneously.

9.     The Egyptian Legend maintains that the world was created from existing matter. This is contrary to the commonly accepted Jewish interpretation of creation, that God created the world ex nihilo, from nothing. The Egyptian view arguably weakens the power of the divinity. However, Maimonides maintains in his Guide of the Perplexed 2:25 that it is possible to interpret Genesis to assert that there was preexisting matter that God used to fashion the world.

10.  Before there was soil, or sky, or any green thing, there was only the gaping abyss of Ginnungagap. This chaos of perfect silence and darkness lay between the homeland of elemental fire,Muspelheim, and the homeland of elemental ice, Niflheim. Frost from Niflheim and billowing flames from Muspelheim crept toward each other until they met in Ginnungagap. Amid the hissing and sputtering, the fire melted the ice, and the drops formed themselves into Ymir, the first of the godlike giants. Ymir was a hermaphrodite and could reproduce asexually; when he sweated, more giants were born. As the frost continued to melt, a cow, Audhumbla, emerged from it. She nourished Ymir with her milk, and she, in turn, was nourished by salt-licks in the ice. Her licks slowly uncovered Buri, the first of the Aesir tribe of gods. Buri had a son named Bor, who married Bestla, the daughter of the giant Bolthorn. The half-god, half-giant children of Bor and Bestla were Odin, who became the chief of the Aesir gods, and his two brothers, Vili and Ve. Odin and his brothers slew Ymir and set about constructing the world from his corpse. They fashioned the oceans from his blood, the soil from his skin and muscles, vegetation from his hair, clouds from his brains, and the sky from his skull. Four dwarves, corresponding to the four cardinal points, held Ymir’s skull aloft above the earth. The gods eventually formed the first man and woman, Ask and Embla, from two tree trunks, and built a fence around their dwelling-place, Midgard, to protect them from the giants.