Myths have been around longer than just about every other form of literature. From the beginning, it is clear that humanity has wanted some sort of explanation for the way the world works, and myths have long served that purpose. Whether it is the myth of Apollo driving his chariot across the sky each day to explain the bright light that traverses the sky (and to provide some sort of comfort that the gods are running things, even though the Greek gods certainly were not the benevolent sort) or the myth of Hades and Persephone’s twisted love that also serves as an explanation of the four seasons (as well as an insight into the stilted relations between the sexes), myths tend to follow a common set of purposes. Joseph Campbell suggests that myths serve four functions: to generate a “sense of grateful, affirmative awe before the monstrous mystery that is existence”; to represent the universe in such a way to maintain that sense of awe while also explaining the deeper mysteries; to “validate and maintaina shared set of rights and wrongson which [a] particular social unit depends for existence”; and to provide a psychological pathway from birth to death (Campbell, 6-10). In our own time, a lot of this information comes to us through secular means. In ancient times, though, they lacked the technology to come to the same conclusions that we have reached today, so myth served a much more powerful part of social discourse than it does today. In the case of the Judeo-Christian creation myth, the story of God moving from a spirit hovering over water to the Creator of the cosmos is a powerful myth that fulfills all four functions.
It is difficult in our own time to imagine what life was like in antiquity. There are times that we see a beautiful sunset or perhaps go snorkeling near a coral reef and feel a sense of awe at the power of creation. However, we know that there is a scientifically explained process that governs the vast majority of the operation of the physical universe. In ancient times, they did not have that same sort of perspective (Veyne). Instead, they relied on mythological and superstitious beliefs to maintain a sense that the world was under control. We have the luxury of the microscope and antibiotics to find and eradicate diseases that simply wiped out significant swaths of the population in those days, without leaving any rational explanation behind. So what Campbell refers to as a “monstrous mystery” (6) was indeed a terrible existence, and myth had to do what it could to fill the affective chasm that it created in the souls of the people. In the first two chapters of Genesis, the reader finds a Creator who molded not just humans but all of the different animals and birds out of the ground with His very own hands and breathed life into them. The fact that a divine being would do something so physically intimate, rather than simply willing the universe into being without even having to blink His eyes or snap His fingers, shows a close relationship, as one even closer than the one between fathers and children. The fact that this Creator would go to this trouble suggests that He would also do what He needed to do to make sure that his creations were safe and lived as secure a life as possible. The end result is one of affirmation and gratitude.
The Old Testament creation myth also creates a representation of the universe that builds this sense of awe for the reader and leaves it to last for generations to come. The first chapter of Genesis describes the process through which God created the world, over the course of seven “days.” It is fairly clear that this could not have been a literal set of seven days, because the “day” is defined as the time it takes the Earth to complete one rotation, and the sun was not even in position until the fourth “day,” and it is the interaction of the Earth and sun, with respect to gravity, that creates the rotation in the first place. However, the purpose of this was to establish a sense of grandeur in the process. The order in which the creation takes place has a sense of structure, to show planning, but it also shows the universe expanding in a glorious way throughout the entire process. The first “day” includes the creation of light, with the separation from the darkness. Then came the creation of heaven, the separation of water from land, and vegetation, in the second and third days. Then the second half of creation includes the specific lights (sun and moon), creatures in the sea, and then the creatures of the land, on the fourth, fifth and sixth days. The seventh day was set aside for rest, suggesting an additional level of grandeur to the process. After all, if this was such an undertaking that an all-powerful divine being would need a day of rest, it must indeed be an awesome universe that He has set into motion.
In addition to creating a sense of awe, it is important for myths to establish the basis for the ethical imperatives of the society that creates them, as this is the way that a society can perpetuate its ethics. (One could argue that myths also allow the elites in a society to distract the public while loading up their bank accounts with as much as they can, but this is not a paper on the 2016 Presidential election). Bruno Bettelheim wrote that the “most important and also the most difficult task in raising a child is helping him find meaning in life” (3), and one way to do this is to give a child a spiritual framework. However, it is not just children who need this sort of support. Rather, it is the entire populace that needs to believe that life has meaning in order for them to contribute meaningfully to society. When people no longer believe in that meaning, then they start to lose enthusiasm, and anarchy can set in. An excellent example of this happens in the dystopian film The Children of Men. In that time period, women have stopped becoming pregnant, and so now the human race is slowly waiting to die. Gangs roam the streets, fighting with an increasingly militarized police force, and former schools now sit in ruins. In the Old Testament creation myth, the seven-day structure of the first chapter of Genesis serves as the basis of the seven-day schedule of life in the Hebrew community. When the Ten Commandments emerged later, one of them would dictate that the Sabbath day was to be kept holy, as a reminder of God’s work in creating the world. The fact that God went to such effort that He needed rest after making the world for His people perpetuates the sense that His people should listen to Him and obey His commands. This obligation to listen to God’s commands then extended into the Mosaic Law, a lengthy list of dictates that emerged during the Exodus from Egypt. So this creation myth serves a foundation for the rules that people were expected to follow when remaining true to God.
So how does the Old Testament creation myth “carry the individual through the stages of his life” (Campbell, 10)? One of the essential differences between the Judeo-Christian body of myth and many of the other cultures in the world is the personal involvement and care that God showed to His people. The Greeks have stories about Zeus and some of the other gods heading down from Mt. Olympus to rape women that they found beautiful and having children with them; these demigods formed the basis for a number of myths as well. The fact that God would mold man out of the ground, breathe life into him, and then mold the rest of the animals out of the ground and send them to the man to receive their name shows a great deal of collaboration that is rare in the collection of world myth. The creation myth is just the beginning of a series of stories that the Hebrew people could use to take comfort and solace in God throughout their lives (Walton).
Works Cited
Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment. New York: Vintage Books, c1989.
Campbell, Joseph. Pathways to Bliss. Novato, CA: New World Library.
The Holy Bible, New International Version. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1984.
Veyne, Paul. Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1988.
Walton, John H. Genesis: NIV Application Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI:
Zondervan, 2001.
