A Comparison and Contrast of the Greek Myth and Christian Belief of the Creation of Earth and of Mankind

University of St. Thomas

English Department

A Comparison and Contrast of the Greek Myth and Christian Belief of the Creation of Earth and of Mankind

                                                       Stephanie Zeibak

English 1341- I

Dr. McNally

September 11, 2015

        There are many theories of how the world was created and how mankind came to be. One of these theories, as told by the New Jerusalem Bible^[1], is the story of God and how He created the earth and mankind (beginning with Adam and Eve). Another, as told by Greek myths in the novel, Mythology, by Edith Hamilton^[2], is the story of Chaos and how the earth and mankind begins with it. Through analyzing both accounts, a conclusion can be made of how both theories compare and how they contrast from one another.  

        According to Christian beliefs, by examining the New Jerusalem Bible, God is an eternal being who is both immanent and transcendent. God is known to have created the earth and mankind in 7 days during the beginning of time. To fully grasp how this came to be, we must go through each day during the creation of earth. The earth, before mankind and God’s involvement, was a formless void, there was darkness over the deep, with a divine wind sweeping over the waters (Gen 1:2). God took this darkness and created the heavens and the earth on the first day. Once this had been done, he took the darkness of the earth and created light and made the light “day” and the darkness “night on the second day. On the third and fourth day, He created the sky, separate from the water and dry land and vegetation. Plants and trees could now be seen on the earth, which was once completely water. He then, on the fifth day, created the sun, moon, and stars; God divided the sun for the day and the moon and stars for the night. On the sixth day, God created animals and man. God created Adam and Eve in His image to govern and rule over the creatures of the land and to be fruitful, as well, to populate the earth.  God first made Adam from the dirt of the earth, but soon saw that he needed a companion, so He then made Eve from Adam’s ribs (Gen 1:3 – Gen 2:1). From this, life was born on earth and it grew vastly.

        By analyzing Hamilton’s book, Mythology, scholars are able to analyze the Greek myth of how the world and mankind was created. Hamilton began by explaining how there was nothing else in the universe; all was black, empty, silent, and endless.^[3] Chaos, a primordial void in which everything started from, somehow gave birth to two children, Night and Erebus (the underworld). Night and Erebus create Love, which in turn gives birth to Light and Day.^[4] The earth, also considered as Mother Earth, is then created from Love, Light, and Day. Mother Earth created the mountains, valleys, rivers, seas, and lakes; however, the creatures that Mother Earth and Father Heaven created were terrible monsters. They were explained as Cyclopes who only had one round eye in the middle of their forehead and were gigantic.^[5] As for the creation of humankind, three accounts were told.  The first was believed that Prometheus and his brother Epimetheus were put in charge of making humans; however, Epimetheus was impulsive in the creation of man. He was not wise and he used up all of his resources, leaving man to be naked and weak, without any supernatural skills or powers like the Olympian Gods they were supposed to mirror.^[6] According to the second story, the gods were to create man themselves. They created five different races. The first four all were failures in which they either could not stop from injuring themselves or were lovers of violence and war. The fifth race, which is considered to be on the earth today, is named the iron race. Hamilton explains how this race is living in evil times and a time will come when they have grown so wicked that Zeus, the ruler of the skies, will destroy them.^[7] The third story begins with men coming from the race of stone. The men on earth were so wicked that Zeus called upon his brother, Poseidon, to flood the earth and kill them off; however, two survived. They were Deucalion and Pyrrha, children of Prometheus who was a wise man and told his son of the flood that was coming to save his family. Zeus allowed the two to live and called off the flood after nine days and nine nights. Once the water went down, they came to a temple in which they found stone. The stone began to fall and take human shape, and they soon became the Stone People.^[8] These are the three stories of how mankind was created.