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In the myths of Creation by a Supreme Bring, we are to understand first that the Creator is eternal in that s/he exists outside of Time and his/her creation and so these narratives open with the phrase "In the beginning." In addition, the Creator exists alone and the act of creation is conscious planning and deliberation. Last, the Creator chooses freely to relate to his/her creation, or not. In this chapter, we will consider representative myths from: the Hebrews, the Quiche-Maya, Japan, and the (Jewish) Kaballah.
The Popul Vuh or The Book of Council is
the Mayan
The form of mystical expression known as Kabbalah includes as a characteristic symbol known as the ten sefirot mentioned first in the Sefer Yesirah (Book of Creation) a cosmogonical and cosmological work probably written during the fourth century C.E. The creation narrative presented here is associated with this Hebrew tradition, and involves the mystical interpretation of numbers and letters. |
The first letter of the opening word of
the Torah is "B" and the opening
word is Bereshith, which translates as In
the beginning. There are several strands which
comprise this narrative, most notably and probably
the oldest is the Yahwist, composed at Jerusalem in
the tenth century B.C.E. and the Elohist which are
later revisions or interpolations of the Yahwist. The
fusion of these strands is the work of Biblical
redactors who formed the fi,nal revision after the
return of the Israelites from the Babylonian
captivity: 
account
of the beginning and tells of events that occurred
before the first sunrise. Only three of these
hieroglyphic books (now in Paris, Madrid, and Dresden,
respectively) and a fourth fragment (Grolier) survived
the Spanish conquest. The writers say " ...here
we shall take up the demonstration , revelation, and
account of how things were put in shadow and brought
to light...."
When we read the
Japanese myth of creation, we are learning about the
origins of the cosmos and of the Japanese people the
rulers of whom are descendents of the sun goddess
born out of the left eye of the august Father creator.