Religious Beliefs and Gods

Creation Myths The author of this report has been charged with describing and listing the facets of at least two major creation myths that have existed or do exist in modern culture. Indeed, the course of human history and culture has led to the presentation and belief in multiple creation theories and religious beliefs. Many people point to the Bible and Genesis or Job in particular when it comes to such theories.

However, there are a number of others and two of those non-Biblical mythology arcs will be the focus of this report. While there are common threads and facets of many of the different creation myths, they each stand on their own in important ways. The first creation myth that will be covered in this report is that of the Enuma Elish, which emanated from the Babylonians. Those that have heard reference to the Epic of Gilgamesh were being told of part of this dogma.

While the Babylonian account of creation is technically separate from the Christian Bible, it has been admitted and proven that the two are highly related in terms of what they have in common and whether one draws from the other. Leviathan and the book of Job share a similar relationship. Another way in which Enuma Elish is referred to beyond being Babylonian would be the Mesopatamian myths. Within this mythology, there are gods for each town.

Not unlike the Christian account of creation, the world begins in a formless state of nothingness. The "maker" within the Enuma Elish is known as Tiamat. Apsu is described as the "begetter." Apsu is the male and represents the "sweet" waters. Tiamat, on the other hand, represents the salt waters. This would correlate with the waters of the Tigres and Euphrates, which is the ostensible cradle of civilization for several creation myths and this would include the Enuma Elish.

Upon review of the Enuma Elish, there is no explicit mention of any destroying force...just the creating one. There is ostensibly a focus on the earth, the water and so forth in that there is a correlation of the natural elements and the gods included in creating and coalescing the same, as partially mentioned a few sentences ago (GVSU, 2016). The other main creation myth that will be covered in this report is that of the ancient Egyptians.

Rather than being localized to a single or small group of Gods, Egyptions actually had a good number of them. Beyond that, there seemed to be different Gods and dogmas throughout the different regions and section of the country. Just as there were different gods, different gods were given credit for the creation. One example of this was Amun while another was Atum. In the end, Atum and Khepri are the two major ones cited as creators.

The beginning of the world under the tutelage of Atum was described as a "watery chaos" and Atum supposedly rose out of those "chaotic waters." Atum was in many ways correlated and linked to the sun god Ra, so there were some obvous and apparent linkages between Atum as the creator and the different natural elements that we know today. The account of Khepri is similar in that there is yet another linkage to Ra (Deuer, 2016). The two creation myths covered all have common links.

They all mention natural elements such as water and the sun, with water being common to both accounts. They both make mention of there being some form of nothingness or chaos before creation occurs. In both accounts or series of accounts, there is the depiction of the god or gods bringing some order out of the chaos and that order is based on a harnessing and manipulation of the natural elements.

These varying yet similar accounts are important to a culture as they often serve as a basis for the norms, beliefs and facets of a society and culture. Indeed, the culture of the United States and many other countries around the world is based in large part on belief in God as defined by the Jews, Muslims/Islam or the Christians (GVSU,.