Every early people naturally asked the questions, How were things
made? How were men created? First of all, Who made the world?
They necessarily answered them according to their own dawning
knowledge.
The most primitive races believed that some great animal created
the earth and man. In the Alaskan collection in the museum of the
University of Pennsylvania there is a huge crow, sitting upon the
mask of a man's face. This symbolizes the crude belief of the
Alaskan Indians regarding the way man was created. The early
Egyptians thought that the earth and man were hatched out of an
egg. In one part of Egypt it was held that the artisan god Ptah
broke the egg with his hammer. In another part of the land and
probably at a later date the tradition was current that Thoth the
moon god spoke the world into existence. The earliest Babylonian
record states that:
The god Marduk laid a reed on the face of the waters,
He formed dust and poured it out beside the reed;
That he might cause the gods to dwell in the dwellings
of their heart's desire,
He formed mankind.
Later he formed the grass and the rush of the marsh and the forest.
Then he created the animals and their young.
The Parsee teachers held that the rival gods, Ahriman and Ormuzd,
evolved themselves out of primordial matter and then through the
long ages created their attendant hierarchies of angels. The
philosophers of India anticipated in some respects our modern
evolutionary theory. Brahma is thought of as self-existent and
eternal. He gradually condenses himself into material objects,
such as ether, fire, water, earth and the elements. Last of all he
manifests himself in man. The Greek philosophers were the first to
attempt to describe creation as a purely physical, generative
process. They taught the evolution of the more complex from the
simpler forms. Plato and Aristotle believed in a transcendental
deity and found in the world indications of a vital impulse toward
a higher manifestation of life--man.
Michael Angelo, with wonderful dramatic power, in his painting in
the Sistine Chapel at Rome has portrayed how lifeless clay in form
of man, when touched by the finger of God, by sheer vitalizing
power is transformed into a living soul.
Very different yet equally impressive is the modern scientific
view. The origin of matter and of life is so absolutely unknown
that scientists have not as yet formulated definite theories
concerning it. Even the theories regarding the origin of the solar
system are still conflicting and none is generally accepted. The
old nebular hypothesis is discredited and the theory of the spiral
movement of the solar matter seems to be confirmed by phenomena
observable in the heavens. The one principle generally held by
scientists is that, given matter and life and some creating force,
our present marvelous complex universe has come into being
according to laws usually called natural. These laws are so
invariable that they may be considered unchanging.
Even more definitely established is the so-called theory of
evolution which is based on the careful observation and comparison
of countless thousands of natural phenomena. According to the
Encyclopedia Britannica it is the history of the physical process
by which all living beings have acquired the characteristics,
physical, mental, moral, and spiritual, which now distinguish them.
It recognizes the gradual development from the simplest to the most
complex forms. It is merely an attempt to describe in the light of
careful observation and investigation the process of growth by
which the world and the beings which inhabit it have grown into
what they are.
A comparison of the Hebrew account of creation with those of other
races and times is extremely suggestive.