What are Six main creation myths?

Answer 1

It is hard to know how to rank myths in importance, since each myth is important to the followers of the religion that developed that myth. Perhaps we can begin by ranking myths according to their relevance today.

The Book of Genesis contains two creation traditions, which are believed in one form or another by Jews, Christians and Muslims:

• God created everything in just six days, by simply speaking them into existence, and then rested on the seventh. The sequence of creation is: (Day 1) light (day); (2) the firmament, which was believed to separate the waters of the heavens from the lower waters; (3) By gathering the lower waters in one place the land appeared. Grasses and trees; (4) sun; moon and stars - the lights in the firmament; (5) fish, land creatures and fowl; (6) man, both male and female.
• In the second creation account in Genesis, at verses 2:4b-25, God created a man (Adam) first and and then a woman (Eve) some time later. In this, more primitive creation story, God's powers are more limited, and he can not make living things out of nothing. He makes Adam out of moist earth and breathed into his nostrils to bring him to life. Then he made each of the animals by forming them out of moist earth. Eve was special, because God took a rib from Adam's side and used this to create her.

A Chinese Daoist creation myth says that everything was once contained in the egg of the universe. Inside this egg slept the first living creature, P'an Ku. When P'an Ku awoke, the egg shattered. The immaculate, orderly, and light part of the egg became the sky; the unclean, heavy, dark part became the earth. These became the forces of yin (cold earth and dark moon) and yang (bright sky and warm heaven). Fearing heaven and earth would weld together again, P'an Ku braced himself between the two forces. For the next eighteen thousand years, P'an Ku remained in this stance, growing 3 metres a day, separating heaven and earth farther and farther apart. P'an Ku also created the substance of things. His breath became the wind and clouds, and his voice created thunder and lightning. The sun came from his left eye and the moon from his right eye. His arms, torso, and legs became north, south, east/ west, and centre. His blood became the rivers, and his veins roads and paths. From his flesh came the trees and soil. The hair on his head became the stars, and the hair on his body became the grass and flowers. His teeth and bones became metal and stone. His sweat became dew. Finally, the various parasites on his body became the first people.

According to another Chinese creation myth, the Jade Emperor fashioned the first humans from clay, but as he left them to harden in the sun, it rained, misshaping some of the figures, thus explaining the origin of sickness and physical abnormalities.

The Epic of Gilgamesh was an important Near Eastern creation myth, with many similarities to the biblical creation stories. It is most famous for its flood story, because of the similarities to Noah's Flood, but also explains the creation of man. Enkidu was formed from clay and saliva by Aruru, the goddess of creation, much as Adam was formed from clay in the later biblical account.

Although not the primary Greek creation story, the Pelasgian creation myth bears some resemblance to the first creation myth in Genesis 1:1-2:4a, in which there was a primal chaos (Genesis 1:2) and a wind (sometimes translated as 'Spirit' as this is the same word in Hebrew). This Greek myth says that in the beginning, Euynome, the Goddess of All Things, rose naked from Chaos, but found nothing substantial for her feet to rest upon and therefore divided the seas from the sky, dancing lonely upon its waves. She danced towards the south, and the wind set in motion behind her seemed something new and apart with which to begin a work of creation.