Male and Female Modes of Creation Part II

by Dr. Wayne Glowka

Professor of English and Acting Co-Chair of the Department of English, Speech, and Journalism

Georgia College & State University

Other Patriarchal Myths

The ancient Hebrew account recorded in Genesis 1, which was compiled around 450 B.C.E., offers another example of a patriarchal creation myth. In this account, however, creatures do not come out of God per se; He is separated from his creations by some distance. As He speaks, however, things appear. Oral creation in this myth is sublimated to a high degree, and the account offers only vague hints of female participation or anything approaching sexuality.

On the first two days of creation, God generates parts of the universe with a command in the familiar formula "Let there be ________." Thus He creates light by saying "Let there be light" (1.3). Once light is created, He divides the light from the darkness, but the process is not explained (1.4). He then speaks into being a firmament that separates the waters below the sky from those above the sky (1.6-9). God then separates the waters below the firmament from the dry land, which he calls Earth (1.9-10). Later, God then speaks the sun, moon, and stars into being (1.14-18).

The Earth, the seas, and the air participate in creation as de-emphasized female agents. God asks the Earth to bring forth plants (1.11-12) and later animals (1.24-25). He commands the seas to bring forth the creatures of the waters and the air to bring forth fowl (1.20-22).

After the Earth has brought forth animals, God speaks in the plural and says, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" (1.26). Various interpretations of this use of the first person plural can be mounted: Christian writers have seen the plural as the first indication of the Trinity in Old Testament material, but some modern scholars see a remnant of Mesopotamian polytheism in this use of the first person plural since the text was compiled after the Babylonian captivity. Whatever is meant by the first person plural, the result is the same: humans are made in the image of God, who has given them dominion over all of creation (1.26-30).

Despite the emphasis on the male god as the creator, this myth in and of itself does not grant special privileges to males. Those privileges are granted in the older myth of Genesis 2, a mixed myth discussed below.

The "Boshongo (Bantu): Bumba’s Creation" tells a similar story of male oral creation. In this myth, which was recorded after whites came to Africa, Bumba is alone at the beginning in the water, just like Atun and God (39). Instead of planning and speaking like Atun and God, however, Bumba feels an unexplained pain that leads to vomiting—a form of oral creation. Thus Bumba vomits up the sun, which in turn spreads light and dries up the water so that the land appears. Bumba then vomits up the moon and stars, which give light at night (40).

The living creatures are also vomited up by Bumba. The first string of retchings produces nine creatures: a leopard, a crested eagle, the crocodile, a fish, a tortoise, a white heron, a beetle, a goat, and lightning. The last creatures to come forth are men. The vomited creatures then create other creatures like themselves through an unexplained process. Creation is completed by Bumba’s three sons, whose origin is not clear. Whatever the case, the myth is clearly patriarchal in its failure to mention female participation in the process of creation.

A curiously sexual patriarchal creation myth can be found in the sixth-century B.C.E. Brhadaranyaka Upanishad. "In the beginning," goes this story, "this universe was Soul [atman] in the form of the Man [Purusa]" ("Indian" 31). After looking around and seeing "nothing other than himself," he said, "I am," creating "the word ‘I’" ("Indian" 31). However, the Man is alone and therefore afraid, but he convinces himself not to be afraid because there is nothing else in existence to be afraid of. But he does not rejoice, because "one who is all alone does not rejoice" ("Indian" 31).

Desiring "a second" ("Indian" 31), the Man solves his problem by creating a woman. Originally the size of a man and a woman closely embracing, the Man causes himself to fall into two pieces, and in this way "a husband and a wife were born" ("Indian" 31). He then unites with her, and mankind is thus born. The female, however, finds this uniting of the Man with a part of himself as shameful. She then changes her shape and becomes a series of animals. But each time she changes her shape, he changes his shape to match hers, unites with her, and causes her to give birth to all of the various kinds of animals ("Indian" 31). According to this myth, life is propagated essentially by rape.

The Man then knows that he is creation because he created everything. With his hands and his mouth, he created fire and the "fire-hole [yoni]" (the external female genitals), and as a result the palms of the hands, the mouth, and the fire-hole do not have hair.

The patriarchal nature of this myth is surely emphasized in its claim that the Man created "whatever is moist . . . from semen, and that is Soma. All this universe is food and the eater of food, For Soma is food, and Agni [the Hindu god of fire] is the eater of food" ("Indian" 31). According to this myth, the male contribution to the reproductive process is the essential element of the entire universe. There can be no stronger statement of patriarchal primacy: the universe itself is male.

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