Psychoanalytically Interpreting Creation Stories

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Table of Contents

Judeo-Christian Creation Story
Greek Creation Story
African Bushmen Creation Story
Interpretation of the myths
Conclusion
Works Cited

Judeo-Christian Creation Story

Substantially, the Bible has always been used to explain several ideologies that are beyond human understanding. As such the Bible has enabled people to comprehend more about their originality and existence. According to the Bible, man was created by God who has authority over everything in the universe (Gen 3:1-19). Interestingly, the creation story unfolds as God took His time to make other creatures before creating man on the sixth day.

God named this man Adam and later gave him a companion who was known as Eve. Both Adam and Eve were put in the Garden of Eden where they could work and take care of everything. God then told them to eat fruits from all the trees in the garden apart from the tree of good and evil. During that time, Adam and Eve were naked yet they did not have any shame as they never realized it. This however changed when Adam and Eve were deceived by the serpent that encouraged them to eat the forbidden fruit (Gen 3:5-8). As soon as they ate the forbidden fruit, both Adam and Eve realized that they were naked and so they hid themselves from God.

Adam then went to God who asked him why he was hiding himself and this is the answer he gave, “I was scared because I was naked.” Adam also told God that it is Eve who had deceived him to eat the forbidden fruit. Eve on the other hand blamed the serpent who had convinced her to eat the fruit. God was not pleased and so He put a curse on Adam, Eve and the serpent (Gen 3:11-14).

Greek Creation Story

According to the Greek creation story, there was an existence of a man known as Zeus who had children by the names Prometheus and Epimetheus. By that time there were no men and animals on earth. In this case, Zeus instructed his sons to go and create man and animals as gave out gifts to each creature. Prometheus was given the responsibility of creating man while Epimetheus was in charge of creating animals.

On his part, Epimetheus was able to find gifts for his animals although Prometheus had no gifts for a man. After some time, Prometheus decided to give out fire as his gift for Man. This really annoyed Zeus who ordered some people to take Prometheus to a mountain where he was eaten up by vultures. Meanwhile, a woman by the name Pandora was created and she became the wife of Epimetheus. Pandora was received happily as she was given very valuable gifts.

Among her gifts was a box which was not supposed to be opened by anyone. As time went by, Pandora became more curious since she wanted to know what was in the box. At long last, she opened it and found many horrors which flew out to the world. When Epimetheus knew what had happened, he rushed back home although all evils had gone away. Out of the box, Epimetheus and his wife heard a voice that said, “Let me out, I am hope”. Upon hearing the voice, Epimetheus and Pandora decided to let hope go away.

African Bushmen Creation Story

In the African creation story, it is believed that people and animals were living under the earth. These people had a Supreme Master and a great lord who was known as Kaang. Later on, Kaang and his people migrated and went to live on the earth’s surface. Once they were on earth, Kaang called a meeting in which he told his people to avoid building any kind of fires. He also warned them of a bad omen if at all they built any kind of fire. Kaang left the meeting after his people promised to take heed of his advices. Surprisingly, these people did not keep their word because they went ahead and built a fire. As a result of this, all the animals ran away from the man as they went into hiding.

Interpretation of the myths

Comparing the three myths, all of them have a way of interpreting the creation story. In relation to Post-Freudian psychoanalytic theory, these myths were all attached to some kind of behavior (Beystehner Para 4). In the Post-Freudian psychoanalytic theory, it is stated that every behavior is normally driven by the urge to have pleasure. Looking at the Judeo-Christian Creation Story, Eve and Adam were deceived in the process of seeking pleasure (Gen 3:1-19).

Thus, the serpent told them to eat the forbidden tree because it was very good. This, therefore, means that Eve and Adam ate the fruit in order to taste its goodness. In the Greek Creation Story, Prometheus met his fate after going against his father’s wish. Prometheus did what he thought was right by giving out the fire as a gift for a man. By doing this, he was trying to fulfill his desires though it was against Zeus (Beystehner Para 4). Still, on the same story, Pandora went against the will of Zeus when she was eager to know what was in the box. On the other hand, the African bushmen built a fire that enabled them to see and feel warm.

Their behavior was motivated by the urge to feel much better yet they knew it was not right. In the Judeo-Christian Creation Story, everything was alright until the timer when Adam and Eve were deceived by the serpent (Gen 3:12 -17). In addition to this, they did not realize their nakedness until they ate the forbidden fruit. This means that the fruit had an influence on them. Consequently, they had to pay dearly for what they had done.

According to Freud, motivation can also take two forms whereby they are driven by sexuality (eros) and aggression/Thanatos (Beystehner Para 4). Seemingly, the sin committed by Adam and Eve has a hidden meaning which is not just eating a mere fruit. Their actions were mainly motivated by aggression as they eager to satisfy themselves. Moreover, their actions were characterized by the oedipal conflict as they realized the issue of nakedness. In other words, Adam and Even came to the realization about their sexual differences after sinning (Gen 3:1-19).

Conclusion

Basically, myths are meant to interpret hidden meaning that m ay not be understood easily mankind. In relation to the three myths, each one of them has a way of interpreting the creation story. For instance, there seem to be a hidden meaning about Adam and Eve’s story. However these myths can be understood much better through the Post-Freudian psychoanalytic theory. This theory has been able to give more understanding on the three myths (Beystehner Para 5).

Works Cited

Beystehner Kristen. Psychoanalysis: Feud’s Revolutionary Approach to Human Personality.US: Northwestern University. 2007. Web.

The Holly Bible. English Standard Version containing the Old and New Testament. UK: Good News Publishers.

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