The Sunday Morning Muse, August 5, 2007

It's Sunday morning in America, and countless people at this very moment are hearing about Adam and Eve-- the biblical story of creation. When I was a kid in Sunday school, I wondered if Adam and Eve had two sons, then where did all the people come from?

The Christians certainly don't corner the market on the story of creation. There are countless other myths out there. Many common names we see all the time are remnants of Greek, Egyptian, Norse, and other mythologies--and they still permeate our culture.

For example: Planet Uranus.

From Wikipedia:

Uranus: It is named after the ancient Greek deity of the sky, the father of Kronos (Saturn) and grandfather of Zeus (Jupiter). Uranus was the first planet discovered in modern times.

--

LiveScience presents a Top 10 list of Creation Myths that helped to define various civilizations both past and present. Adam and Eve is Number 1. Number 2 talks about Uranus... and it kind of makes you wonder why we named a planet after him. I can imagine this one below would be a tough myth to teach in Sunday School:

The early Greek poets posited various cosmogonies. The best-preserved is Hesiod's Theogony. In this hymn, out of the primordial chaos came the earliest divinities, including Gaia (mother earth). Gaia created Uranus, the sky, to cover herself. They spawned a bizarre menagerie of gods and monsters, including the Hecatonchires, monsters with 50 heads and a hundred hands, and the Cyclopes, the "wheel-eyed," later forgers of Zeus's thunderbolts.

Next came the gods known as the Titans, 6 sons and 6 daughters. Uranus, despising his monstrous children, imprisoned them in Tartarus, the earth's bowels. Enraged, Gaia made an enormous sickle and gave it to her youngest son, Cronus, with instructions. When next Uranus appeared to copulate with Gaia, Cronus sprang out and hacked off his father's genitals! Where Uranus's blood and naughty bits fell, there sprang forth more monsters, the Giants and Furies. From the sea foam churned up by the the holy testicles came the goddess Aphrodite. Later, Cronus fathered the next generation of gods, Zeus and the Olympians.

--

Sheesh.. this makes eating a forbidden fruit not such a big deal. Imagine if Eve was told *not* to use the sickle. :)