Creation myth

The Creation (c. 1896–1902) by James Tissot. An interpretation of the Genesis creation narrative from the first book of the Torah (commonly known as the Book of Genesis)

A creation myth is a symbolic narrative of how the world began and how people first came to inhabit it.

Quotes

• Cosmology might seem like a rarefied discipline, but in many indirect ways it touches everyone. We all have a need to know why the world is as it is and how we came to exist. Throughout history, societies have sought to address this need by producing creation myths: accounts which weren't explanations in the scientific sense but stories intended to place human beings in the context of a grander scheme.
  • Paul Davies, What's Eating the Universe?: And Other Cosmic Questions. U. of Chicago Press. 2021. p. 2. 

• The Biblical words about the genesis of heaven and earth are not words of information but words of appreciation. The story of creation is not a description of how the world came into being but a song about the glory of the world's having come into being.
  • Abraham Joshua Heschel, in The Wisdom of Heschel (1970), p. 150

• Like Creation stories everywhere, cosmologies are a source of identity and orientation to the world. They tell us who we are. We are inevitably shaped by them no matter how distant they may be from our consciousness.
  • Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions. 16 September 2013. p. 7. ISBN 978-1-57131-871-8. 

• Creation stories offer a glimpse into the worldview of a people, of how they understand themselves, their place in the world, and the ideals to which they aspire.
  • Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions. 16 September 2013. p. 305. ISBN 978-1-57131-871-8. 

• The history of creation, regarded by some in very early ages as probably "mythical," has, indeed, been proved to be certainly so, but the myth includes teaching of much more significance than the supposed history, and everyone should be glad to discover this additional proof that the aim of the writers of Scripture was not to satisfy an idle curiosity about facts which do not concern us. The doctrine of evolution promises to be of very easy assimilation by the Church.
  • Coventry Patmore, The Rod, the Root, and the Flower (London: George Bell and Sons, 1895), Knowledge and Science XXX, p. 87

See also

• Creation
• Cosmology
• Creationism
• Mythology