Genesis 1 and Zoroastrian Creation Myth
A fundamental tension between good and evil, the God of light and the God of darkness, is taken very seriously in Zoroastrian theology:
The Bundahishn, an encyclopedic collection of Zoroastrian cosmology and creation myth, describes the “bounteous creations” of Ahura Mazda (aka Ohrmazd), Zoroastrianism's deity of good. Creation in the Zoroastrian tradition happened in six stages: the sky, water, earth, plants, animals and mankind. The Bundahishn also teaches that Angra Mainyu, an evil spirit “with backward understanding and desire for destruction,” created “many daemons and fiends” to undermine the good creations of Ahura Mazda. Similarly, in the first Fargad (chapter) of the Vendidad, Angra Mainyu creates one place of evil in the world which corresponds to every place of good created by Ahura Mazda.
The six stages of creation in the Bundahishn are evocative of the six days of creation in Genesis 1, namely:
In Genesis 1 every part of creation is summed up with the conclusion “and God saw it was good.” Even the creation of creeping things, sheratzim, which in Chapter 11 of Leviticus the Bible will declare impure and forbidden to eat, are summed up with: “...and God saw that they were good.” Evil finally comes up in chapter 2 of the Bible. The fruit which god forbids Adam and Eve to partake in is called the עץ דעת טוב ורע, the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
From the perspective of Zoroastrian theology, evil exists as a cosmic force and is literally manifest within nature. Within the mosaic tradition, all of God's creation are unambiguously “good” and the forbidden Eden fruit is responsible for imputing evil on the world (whatever that means). (Milton's interpretation/re-imagining of the Genesis story complicates things because in Paradise Lost the snake that tempts Eve is inhabited by Satan – but that discussion is for a different post.)
(Exegetical footnote: A striking difference between the progression of creation in the Bible and the progression of creation in the Bundahishn is the order in which the heavens are created. The heavenly bodies are created on the first day in the Zoroastrian cosmogony and on the fourth day in the Biblical one. It's possible that the Biblical ordering was intended as a polemic against the ancient pagan practice of worshiping the heavenly bodies and the Egyptian sun god, Ra. Similarly, despite numerous references to day and night, the word "sun," shemesh, doesn't appear once in the whole chapter.)
In the Zoroastrian conception, not all things are good; some are good, some are mixtures of good and bad, and some are really bad. Among animals, some, like the dog, are ahuric and belong in the realm of the good. Indeed, to this day in Zoroastrianism the dog receives not just the leavings of human food, but the best of the food before the humans get any. On the other hand there are the daevic animals, which belong on the side of darkness, the so-called xrafstra...the more one kills of such animals, the better, for the physical world (Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 53, No. 2, Jun., 1985).
The Bundahishn, an encyclopedic collection of Zoroastrian cosmology and creation myth, describes the “bounteous creations” of Ahura Mazda (aka Ohrmazd), Zoroastrianism's deity of good. Creation in the Zoroastrian tradition happened in six stages: the sky, water, earth, plants, animals and mankind. The Bundahishn also teaches that Angra Mainyu, an evil spirit “with backward understanding and desire for destruction,” created “many daemons and fiends” to undermine the good creations of Ahura Mazda. Similarly, in the first Fargad (chapter) of the Vendidad, Angra Mainyu creates one place of evil in the world which corresponds to every place of good created by Ahura Mazda.
The six stages of creation in the Bundahishn are evocative of the six days of creation in Genesis 1, namely:
- Day 1 – God creates light and differentiates between day and night
- Day 2 – God creates a firmament to differentiate between the heavens and the Earth
- Day 3 – God commands the waters on Earth to move to one place to reveal the dry land and vegetation comes forth
- Day 4 – God creates the heavenly bodies to differentiate between day and night and the seasons
- Day 5 – God creates birds in the sky and fish in the waters
- Day 6 – God creates animals and human beings
In Genesis 1 every part of creation is summed up with the conclusion “and God saw it was good.” Even the creation of creeping things, sheratzim, which in Chapter 11 of Leviticus the Bible will declare impure and forbidden to eat, are summed up with: “...and God saw that they were good.” Evil finally comes up in chapter 2 of the Bible. The fruit which god forbids Adam and Eve to partake in is called the עץ דעת טוב ורע, the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
From the perspective of Zoroastrian theology, evil exists as a cosmic force and is literally manifest within nature. Within the mosaic tradition, all of God's creation are unambiguously “good” and the forbidden Eden fruit is responsible for imputing evil on the world (whatever that means). (Milton's interpretation/re-imagining of the Genesis story complicates things because in Paradise Lost the snake that tempts Eve is inhabited by Satan – but that discussion is for a different post.)
(Exegetical footnote: A striking difference between the progression of creation in the Bible and the progression of creation in the Bundahishn is the order in which the heavens are created. The heavenly bodies are created on the first day in the Zoroastrian cosmogony and on the fourth day in the Biblical one. It's possible that the Biblical ordering was intended as a polemic against the ancient pagan practice of worshiping the heavenly bodies and the Egyptian sun god, Ra. Similarly, despite numerous references to day and night, the word "sun," shemesh, doesn't appear once in the whole chapter.)
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