The Encyclopedia of World Religions

cosmogony S 103

two parents. These parents may be the earth and the sky, as in the mythology of Rangi and Papa in certain Pacific Ocean societies ( see P ACIFIC O CEAN RELIGIONS ). The Enuma Elish, a Mesopotamian myth, calls the first parents Tiamat and Apsu ( see M ESOPOTAMIAN RELIGIONS ). They are the fresh and salt waters whose mixing produces silt. (Think of a river delta.) One Egyptian cosmogony says that the creator first produced the pair Air and Moisture ( see E GYPTIAN RELIGION ). Another kind of cosmogony begins with a cos mic egg. One of the U PANISHADS in India describes the creation of the world from a primal egg. As the egg splits, the bottom part of the shell becomes the earth, the top part becomes the sky. The contents of the egg divide to become the various features of the universe. A third kind of cosmogony is “creation from nothing.” Religions that worship a high god or a single god favor this kind of cosmogony. The best known examples are J UDAISM , C HRISTIANITY , and I SLAM . Genesis 1 gives a “soft” version of creation from nothing. God does not actually create from nothing. He gives order to “the waters.” A well known Hindu hymn assumes creation from noth ing, but it asks who can know how creation came about. “The one who looks down from the highest heaven, that one knows—or perhaps even he does not know” (Rig-veda 10.129). Other religions say that the world as we know it emerged from the bowels of the earth. Indige nous Americans of the southwest often tell of the emergence of the ancestors from within the earth and their transformation into people ( see N ATIVE A MERICAN RELIGIONS ). Yet another kind of cosmog ony is the “earth-diver myth.” The earth comes into existence when primal beings recover raw material from beneath the waters. The Yokuts, an Indian people in California, told how the primal animals sent a duck down to bring up earth from the bottom of the ocean. Sometimes these types combine. For example, an Egyptian cosmogony begins with creation from nothing, but the first item created is the world-par ent pair. There may also be other types of cosmog ony. For example, a famous hymn in the sacred

In 451 the Christian bishops met in council at Chalcedon (near Istanbul, Turkey) to deter mine what Christians should teach about Jesus. They decided that in Jesus two natures, divine and human, were combined into one person. Most Egyptians disagreed. They taught that in Jesus divinity and humanity were united into one nature. These Egyptian “monophysites,” as they were called, became the Coptic Church. Until the middle of the seventh century the emperor of Byzantium severely persecuted the Coptic Church. He wanted to force it to adopt the teachings of Chalcedon. But in 642 Arab Muslims conquered Egypt, and the Coptic Church achieved peace. The leader of the Coptic Church is the patri arch of Alexandria, known as the pope (not to be confused with the pope in R OMAN C ATHOLICISM ). In 1971 Shenouda III became the 117th Coptic pope. By 1992 there were roughly 85 Coptic churches in the United States with a total of 180,000 members. Coptic churches are also found today in many other countries outside Egypt, including Canada, Great Britain, France, Germany, Australia, and Bra zil. One of the most prominent Coptic Christians in recent years has been Boutros Boutros-Ghali, secretary-general of the United Nations from 1992 to 1996. cosmogony A story of how the world came to be. Not all religions talk about the origin of the world and of human life. For example, the B UD DHA adamantly refused to address questions about origins. He said these questions were unimportant. Instead, one should analyze the world as it stands and seek to gain release from SAMSARA , or rebirth. Few religions, however, have been able to take such an agnostic attitude. When they talk about the origin of the world and human life, they usu ally tell stories or myths. These myths are known as cosmogonies. The American scholar, Charles H. Long, has identified five different kinds of cosmog ony. For beginners his classification is ideal. One kind of cosmogony, or story, attributes the origins of the world to the sexual activity of