As I understand it, the Navajo people passed down their beliefs orally from generation to generation. There's something so much more credible about a book, especially if there are so many different writers attributed with its works. Of course, this isn't a logical reason to place more reason in the Bible.
What particularly irritated me was the claim about the 4 main types of colours. If there's anything that I value from my elementary to middle school education, it's the belief in the 3 primary colours: red, blue, and yellow. They are the most basic of colours, as they can create any other colour. Black is the absence of light, and white is the overwhelming presence of light. So, the Navajo Creation Myth loses points there.
There's another flaw in the Navajo Creation Myth that bothered me; the medicine. If the first man had this medicine to create all these physical phenomena, where did it go?
Lastly, the Creation Myth answers all but (arguably) the most important question. Where do we come from? The first man was a Navajo from one of the past underground worlds. All the people were from that underground world. They came from the previous underground world. But, where did the people come from before the first underground world, or perhaps more importantly, how and why did they come to being there.
The Bible addresses this issue by attributing our creation to God. It doesn't claim anything about nonexistent magical medicine, or about false primary colours, and it answers the questions we really want to know from a Creation Myth. That's why Genesis' Creation Myth seems more likely to be true.
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First off, why do you find a book to be more credible, even if only instinctually so? After all, written word is only recorded spoken word- the same sentence read or spoken would mean the same thing.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, I disagree about the four colors. If you think about it, black, white, blue, and amber more aptly describe and divide the world than your three primary colors. The four Navajo colors correspond to night, day, water, and earth respectively.
Thirdly, couldn't the medicine have been used up in the process of creating the world?
I agree that since the Navajo story doesn't explain where people came from, just that people continuously emerged from an underground world, the Creation Myth is not likely. The Creation Myth implies that people have just always existed, for ever and ever, and gives no sense of beginning. I also agree that written record is more reliable than spoken word, because the story can be changed drastically from mouth to mouth, kind of like the game telephone..
ReplyDeleteGreat post, great comments. (Scy, I never knew that about the Navajo color scheme, but it makes perfect sense.)
ReplyDeleteAre written records really any more superior? While we have a Torah, a Bible, a Koran (to name a few) in written form, no one seems to agree on what the words mean anyway. Maybe the world would be a more peaceful place if you had to have your religious "text" handed down to you slowly, personally, orally over the course of your development as a person. Maybe people would be less likely to simply point to something written down, take it out of context, and say, "See, the [insert name of holy book here] says this type of person is evil and should not be tolerated."
Finally, Bhenn, you're right that the Navajo myth does not answer where humans came from, but does Genesis tell us where God came from?
The Navajo myth is less concerned with origins and more concerned with getting across the idea that life is cyclical. Do you yourself see that as a truth? Is it more important to understand something like that then to know where you came from?