Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey A you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 2: My name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick. And in today's episode of
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow Your Mind, I wanted to talk about
Speaker 3: creation myths, in particular an aspect of creation myths that
Speaker 3: has always really interested me but which often felt kind
Speaker 3: of overlooked, especially in my early religious education, and that
Speaker 3: element is what people imagine the world was like before
Speaker 3: the time of creation.
Speaker 2: M Yeah, this is a this is a tough one, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, because on one level, it's hard enough for
Speaker 2: us to imagine the world before we were born, much
Speaker 2: less some state of existence before the advent of humanity
Speaker 2: or the event everything that came before that. But it's
Speaker 2: you know, it's a it's an important, you know, core contemplation.
Speaker 2: You know, what existed before the observable universe, And it's
Speaker 2: such an enormous question. It's only only possible through human
Speaker 2: reason and self awareness building, allowing us to build out mythological, philosophical,
Speaker 2: and ultimately scientific models of phases of existence completely beyond
Speaker 2: our time or beyond our observation, beyond our just you know,
Speaker 2: basic fathomability, and in a literal sense. The interesting thing
Speaker 2: is it does us absolutely no good as a species
Speaker 2: to form an understanding, incorrect or even partially correct, of
Speaker 2: of what such a period might have been like, or
Speaker 2: to even call it a period. It may not even
Speaker 2: be accurate, But to even contemplate such a thing it does.
Speaker 2: It doesn't really give us a survival advantage or anything,
Speaker 2: But it is, I guess, to a large extent, urged
Speaker 2: onward by our deeply seated survival instinct to understand the
Speaker 2: past in order to better navigate present in future threats.
Speaker 3: Absolutely right, it pays to understand the past, But does
Speaker 3: it pay to understand what came before the past? Are
Speaker 3: there lessons to learn from that? But it is actually
Speaker 3: a question worth examining when you're looking at religious or
Speaker 3: mythological creation narratives, because one thing you will notice if
Speaker 3: you start reading a bunch of these stories is that
Speaker 3: a lot of them are actually not very well captured
Speaker 3: by the English word creation, because, at least in English,
Speaker 3: at least today in English, the word creation, I think,
Speaker 3: tends to make people imagine the manufacturing of new materials
Speaker 3: or substances that did not previously exist.
Speaker 2: So if you think.
Speaker 3: About the act of cosmic creation in that way, bringing
Speaker 3: new substances into existence, bringing the world into existence out
Speaker 3: of nothing, then it doesn't make a lot of sense
Speaker 3: to talk about what the world was like before creation,
Speaker 3: because there's nothing to talk about or to describe. But
Speaker 3: the instantiation of new existence from nothing is actually not
Speaker 3: what most creation narratives describe. In most cases, I would argue,
Speaker 3: there is some kind of pre existing world or state
Speaker 3: before creation, and the act of creation is not actually
Speaker 3: what spits out the raw space and matter and energy
Speaker 3: of the cosmos, but rather it is some kind of
Speaker 3: sorting and ordering process which, whether by the intentional will
Speaker 3: of a God or God's or by some kind of
Speaker 3: happy accident, takes a static or maybe unorganized, or a
Speaker 3: highly entropic or chaotic state of affairs, and imposes on
Speaker 3: it some kind of order or struck sure which allows
Speaker 3: stories to take place within that space. And I want
Speaker 3: to illustrate this by looking at just one example, which
Speaker 3: will probably be surprising to a lot of people who
Speaker 3: grew up like I did reading the creation story in
Speaker 3: the Book of Genesis, at least in its classic translated
Speaker 3: form in English. So as we've just been talking about this,
Speaker 3: I bet a lot of listeners were probably thinking, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: some stories may have this ordering quality rather than a
Speaker 3: creating quality. Maybe you're thinking of these creation by combat
Speaker 3: type stories. We'll talk about some of these in our
Speaker 3: episode today, but you might be thinking, well, the biblical
Speaker 3: creation account in Genesis, that's got to be one of
Speaker 3: the exceptions. That is a story that actually does feature
Speaker 3: the creation ex nihilo, where God by his will instantiates
Speaker 3: the universe out of non existence. And that's what I
Speaker 3: used to think, because if you read the very first
Speaker 3: sentence of Genesis one in the classic King James translation,
Speaker 3: it says, reading from the King James, in the beginning,
Speaker 3: God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth
Speaker 3: was without form and void, and darkness was upon the
Speaker 3: face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved
Speaker 3: upon the face of the waters. Now, a couple of
Speaker 3: things about that passage actually, well, one of the reasons
Speaker 3: I'm interested in talking about this subject today is my
Speaker 3: memory from childhood of how overwhelmingly dark and mysterious this
Speaker 3: passage sounded like, I guess, as with a lot of
Speaker 3: things in the Bible, if you grow up reading it
Speaker 3: or hearing about it. You can kind of just gloss
Speaker 3: over it, like go past it pretty quick and not
Speaker 3: really think about it. But if you stop and think
Speaker 3: about this image, I think it is very frightening and
Speaker 3: exciting and weird. So it is a world that did
Speaker 3: not yet have light, because it doesn't. It says that
Speaker 3: God didn't bring light into existence until the next verse.
Speaker 3: But it has some quality of formlessness and emptiness, but
Speaker 3: it's not completely empty because there are waters. It says
Speaker 3: there are deep waters in this dark world, and the
Speaker 3: deep waters have a surface. And then it says the
Speaker 3: spirit of God or sometimes otherwise translated as the wind
Speaker 3: of God moved upon the face of the waters. Again,
Speaker 3: maybe you can just kind of go past you if
Speaker 3: you don't think about it too hard. But when I
Speaker 3: try to picture this world and like give it a
Speaker 3: feeling of physical reality, it is literally hair raising to me,
Speaker 3: kind of like if I really force myself today to
Speaker 3: think about the physical reality of a black hole or
Speaker 3: imagining myself on the surface of Titan or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, something like knowing that it's supposed to not
Speaker 2: just be the surface of the ocean perhaps, but like
Speaker 2: something that is like the surface of the water with
Speaker 2: some sort of force moving across the top of it.
Speaker 2: But there's nothing else yet. There's no fish. Yeah, no light,
Speaker 2: Well there's no light. There's just kind of this, this
Speaker 2: sort of semblance of darkness and depth and.
Speaker 3: Presence, cosmically deep water wrapped enveloped in darkness, with a
Speaker 3: kind of ghostly wind of the breath of God moving
Speaker 3: across the top of it. Now, as I understood this
Speaker 3: passage when I was young, this description would have been
Speaker 3: of a sort of half created world, a creation in progress.
Speaker 3: It was like the first state of affairs. God created
Speaker 3: before the imposition of light, and before the land and
Speaker 3: the day and the night, and plants and beasts and
Speaker 3: human beings. And for a long time this was I
Speaker 3: think the most common understanding among Christians, at least, I'm
Speaker 3: not actually sure what is the most common understanding among
Speaker 3: Jewish readers, But the common view that I encountered growing
Speaker 3: up as an American Protestant was that the Biblical creation
Speaker 3: story was a manufacturing type creation. Because the very first
Speaker 3: words are in the beginning God created.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it makes it sound like this is not adapted
Speaker 2: screenplay category. This is screenplay. This is not supposed to
Speaker 2: be based on anything prior, right, But I know exactly
Speaker 2: what you're you're getting at with all this, you know,
Speaker 2: growing up in the church as well, like when you
Speaker 2: begin to hear readings of these early early passages, or
Speaker 2: more to the point, I think most of us, our
Speaker 2: earliest experiences are not with direct Bible quotations necessarily, but
Speaker 2: various like picture book Bible stories, you know, illustrations for children,
Speaker 2: versions of the stories for children that very much simplify
Speaker 2: things and certainly gloss over anything that might be confusing.
Speaker 2: But then but then things do get confused, you know,
Speaker 2: you start thinking about, okay, the darkness on the face
Speaker 2: of the deep, what is the deep? Or certainly when
Speaker 2: you get into the New Testament, I remember the first
Speaker 2: time I've begin picking up in this whole. Okay, in
Speaker 2: the beginning, there was the Word, and the word was
Speaker 2: with God, and the Word was God, and I think
Speaker 2: that was often poorly explained, and it is also kind
Speaker 2: of inherently confusing. So I would just be setting or thinking, Okay,
Speaker 2: you're telling me that before the creation of the universe,
Speaker 2: there's just a Bible kicking around, Like what, It's more
Speaker 2: complicated than that. But I do remember the initial confusion.
Speaker 3: I actually had to do a sidebar on this because
Speaker 3: I know exactly what you're talking about. Though in the
Speaker 3: beginning was the word in the Gospel of John. That's
Speaker 3: a whole other can of worms. It is a very
Speaker 3: common Protestant interpretation of that verse that the word refers
Speaker 3: to the Bible, because they say, like, you know, let's
Speaker 3: now hear the word of God, and they mean reading
Speaker 3: from the Bible. This is almost definitely not what the
Speaker 3: author meant in that passage. The English word word is
Speaker 3: a translation of the Greek logos, which has a host
Speaker 3: of meanings including word, but also means like reason, logic, discourse,
Speaker 3: maybe order. And there are literally whole books on what
Speaker 3: the author of the Gospel of John meant by the
Speaker 3: word logos there. So it's like a very fraught and
Speaker 3: complex and highly entangled theological and philosophical concept. But at
Speaker 3: the risk of oversimplifying, it seems to have something to
Speaker 3: do with the author's belief that Jesus is the embodiment
Speaker 3: of a divine principle that existed before creation with God,
Speaker 3: as a part of God or as an expression of
Speaker 3: God's power in a way that is actually manifested as words,
Speaker 3: So in the way that God speaks things into existence
Speaker 3: in the Genesis narrative by saying their names, like in
Speaker 3: the in the very next verse after those first two verses,
Speaker 3: I was just reading, God says, let there be light,
Speaker 3: and then there is light, so he speaks the word,
Speaker 3: and then the reality comes into being. And I would
Speaker 3: even relate this to other things outside of ancient Judaism,
Speaker 3: Like we've talked about the way that words have literal
Speaker 3: power to transform reality in Egyptian magic. I mean, this
Speaker 3: is a common way of thinking in the ancient world,
Speaker 3: that there is some kind of magical or creation potential
Speaker 3: in language itself, and that when the words are spoken
Speaker 3: by God or by the gods, they have even this
Speaker 3: greater power. So like God's word is in itself a
Speaker 3: kind of infinite divine potential.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, and really, like the whole discussion
Speaker 2: we're having here is possible because of words. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's of course the simple version of that, but also
Speaker 2: like language allows us to deal with increasingly loftier and
Speaker 2: complex subjects and topics, that allows us to talk about
Speaker 2: things like the time before the beginning of time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, that nature yeah, but to be clear, yeah,
Speaker 3: the word in the Gospel of John, don't think I
Speaker 3: don't think it's supposed to mean the Bible and it
Speaker 3: doesn't just mean word. It's this like highly complex, multi
Speaker 3: layered theological, philosophical load that is being delivered there.
Speaker 2: But when you're a kid, yeah, you think you could
Speaker 2: just say here word and you're like, what does that
Speaker 2: even mean? And then, like I said, I think half
Speaker 2: the time it's very poorly explained or the person that's
Speaker 2: reading is like, don't worry about that, Yeah, just move
Speaker 2: on to the next topic, that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: But so, anyway, so we jumped off of that from
Speaker 3: talking about how my understanding used to always be, and
Speaker 3: the common understanding for a long time was that the
Speaker 3: Biblical creation narrative had this manufacturing quality in the beginning
Speaker 3: God created. Now imagine my surprise years later when I
Speaker 3: encountered a different English translation of the exact same passage
Speaker 3: in the Bible. Again. This is Genesis chapter one, the
Speaker 3: first couple of verses. This translation says in dead when
Speaker 3: God began to create the heavens and the earth, the
Speaker 3: earth was complete chaos and darkness covered the face of
Speaker 3: the deep, while a wind from God swept over the
Speaker 3: face of the waters. So this is from a more
Speaker 3: modern translation. The first one I read was the King James,
Speaker 3: which is hundreds of years old. This is from the
Speaker 3: updated edition of the New Revised Standard Version or n RSV,
Speaker 3: which uses modern scholarship to try to capture more faithfully
Speaker 3: the meaning of the original Hebrew. In this case does
Speaker 3: the Hebrew and the Greek of the New Testament, but
Speaker 3: still it has that haunting description of the darkness enveloping
Speaker 3: the deep waters. It has the wind of God rushing
Speaker 3: over the surface of the ocean. But the first few
Speaker 3: words are very different. It is not in the beginning
Speaker 3: God created, implying the raw manufacture. Instead, it says when
Speaker 3: God began to create the heavens and the earth, the
Speaker 3: earth was, suggesting that the darkness was wrapping the deep water,
Speaker 3: and the rushing wind or the spirit of God was
Speaker 3: above the face of the ocean, and this is what
Speaker 3: things were already like when God began the creation. And
Speaker 3: from what I can tell, most scholars agree that this
Speaker 3: newer translation is closer to the plain meaning of the
Speaker 3: passage in Hebrew. And I think that's so interesting because,
Speaker 3: like so many people read this story and they think
Speaker 3: this is how the world was made, and this is
Speaker 3: a totally different understanding of the initial state of affairs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The idea that there's something out like
Speaker 2: some makes it sound like there's like some very limited
Speaker 2: wasteland that already existed. Now, why is it a wasteland?
Speaker 2: Was there something before this? Is this just what was
Speaker 2: left after the lizard men blew it? I don't know.
Speaker 2: The Bible doesn't get into that though.
Speaker 3: Well, actually that'll tie right into something about I want
Speaker 3: to get into further about the translation of this passage.
Speaker 3: So I was reading about this in a twenty twenty
Speaker 3: two paper by University of Toronto professor Robert D. Holmstead
Speaker 3: in the Journal for Semitics called the Syntax of Genesis
Speaker 3: ie Verses one to three. And in this paper, the
Speaker 3: scholar Homestead analyzes the linguistic features of the first three
Speaker 3: verses of Genesis, and he says there are two plausible
Speaker 3: ways of translating this passage, or he calls it analyzing
Speaker 3: this passage saying what it is supposed to mean most literally,
Speaker 3: But he says in both of these analyzes, the description
Speaker 3: of that dark world and the deep waters that we've
Speaker 3: been talking about is a parenthetical describing what the world
Speaker 3: was like before God began his work. Now, interestingly, in
Speaker 3: this translation and in all of the updated translations that
Speaker 3: I've read, God does seem to instantiate or manufacture some
Speaker 3: of the raw materials of reality. So it's not like
Speaker 3: God doesn't have the power to create things from nothing.
Speaker 3: For example, in verse three, the story says that God said,
Speaker 3: let there be light, or in Holmsteat's translation, let light exist,
Speaker 3: and then light begins to exist, so he speaks it,
Speaker 3: and then it does come into existence. So I think
Speaker 3: that is truly meant to be read as raw creation.
Speaker 3: And of course light is a very important ingredient in
Speaker 3: the universe. So I don't think this is this way
Speaker 3: of reading the story has any less implication of God's
Speaker 3: power to create. It's just telling a different kind of
Speaker 3: order of affairs. But this dark world and the deep
Speaker 3: water and the hovering wind of God over the surface
Speaker 3: of the water that was all there before, And in
Speaker 3: keeping with that, in Homestead's two possible analyzes of this passage,
Speaker 3: the first sentence does not use the word created at all.
Speaker 3: Homesteadt cites another scholar named Walton who makes extensive arguments
Speaker 3: that create is the wrong translation of the Hebrew verb
Speaker 3: in question, and Holmstead himself instead uses the term ordered.
Speaker 3: He says, so God ordered the heavens and the earth.
Speaker 3: He also acknowledges a scholar named Ellen van Wolda who
Speaker 3: argues that the best translation is separate. God separated the
Speaker 3: heavens and the earth. Either way in the story, this
Speaker 3: is not an act of making, but of organizing, bringing
Speaker 3: structure and character to these deep cosmic fathoms that came before.
Speaker 3: By the way, just since we're on the subject of
Speaker 3: this paper, one more interesting argument that Homestead makes is
Speaker 3: about the very first phrase of Genesis, one which is
Speaker 3: usually translated in the beginning with a definite article referring
Speaker 3: to the only beginning, the beginning of all time and space,
Speaker 3: for various linguistic reasons. Holmsteat says, actually, there are two
Speaker 3: possible translations which better capture the original meaning. One is
Speaker 3: in a beginning rather than in the beginning. So in
Speaker 3: a beginning, God ordered the heavens and the earth. You
Speaker 3: can take this opening as similar to the phrase once
Speaker 3: upon a time, denoting a point of beginning among many
Speaker 3: worlds or possibilities and then the other possible reading he gives,
Speaker 3: which has a pretty similar ultimate meaning, is in the
Speaker 3: beginning in which God ordered the heavens in the earth.
Speaker 3: This is once again setting the beginning of the story
Speaker 3: as one among multiple possibilities. Kind of like if you
Speaker 3: were to say, hey, tell the story that starts with
Speaker 3: Mary finding a kitten. Oh, okay, in the story where
Speaker 3: Mary finds a kitten. So it's kind of like that
Speaker 3: in the story where God, where God orders the heavens
Speaker 3: and the earth. But both of these phrasings really cause us,
Speaker 3: i think, to take differently the intended meaning of the
Speaker 3: Creation's story being told not just as the beginning, but
Speaker 3: as one of many possible or many actual beginnings of
Speaker 3: the world in the teller's view. So Homestead says, quote,
Speaker 3: either way, the door is logically open to other beginnings
Speaker 3: that were before this particular one. Bring us back to
Speaker 3: what you're just say, after the lizard people blew it
Speaker 3: up or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the door is biblically open for lizard men
Speaker 2: and great old ones and whatever you want to put
Speaker 2: in there in the prequel.
Speaker 3: Yeah, at least that's the case. Homestead makes that the
Speaker 3: best way of the most faithful translation here would say
Speaker 3: that the story is not saying this was the only
Speaker 3: way that the world was ever created. There may have
Speaker 3: been many other creations before, There may be other creations after.
Speaker 3: This was a beginning, one way God decided to do
Speaker 3: it one time at least?
Speaker 2: Oh wow, do creationists know about this yet, because it
Speaker 2: seems like this would open up new possibilities.
Speaker 3: I don't want to just like slam on Young Earth
Speaker 3: creationists here. I mean, obviously we know that the Earth
Speaker 3: is not just six thousand years old, but I'm not
Speaker 3: not trying to hate on people who believe that. But
Speaker 3: I do think it's interesting how as far as I'm aware,
Speaker 3: people who have the young Earth creationist viewpoint seem to
Speaker 3: sometimes be really resistant to scholarship that offers readings of
Speaker 3: the Bible that would alleviate some of their concerns. You know,
Speaker 3: like this would actually reduce, like I think, a more
Speaker 3: faithful reading of the creation narrative. It would actually give
Speaker 3: you more room to say, oh, Okay, it's not so
Speaker 3: much a problem that this conflicts with science, because maybe
Speaker 3: I'm not supposed to read this literally. Maybe that is
Speaker 3: not actually what the author or what God even intended
Speaker 3: but I think there's just a lot of resistance to that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: because I think I mean, if I can just psychologize
Speaker 3: a little bit, I think a lot of times, when
Speaker 3: we get really rigid about representing a point of view
Speaker 3: like Young Earth creationism according to your interpretation of the Bible,
Speaker 3: a lot of times what we're really showing fidelity to
Speaker 3: is our own past experience, Like we don't want to
Speaker 3: budge from the way we have always felt about the narrative.
Speaker 3: So if somebody offers you a revision of how the
Speaker 3: narrative should be understood, you will resist that as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like the same thing that you're resisting, but
Speaker 2: from a different direction.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but anyway, So that's what I wanted to talk
Speaker 3: about in this series, is these visions of the world
Speaker 3: from different types of creation accounts, visions of the world
Speaker 3: before what is commonly understood as the act of creation
Speaker 3: took place, and also maybe looking at what in these
Speaker 3: stories had to change about the world in order for
Speaker 3: it to be seen as now ready for the beginning
Speaker 3: of history or for the beginning of the story. So
Speaker 3: before we move on to talk about specific examples of
Speaker 3: pre creation narratives, Rob I know you've got a really
Speaker 3: interesting one I'm excited to look at today. But before
Speaker 3: we get to that, I just wanted to mention a
Speaker 3: few more things, like reasons I find this topic of
Speaker 3: the world before creation really interesting. One thing I wanted
Speaker 3: to harp on a little bit more is just the
Speaker 3: aesthetics of it. Like I've already talked about how I
Speaker 3: always found it haunting to think about that sketch from
Speaker 3: Genesis of the darkness upon the deep waters and the
Speaker 3: wind of God rushing above. But there are other visions
Speaker 3: of the world before Creation that are beautiful and strange
Speaker 3: and frightening in similar ways. But sometimes they are illuminating
Speaker 3: about ontologies, like visions of the world before creation can
Speaker 3: inform us about what a culture and a people thought
Speaker 3: it meant for things to exist. So one that I
Speaker 3: find really striking is the description of the pre creation
Speaker 3: world in the Babylonian Epic of Creation. This is sometimes
Speaker 3: called the enuma a leash, which comes from the first
Speaker 3: two words of the poem in the original language numa Aleish,
Speaker 3: which means usually translated as something like when on high
Speaker 3: or in the skies above or something.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 3: My Oxford University Press edition of the Myths of Mesopotamia,
Speaker 3: translated by Stephanie Dally, It goes like this here, when
Speaker 3: skies above were not yet named, nor earth below pronounced
Speaker 3: by name, Apsu the first one, their begetter and maker Tiamot,
Speaker 3: who bore them, all had mixed their waters together, but
Speaker 3: had not formed pastures nor discovered reed beds. When yet
Speaker 3: no gods were manifest, nor name pronounced, nor destinies decreed.
Speaker 3: Then gods were born within them, Lamu and Lahamu emerged,
Speaker 3: their names pronounced. So a lot of things are interesting
Speaker 3: about this, and we may return to it in a
Speaker 3: later part in the series. But one thing I really
Speaker 3: like about the Dali translation in particular here is the
Speaker 3: blurring of the distinction between the existence of things and
Speaker 3: the naming of things. So, instead of just saying sky
Speaker 3: and earth did not exist, as some translations I have found,
Speaker 3: they translate it more like that. Here it says they
Speaker 3: were not named, And in ancient Mesopotamian thinking, it seems
Speaker 3: that there may actually be some conceptual overlap here. To
Speaker 3: what extent do things exist if they are not named?
Speaker 3: Is existence a thing separate from observation and recognition? Maybe
Speaker 3: if a thing is not actually named. It's just sort
Speaker 3: of a chaotic potential, and it is not really itself
Speaker 3: yet until it is recognized. So either way, before the
Speaker 3: naming and possibly before the existence of earth and sky,
Speaker 3: you know, before we get the what the pastures or
Speaker 3: the metalands, before the marshes or the reed beds, there
Speaker 3: are these two substances or principles. They're both watery in nature,
Speaker 3: and they're joined in this union. You've got Opsu, who
Speaker 3: is the god embodying fresh water or just maybe is
Speaker 3: fresh water or is the subterranean waters. And then you've
Speaker 3: got Tiamot, the goddess embodying salt water or bitter water.
Speaker 3: And this part of the story, the creation event, is
Speaker 3: not a god exerting its will and imposing order like
Speaker 3: we get in the biblical narrative, though there is something
Speaker 3: like that later in this story. Instead, it is this
Speaker 3: joining of chaotic potential, almost a biological telling of creation,
Speaker 3: where you have the mingling of salt water and fresh
Speaker 3: which results in a sort of divine pregnancy and the
Speaker 3: birth of the gods, leading to many generations of gods
Speaker 3: whose activities will define the later parts of the story.
Speaker 3: But the interesting thing is that much later in the
Speaker 3: story there is a second act of creation by divine
Speaker 3: imposition of order. So the second act of creation in
Speaker 3: it is the classic creation by combat narrative. As we mentioned,
Speaker 3: it's common to many mythologies. We'll probably talk about some
Speaker 3: other examples of it in the series. But in the
Speaker 3: Babylonian Epic of Creation, the short version goes like this.
Speaker 3: Apsu becomes unhappy because the younger generations of gods are
Speaker 3: making too much noise, way too noisy, really annoying, so
Speaker 3: he plots to kill them. But the younger gods rebel
Speaker 3: and they kill Apsu, and then, enraged at this offense, Tiamot,
Speaker 3: his mate, makes monsters descend against the young gods as revenge,
Speaker 3: and then the young gods, represented by Marduke, the hero
Speaker 3: deity of the city of Babylon, slay their ancestor Tiamot,
Speaker 3: and then they fashion the world, or mar Marduke does.
Speaker 3: They fashion the world out of her dead body. And
Speaker 3: so if you take this part of the story to
Speaker 3: be the act of creation instead of the earlier like
Speaker 3: mingling of Tiamat and Apsu and the birth of the
Speaker 3: younger gods, the world before is the body of the
Speaker 3: chaotic deep salt waters, the body of Tiamot, so her
Speaker 3: body parts after her defeat are chopped up by Marduke
Speaker 3: and made into the land and the sky and you
Speaker 3: get the mountains and the vault of Heaven and everything
Speaker 3: like that. So it is a repurposing of the body
Speaker 3: of a god, a repurposing of material into the created,
Speaker 3: ordered world in which history can take place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you're right, we're going to see I think,
Speaker 2: multiple examples of this as well as these other factors.
Speaker 2: And sometimes you'll see you'll see the different different variations
Speaker 2: within a single creation story. And as I think, as
Speaker 2: what we'll also be discussing, sometimes talking about a single
Speaker 2: creation story itself is kind of a misleading idea because
Speaker 2: any given you know, ancient culture is going to probably
Speaker 2: have multiple different traditions, traditions that are forgotten at times
Speaker 2: that are then folded up into other traditions, imported traditions,
Speaker 2: and then eventually they're written down and they may take
Speaker 2: on a different flavor then, So a lot of different
Speaker 2: chefs coming in and out of the kitchen.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, you know, one rabbit hole I went down that
Speaker 3: I didn't end up creating any kind of notes about
Speaker 3: for today because it was but just an interesting rabbit
Speaker 3: hole I went down while doing research for this episode
Speaker 3: was about methodological problems in establishing narratives of mythology, because
Speaker 3: you know, what some scholars today have started pointing out
Speaker 3: is that you might, like, look at a story like
Speaker 3: the Numa aliation, say, this is the creation narrative of
Speaker 3: you know, some people in ancient Mesopotamia, of ancient Babylonians
Speaker 3: or whatever, and you might, well, that might well be
Speaker 3: true to in some sense. But you can also look
Speaker 3: at a lot of these narratives that have come down
Speaker 3: to us as artifacts of the particular time and situation
Speaker 3: in which the text form was created. So you know,
Speaker 3: most of these narratives probably do have some kind of
Speaker 3: oral basis. You know, they're coming from some well of
Speaker 3: oral tradition. Maybe not all of them, and maybe some
Speaker 3: are original compositions by the original text creator, but most
Speaker 3: of them probably have some oral tradition behind them, and
Speaker 3: then at some point in history somebody sets it down
Speaker 3: in a text form, which then of course has its
Speaker 3: own history after that because of you know, copying and versions.
Speaker 3: You know, so texts change as well, but often the
Speaker 3: version that becomes the first text we know in some
Speaker 3: cases is a kind of combination of pre existing mythologies
Speaker 3: with the textualizer's own personal additions and structure imposition of
Speaker 3: structure and things. So it's just easy to start thinking
Speaker 3: of a lot of things as the mythology that emerges
Speaker 3: from the people and the you know, common folk belief.
Speaker 3: But a lot of things we may think of that
Speaker 3: way actually are coming from the act of turning a
Speaker 3: tradition into the text. Sorry if that was convoluted, but
Speaker 3: I was just trying to recreate that from memory. Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 3: one more tangent I wanted to do before we get
Speaker 3: to your great example to talk about today, Rob. In
Speaker 3: this series, we're not planning on doing a like a
Speaker 3: running comparison between mythological accounts of creation and our best
Speaker 3: scientific theories of how the universe began. I don't think
Speaker 3: that's a very useful exercise because obviously, like the people
Speaker 3: who told these stories did not have access to technology
Speaker 3: or the theoretical grounding to the kinds of things that
Speaker 3: we have to understand the universe today, So it doesn't
Speaker 3: make sense to judge their stories on the basis of
Speaker 3: questions like did they get the facts right.
Speaker 2: Right, because sometimes they sort of do, and it's nice
Speaker 2: when it happens. It's kind of it's noteworthy, and we'll
Speaker 2: probably bring that up a few times. But it also Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's not like that means the creation myth is bad
Speaker 2: or incorrect because it doesn't line up with the current
Speaker 2: most popular astronomical model or something.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah it doesn't. I mean, it's neither for nor
Speaker 3: against whether it lines up or not. Yeah, I think
Speaker 3: we're just we're trying to understand these stories on their
Speaker 3: own terms and think about what they reveal about us
Speaker 3: and about the people who told them. But I thought
Speaker 3: it would be worthwhile, just for a bit of grounding
Speaker 3: to make clear that in physics based cosmology, we currently
Speaker 3: do not have a solid way of knowing what, if anything,
Speaker 3: existed before or outside of our local universe. So our
Speaker 3: best model of the history of our universe is an
Speaker 3: updated version of what usually gets called the Big Bang,
Speaker 3: And in short, the theory goes like this, About thirteen
Speaker 3: point eight billion years ago, the observable universe existed in
Speaker 3: an incredibly hot, dense state, and then this region of
Speaker 3: space and the energy within it began to expand rapidly
Speaker 3: and cool energy took the form of particles, including matter.
Speaker 3: Matter aggregated to itself through gravitational attraction, and it formed
Speaker 3: things like stars and planets, and the universe has been
Speaker 3: expanding and cooling ever since. We know this from multiple
Speaker 3: lines of evidence that the Big Bang theory is not
Speaker 3: just guesswork. There are a lot of different lines of evidence,
Speaker 3: all converging, all pointing toward it, and some of the
Speaker 3: main pieces of evidence include the observations of the cosmic
Speaker 3: microwave background. This is the energy glide left over after
Speaker 3: the universe first cooled enough to become transparent to light,
Speaker 3: and we can actually see this glow directly with our
Speaker 3: telescopes in every direction. Another major piece of evidence is
Speaker 3: the red shift of distant galaxies. So because the light
Speaker 3: from distant galaxies is red shifted, we know that those
Speaker 3: galaxies are moving away from us. Not moving away from
Speaker 3: us in the sense of flying further away from us,
Speaker 3: but moving in the sense that the space between us
Speaker 3: is expanding, and this is evidence of the past and
Speaker 3: continued expansion of space in the universe. And then another
Speaker 3: major piece of evidence often sited is the relative abundance
Speaker 3: of elements like hydrogen and helium. Basically, you find these
Speaker 3: elements in almost exactly the quantities that are mathematically predicted
Speaker 3: by the nucleosynthesis model of the Big Bang. So a
Speaker 3: lot of different evidence all backing up the Big Bang
Speaker 3: theory as the basic history of the universe of its expansion,
Speaker 3: and the Big Bang theory has been updated since its
Speaker 3: earliest inception. It's not exactly the same as it was
Speaker 3: when people first thought it up. For example, most physicists
Speaker 3: now accept a modification called inflation or cosmic inflation, where
Speaker 3: this is complicated, but basically, in the earliest fraction of
Speaker 3: a second of our universe, space expanded and cooled exponentially
Speaker 3: much more rapidly, and then this led into a phase
Speaker 3: called reheating, which created the hot, dense early state of
Speaker 3: the universe consistent with the Big Bang. And then the
Speaker 3: expansion after this settled into a still dynamic but overall
Speaker 3: slower rate thereafter. But even with these modifications like inflation,
Speaker 3: the Big Bang theory is only a model of the
Speaker 3: history of our observable universe, and it does not answer
Speaker 3: what if anything, came before the beginning of the expansion
Speaker 3: thirty point eight billion years ago. I mean, you can
Speaker 3: talk about inflation, but still that's just tracing it back
Speaker 3: to a point about thirteen point eight billion years ago
Speaker 3: when this expansion began. Physicists do try to come up
Speaker 3: with models that could pre date or lead to this
Speaker 3: initial state of the Big Bang. For example, some have
Speaker 3: proposed a cyclical universe, like a universe that continually expands
Speaker 3: and then contracts on itself over and over, or have
Speaker 3: proposed methods through which new bubble universes could be created
Speaker 3: out of old universes. But we don't have direct evidence
Speaker 3: for these worlds before. The best you can do right
Speaker 3: now is try to create a mathematically consistent model that
Speaker 3: is consistent with the things we observe, but you're not
Speaker 3: going to have direct evidence for it. So currently science
Speaker 3: doesn't really give us a picture of the world before.
Speaker 3: If there even was or is such a thing, it is,
Speaker 3: at least for now, beyond our reach. So we don't
Speaker 3: have scientific acts to the world before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to say the least, things get very complicated when
Speaker 2: you start thinking about about time and in all of
Speaker 2: this and how time seems to work, and so sometimes
Speaker 2: questions of before don't really make a lot of sense. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And then likewise, like to your point, if if there
Speaker 2: was a before and that before was in like essentially
Speaker 2: before like everything got scrapped and crunched down, like, then
Speaker 2: all the evidence is lost, like as far as we
Speaker 2: can understand it, so you know, the evidence is destroyed. Likewise,
Speaker 2: if the evidence exists outside of this universe, in other
Speaker 2: universes or pocket universes, also beyond our grasp and understanding.
Speaker 3: Yeah, though I do want to say, looking beyond the
Speaker 3: boundaries of our observable universe in time or space is
Speaker 3: not you know, I don't think that is like fringe behavior.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think it's a perfectly reasonable thing to
Speaker 3: try to create models for and see like what would
Speaker 3: actually be plausible. But we don't currently know of any
Speaker 3: way those models could be. You know, we can't look
Speaker 3: directly for evidence of those things, at least as far
Speaker 3: as we know.
Speaker 2: Right right, And we don't want to open those portals
Speaker 2: through which the lizardmen and they're great old when gods
Speaker 2: could just swarm back into our reality.
Speaker 3: I just want to say, we have no reason to
Speaker 3: assume that the lizard men have hostile intentions that should
Speaker 3: be perfectly benevolent lizards from another dimension.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or it could just be transactional. They're just like
Speaker 2: we want your peanut butter, and we are willing to
Speaker 2: trade for it, and we'll just hear them out. Who
Speaker 2: knows what they have. We might like it more than
Speaker 2: we like peanut but are hard to imagine, but maybe
Speaker 2: they've had they have something, Rob.
Speaker 3: I think you wanted to talk about a really interesting
Speaker 3: example from Chinese mythology.
Speaker 2: Right, that's right. I want to talk a little bit
Speaker 2: about Panghu or pangou Shie. This is a creator her
Speaker 2: entity in Chinese mythology, but it's a little more complicated
Speaker 2: than that, and I think you'll find, like I was
Speaker 2: kind of teasing out earlier, this is the tradition surrounding
Speaker 2: this entity kind of get into a number of different
Speaker 2: creation story types. And I'm going to be drawing on
Speaker 2: a couple of different texts that I've referred to in
Speaker 2: the past when we've talked about Chinese mythology. So is
Speaker 2: Anne Beryl points out in her book Chinese Mythology and
Speaker 2: Introduction there were various Chinese cosmological myths and they fit
Speaker 2: a general pattern, and that is that the universe is
Speaker 2: not created out of nothing, but out of some form
Speaker 2: of pre existing matter, and she writes that this generally
Speaker 2: takes the form of some sort of primeval vapor that
Speaker 2: must somehow be differentiated into the two fundamental opposing forces
Speaker 2: of yin and yang to become reality as we know it.
Speaker 2: She also notes that the myths and their early view
Speaker 2: of the cosmos they have some similarities with say, ancient
Speaker 2: Egyptian thought, but they are distinct from Judeo Christian models
Speaker 2: in that there is no divine will involved in the creation,
Speaker 2: so on the whole there's no like pure creator or
Speaker 2: creatrix character. Though that's not to say there are no
Speaker 2: divine acts of creation in Chinese mythology, but because there are,
Speaker 2: especially when you get into acts of say, you know,
Speaker 2: the creation of humans and so forth. But as far
Speaker 2: as the world or the universe, for the most part,
Speaker 2: it seems to emerge without divine intent.
Speaker 3: Right, So what you're describing is something we have seen
Speaker 3: already in stuff we've talked about today, and we'll see
Speaker 3: in other examples of a kind of mixed or undifferentiated
Speaker 3: entropic state of matter, in this case not We've talked
Speaker 3: already about waters being mixed and just all swirling together
Speaker 3: and having having not been separated yet. But here is
Speaker 3: a mixed form of vapor or some kind of cloud,
Speaker 3: and that somehow the separation of it into these two
Speaker 3: distinct and opposite qualities of yin and yang. That is
Speaker 3: the initial act of creation, even though there's nobody to
Speaker 3: do it. It's not like a god says, now these
Speaker 3: two will be separate.
Speaker 2: Right right. And it's also worth noting that, like you know,
Speaker 2: all these different when we're talking about the creation of
Speaker 2: the universe, that means something completely different to us when
Speaker 2: we think about it, because we have a like a
Speaker 2: NASA informed science education informed and probably like Star Trek
Speaker 2: and Star Wars informed idea of what that means or
Speaker 2: doctor who informed and so forth, you know, so we,
Speaker 2: like you instantly turn to thinking about multiple planets and
Speaker 2: possible other universes and multiverse and so forth. But like
Speaker 2: for the Chinese, the ancient Chinese, for example, like they
Speaker 2: were dealing with a single world and there was not
Speaker 2: the there was no idea of there being additional worlds.
Speaker 2: This is like a big I've seen it described as
Speaker 2: like a big square world, and that was generally what
Speaker 2: was thought of as being existence. That was the world,
Speaker 2: that was the universe and these other concepts didn't quite exist.
Speaker 2: So coming back to Pangu here, the name literally means
Speaker 2: something like the ancient coiled one, or, according according to
Speaker 2: Anne Burrel, coiled antiquity, coiled interesting. And he is coiled
Speaker 2: because he is coiled within another another thing that pops
Speaker 2: up in a number of different creation stories, and that
Speaker 2: is the cosmic egg. Hmm, okay, So I'll come back
Speaker 2: to the cosmic egg in just a second, but I
Speaker 2: want to turn to another source that I used, and
Speaker 2: that's the Handbook of Chinese Mythology by yang An and Turner,
Speaker 2: and they point out that one thing to keep in
Speaker 2: mind about Pangu here is that actual Chinese literary mentions
Speaker 2: of Pangu only seem to go back as far as
Speaker 2: the Three Kingdoms era, so that's two twenty through two
Speaker 2: eighty CE, and there's a certain amount of back and
Speaker 2: forth about whether it's completely of Han Chinese origin or
Speaker 2: if it was imported from another another ethnic group or
Speaker 2: another area. Anyway you slice it, though, it has a
Speaker 2: great deal of sticking power, and again wasn't written down
Speaker 2: until the third century CE, but certainly is based on
Speaker 2: ideas that existed for a long time before that. So
Speaker 2: let's talk about before we get back to the egg,
Speaker 2: Let's talk about coiled Antiquity himself, Pangu. What does he
Speaker 2: look like? Well, descriptions vary. Sometimes those descriptions take on
Speaker 2: a kind of Chinese dragon or animal hybrid sort of vibe.
Speaker 2: But when it comes to visual depictions, he's almost always
Speaker 2: shown as a great, shaggy horned humanoid giant. So some
Speaker 2: sort of a big shaggy giant with its generally like
Speaker 2: a couple of bumps, a little couple of horns on
Speaker 2: top of his head, not.
Speaker 3: Like big horns, like rams horns, but little buds almost.
Speaker 2: Yeah, almost like two cartoon bumps from being hit on
Speaker 2: the head with a cartoon sledgehammer, that sort of thing. Yeah, Now,
Speaker 2: I know you and I have seen these horns before,
Speaker 2: and longtime listeners, I've heard us mention these as well.
Speaker 2: Because this might bring to mine Old Shinong, the divine
Speaker 2: farmer and culture hero who, among other things, tried out
Speaker 2: all the plants to determine what was medicine, what was poison,
Speaker 2: and what was food and sampled. I believe the story
Speaker 2: says seventy poisons a day in this quest to understand.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's got to be a record, yeah, but a
Speaker 3: very important job.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, so you know, very much a culture
Speaker 2: hero culture bringer type character like here is a mythological
Speaker 2: entity that solved problems for us or passed on some
Speaker 2: sort of knowledge or gave knowledge to us that it
Speaker 2: was in the stronghold of the gods, that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: But Chinong is also depict with horns. It has some
Speaker 3: kind of bovine quality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that seems to be the key. He's he's
Speaker 2: tied to the ox and or the water buffalo, and
Speaker 2: it's this has to do with his association with that animal,
Speaker 2: and that's why he has oftentimes depicted as having horns.
Speaker 2: Now coming back to Pongu here. According to Yang'n and Turner,
Speaker 2: this use of horns, or this appearance of horns may
Speaker 2: be connected to Chinese myths that humans all used to
Speaker 2: have a horn or horns, which they used in hunting,
Speaker 2: and they would weaken or loosen as humans approach death.
Speaker 2: As this happened, however, workers would realize, Hey, I'm starting
Speaker 2: to die. My horns or my horn or horns are
Speaker 2: getting loose. I'm just going to go over here and
Speaker 2: not work anymore, and just wait for death. And the
Speaker 2: God of Heaven wasn't crazy about this development and was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: we're canceling horns. It's making it's making the humans give
Speaker 2: up hope and or not work all that hard. So
Speaker 2: horns are confiscated.
Speaker 3: No more horns because people were slacking on Fridays.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, wow. Now, incidentally, to bring things back to
Speaker 2: Judeo Christian traditions, or certainly, I guess more appropriately to
Speaker 2: bring it back to early Christian and onward traditions, and
Speaker 2: in the Middle Ages you have depictions of Moses with horns,
Speaker 2: similar horns, and this actually does show up in some
Speaker 2: Chinese depictions of Moses. There at least used to be
Speaker 2: an example of this at the met in New York.
Speaker 2: I didn't notice the last time I was there, but
Speaker 2: it may not have been in that section long enough.
Speaker 2: But this generally is attributed to This idea that Moses
Speaker 2: had horns is generally attributed to a mistranslation of a
Speaker 2: Hebrew term in Jerome's Latin Vulgate Bible and then reflected
Speaker 2: in European works of visual art up to the age
Speaker 2: of Michaelangelo. So you know, it would seem to be
Speaker 2: more of a connection to European traditions as far as
Speaker 2: Moses goes, has nothing to do with the idea that
Speaker 2: humans used to have horns or anything like that. But
Speaker 2: I did run across. I was looking into this a
Speaker 2: little bit more to see there's something I didn't know
Speaker 2: about or had missed, and I ran across a paper
Speaker 2: in the Eurasian Journal of Anthropology from twenty twenty four
Speaker 2: talking about the idea of Moses having horns and certainly
Speaker 2: acknowledging that it's connected to this mistranslation issue. But it
Speaker 2: was by an individual by Frank fan or Frank Fahn,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure which it is, but he presents a
Speaker 2: possible connection in these depictions to actual cranial deformities due
Speaker 2: to thallacimia, an inherited blood disorder, and the idea here
Speaker 2: is that it's tied to the idea that this illness
Speaker 2: basically creates certain protection against malaria infection, and therefore there
Speaker 2: would be like a survival advantage in having it, so
Speaker 2: you might have used used to have had more people
Speaker 2: with horns, or at least things that looked like horns
Speaker 2: that were just cranial deformations. Hopefully, I'm not misrepresenting any
Speaker 2: of this, this scholarship, but it's an interesting idea. I'm
Speaker 2: not sure how much I'm willing to bet on it,
Speaker 2: but I always love a paper that kind of says, Okay,
Speaker 2: this is this is clearly what the case is. But
Speaker 2: what if it were this? And so here's an here's
Speaker 2: an alternate route, an alternate road that you know, we
Speaker 2: can all agree might not be as a reasonable hypothesis,
Speaker 2: but certainly we can stack up some some arguments why
Speaker 2: it could potentially be the case.
Speaker 3: Right does not. This hypothesis does not satisfy Oakham's razor,
Speaker 3: but is interesting at least.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so at any rate, Pungu has horns, and
Speaker 2: again he's the ancient coiled one, and he's coiled within
Speaker 2: the primordial or cosmic egg, which itself has coalesced out
Speaker 2: of the formless vapor. So nobody made the egg, nothing
Speaker 2: laid the egg. The egg has just formed out of
Speaker 2: the vapor that pre existed everything. And again this is
Speaker 2: a common motif for cosmic egg. But Pongu is inside
Speaker 2: the cosmic egg, coiled within the egg of chaos. And
Speaker 2: while he is in there, the complimentary opposing forces of
Speaker 2: yin and yang are separating within the egg until one day,
Speaker 2: after eighteen thousand years, according to this story, for uncertain
Speaker 2: reasons or no reason at all, the egg hatches. Now, Joe,
Speaker 2: have you ever separated an egg for a recipe? I
Speaker 2: assume you have. Let's talk about this because this becomes
Speaker 2: the primary metaphor for understanding the form and function of
Speaker 2: the universe in this story. Do you have a preferred
Speaker 2: method for separating an egg.
Speaker 3: I don't know what the term for this is, but
Speaker 3: I just fingers. You dump it into your fingers, and
Speaker 3: you kind of hold them slightly apart from each other
Speaker 3: and allow the white to slip through, but you don't
Speaker 3: let the yolk go through, and you kind of flex
Speaker 3: them and press them together until you have sort of
Speaker 3: cut the white off from the yolk. That that's what
Speaker 3: I usually do if I need to separate them. And
Speaker 3: the problem I have more often is not with separating
Speaker 3: eggs and yolks. I don't do that all that often.
Speaker 3: It's when I'm trying to make eggs and I crack
Speaker 3: the egg and break the yolk on the shell. I
Speaker 3: hate that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's always that happens to me when I'm like
Speaker 2: frying eggs for the family, and it always irks me
Speaker 2: because I know that certain members of the family really
Speaker 2: like like a jammy egg, and once you've done that,
Speaker 2: it's like the egg's not gonna You're not gonna get
Speaker 2: a jammy egg out of that.
Speaker 3: Well, for me, it's just always like, Okay, I'm making
Speaker 3: poached eggs or I'm making fried eggs, and you know,
Speaker 3: I break a couple of yolks while I'm getting them out,
Speaker 3: so I'm like, well, I guess I got to make
Speaker 3: scre eggs too. I'll do that when I'm done.
Speaker 2: We used to have these little earth or maybe a
Speaker 2: couple of these. We have these earthenware egg separators with
Speaker 2: like a little face and a mouth where you would
Speaker 2: supposedly put the egg in there and be able to
Speaker 2: pour it and then just the white would come out
Speaker 2: and the yolk, I mean just the center of the
Speaker 2: egg would stay in and the rest would come out.
Speaker 2: I've never seen that, but my memory of that was
Speaker 2: more of a neat idea as opposed to a practical
Speaker 2: way of carrying it out. And then there's another version
Speaker 2: where stuff comes out of the nose. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I haven't used that one. But yeah, most of the
Speaker 2: time for me, it's like getting in there with a
Speaker 2: spoon and then my fingers.
Speaker 3: One quick kitchen trick, I do know. If you are trying,
Speaker 3: if you're trying to make poached eggs and you want
Speaker 3: less of that wispy white that goes all through the water,
Speaker 3: you just quickly put the egg in like a mesh
Speaker 3: strainer before you poach it, and you kind of whisk
Speaker 3: it around it or not whisk it, but you just
Speaker 3: swish it around a little bit in the mesh strainer.
Speaker 3: And what happened is the tight part of the white
Speaker 3: will stick to the yoak, but the very watery part
Speaker 3: of the white will go out through the bottom of
Speaker 3: the strainer, and then when you put that in the water,
Speaker 3: usually it holds together in a pretty tight, nice little ball.
Speaker 2: Interesting, Okay, Well, Luckily for Pangu, he doesn't have to
Speaker 2: mess with most of that. So the egg hatches, he's
Speaker 2: within the egg and like essentially the stuff of the
Speaker 2: universe is all around him. But luckily gravity is coming
Speaker 2: into play, so murkier, heavier yen is sinking down while
Speaker 2: that airy, lighter yang is rising up. So the yen
Speaker 2: sort of falls down and becomes Earth, and Yang rises
Speaker 2: up and becomes sky. Okay, and then here's Pogu in
Speaker 2: the middle of this. And by being in the middle
Speaker 2: of this, he's he's in an interesting position because he's
Speaker 2: kind of part of both. He's not you know, there's
Speaker 2: there's En and Yang with him within him. He's he's
Speaker 2: human in his own way as well. He's not really
Speaker 2: a human, but he's kind of like he's a humanoid being.
Speaker 2: And in some versions of the tale, he like finalizes
Speaker 2: the separation of Earth and Sky with an axe or
Speaker 2: some other tool. What does well, that's that's a difficult question.
Speaker 2: I want to come back to that. In other versions,
Speaker 2: to put his role is really to prevent the two
Speaker 2: from merging together again. So you know, he may not
Speaker 2: have had a role in actually separating the two again.
Speaker 2: Sometimes he does, but then he has this additional role
Speaker 2: of like keeping them from coming back together, and so
Speaker 2: he ends up taking on the you know, almost like
Speaker 2: an Atlas roll, holding them, not holding the sky up,
Speaker 2: but holding the Sky and Earth apart from each other
Speaker 2: to prevent reconciliation into the universe's prior state. So it's
Speaker 2: not just that the sky might come down, it's just
Speaker 2: Earth and sky, Yin and Yang might come back together,
Speaker 2: become one, and then that's that's you know, it's kind
Speaker 2: of like the end of the universe. You know.
Speaker 3: Oh, but that's kind of almost again, I'm not I'm
Speaker 3: not saying this was like pressions about physics, but just
Speaker 3: by happy coincidence, this is uh, prefiguring the idea that
Speaker 3: gravity is actually not just attraction toward the ground or
Speaker 3: towards the center of the Earth, but the mutual attraction
Speaker 3: of all things to each other.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think one of the things to keep in
Speaker 2: mind in all of this, especially in discussing cases where
Speaker 2: there's something about it that feels like it lines up
Speaker 2: with our scientific understanding of the universe, is that all
Speaker 2: these these ancient people, you know, they a they thought
Speaker 2: long and hard about all of this in one way
Speaker 2: or another, you know, creativity and creatively or you know,
Speaker 2: or philosophically. And then also they lived in this universe.
Speaker 2: So they lived in a universe where emergence occurs, where
Speaker 2: gravity exists. Uh, you know, they they see complex systems
Speaker 2: all around them, They see how these things work. They
Speaker 2: see they see order coming out of chaos and chaos,
Speaker 2: you know, coming out of order in the world around them,
Speaker 2: and so they have all of this evidence in their
Speaker 2: perceptions of reality that are a part of the larger universe,
Speaker 2: and therefore it factors into their models of the larger universe.
Speaker 2: And that makes you know, complete sense.
Speaker 3: That's certainly true. As we often emphasize on the show,
Speaker 3: I think one of the biggest mistakes people make when
Speaker 3: thinking about the ancient past is for some reason, just
Speaker 3: assuming that the people long ago were dumb or you know,
Speaker 3: that they couldn't figure things out. Obviously, we know a
Speaker 3: lot of things that they didn't know a back then.
Speaker 3: We have a lot of tools they didn't have back then.
Speaker 3: But based on the things they had, you know, people
Speaker 3: have always been smart. People have always been able to
Speaker 3: figure things out. I mean, I'm kind of doubtful that
Speaker 3: people in the ancient world actually figured out the like
Speaker 3: the nature of gravity as the mutual attraction of all
Speaker 3: mass to mass, but I guess you can't rule it out.
Speaker 3: But yeah, that's interesting. Certainly, Certainly people have always been
Speaker 3: smart and have always been able to figure things out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And now coming back to Pangu and another way
Speaker 2: that he sort of ties into who you can compare
Speaker 2: him to Atlas Tales is of course, Atlas is all
Speaker 2: about trying to get somebody else to take on this
Speaker 2: task for him. Can someone else hold up the sky
Speaker 2: wanting you know, run a quick errand that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Exactly, Yeah, Hercules, I got something to do, or let
Speaker 3: me help you out. You just sold this for a second.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. And so we see a bit of that
Speaker 2: in some of the tellings of pangu in which he
Speaker 2: molds an ox out of his own saliva and some
Speaker 2: clay to help the separation to sort of do the
Speaker 2: work for him. And then in some of these stories
Speaker 2: as well, he has to make a clay rooster as
Speaker 2: well to help keep the ox alert at all times,
Speaker 2: and with the ox going asleep and then waking up,
Speaker 2: this ends up being a way of explaining earthquakes.
Speaker 3: Oh interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now there's another variation on the story that gets very
Speaker 2: much into this idea of some sort of primordial being's
Speaker 2: body dying and then becoming the world, because it's often
Speaker 2: said that Pangoo does not live eternally, but dies and
Speaker 2: part of his parts of his gigantic body become key
Speaker 2: parts of the universe or the observable reality. So according
Speaker 2: to different versions of the story. One eye becomes the sun,
Speaker 2: the other becomes the moon. His voice becomes thunder, His
Speaker 2: limbs and trunk become the forests become the four extremes
Speaker 2: of the earth and the five mountains. His blood becomes
Speaker 2: the rivers, his flesh becomes the fields and the soil.
Speaker 2: His teeth and bones become rocks, His semen and marrow
Speaker 2: become pearls and jade. His sweat becomes rain and dew,
Speaker 2: and the insects that lived on his body become the
Speaker 2: first humans. Though to be clear, this is not the
Speaker 2: only human creation myth in Chinese mythology. Wow, And another
Speaker 2: interesting thing here is Okay, you can say, okay, well
Speaker 2: Pango is dead then, but it's not. I don't know.
Speaker 2: It seems like that might be the wrong way to
Speaker 2: describe it. Again, there are different versions of the stories
Speaker 2: concerning him. But also he is apparently still worshiped as
Speaker 2: a god in certain parts of China, and so if
Speaker 2: he is dead, it's not, you know, in a mortal
Speaker 2: sense of the word, and certainly not in every tradition.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I think the story of Pungo is fascinating
Speaker 2: because you can easily detect the different sorts of creation
Speaker 2: stories that are bound up in this figure. He's depicted
Speaker 2: as a primordial being, as a world tree or pillar,
Speaker 2: a decaying giant who becomes the earth, and more.
Speaker 3: That is really interesting. I was not familiar with this
Speaker 3: story before, and I like this a lot. Can I
Speaker 3: actually come back to two different things you've mentioned while
Speaker 3: talking about this and something that connects them. So I
Speaker 3: want to come back to the acts, where you know
Speaker 3: the question of where did Pangu's acts come from? That
Speaker 3: he uses to do the separation at least in some
Speaker 3: tellings of the Earth and Sky. This is something I
Speaker 3: was thinking about talking about the beginning of the episode.
Speaker 3: I didn't have time to develop it though, but it
Speaker 3: it's a quality that I really enjoy about some creation
Speaker 3: narratives that I was thinking about calling the Cain's wife factor.
Speaker 3: Do you remember the story of Cain and Abel in
Speaker 3: the Book of Genesis also so yes. The short summary
Speaker 3: is that Cain and Abel are the first children of
Speaker 3: Adam and Eve after Adam and Eve are expelled from
Speaker 3: the garden, and the way the story is always understood
Speaker 3: is that at this point these are the only people
Speaker 3: on Earth. You know, at Adam and Eve are the
Speaker 3: first humans. They were expelled from the garden of Eden.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: They start to have children. They have Cain and Abel,
Speaker 3: and then Cain kills his brother Abel uh. And then
Speaker 3: Cain is banished for this. He is sent away, so
Speaker 3: it says he, you know, he goes out of the land,
Speaker 3: and then we're told he wanders somewhere else, and then
Speaker 3: he meets a woman and gets married. Now, of course,
Speaker 3: the obvious question is where did Cain's wife come from?
Speaker 3: Who is she supposed to be? She just kind of
Speaker 3: appears out of nowhere. I thought these were the only people.
Speaker 3: Where's she from? There have been over the years, I
Speaker 3: don't know, kind of anti Christian activists or people who
Speaker 3: are very critical of the Bible who use this as
Speaker 3: an example of like, look how stupid this story is,
Speaker 3: Like look how stupid it is that they forgot that
Speaker 3: these were the only characters and here's another character coming
Speaker 3: out of nowhere. I don't view it that way. I
Speaker 3: when I look at this, it instead seems to me
Speaker 3: to be evidence that this story is not intended to
Speaker 3: be taken as a literal history of events and as
Speaker 3: a totalizing narrative of reality. It just signals to me
Speaker 3: that it is being told with a sense of lightness
Speaker 3: and understood creativity, that in the more in the original context,
Speaker 3: that the teller of the story and the audience would
Speaker 3: understand that the story is being told with a sense
Speaker 3: of freedom and creativity, and that there's a playfulness here.
Speaker 3: And so it is not meant to be taken as
Speaker 3: a literal historical recounting of the only people that ever
Speaker 3: existed in the past and all that kind of thing.
Speaker 3: I mean, there may have been some sense that this
Speaker 3: is conveying some truth, maybe in a more metaphorical sense,
Speaker 3: about where people came from, But I don't know. I'm
Speaker 3: connecting it more to the idea that we were also
Speaker 3: talking about a few minutes ago about how I think
Speaker 3: people in the past were smart and like they they
Speaker 3: maybe not were always as literal minded as we tend
Speaker 3: to assume.
Speaker 2: They were, right, Yeah, or or certainly even as pedantic
Speaker 2: as we can be concerning some of these stories. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Where you know, if you if you seriously asked the
Speaker 2: question like, well, where did the acts come from, it's like, well,
Speaker 2: you know, it's just it's just part of the story exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And so many of these creation stories, they do end
Speaker 2: up basing at least some part of it in human
Speaker 2: tool used, human crafting, because that's how we end up
Speaker 2: understanding and shaping our understanding of creation, because we have
Speaker 2: to base it on human acts of creation, be that
Speaker 2: you know, molding something out of clay, chopping something with
Speaker 2: an axe, or you know, using the word processor of
Speaker 2: the gods, you know, turning a blank page into into copy.
Speaker 2: I was thinking about that earlier. It's like when we
Speaker 2: create a document for our podcast, it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: it begins with nothing, just to blank white space.
Speaker 3: But then but that's actually not nothing, is it.
Speaker 2: It's not nothing? No, But then it also doesn't go
Speaker 2: from you know, from you know, beginning to end super quickly.
Speaker 2: There are different phases of creation. Like in my case,
Speaker 2: I always apply some sort of a template, and that's
Speaker 2: the first act of creation, uh, you know, and then
Speaker 2: on the third day God began to fill in the
Speaker 2: template that sort of.
Speaker 3: Thing, and then one and then the gods began developing
Speaker 3: things that turned out to be completely useless wrong, you know,
Speaker 3: like un let's not okay, can't do that. I'm gonna
Speaker 3: shift to something else.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, we'll actually come back to that idea and
Speaker 2: some of our examples, Oh nice, the different drafts of creation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but so anyway, Yeah, I wanted to make the
Speaker 3: connection between the acts and Kane's wife because I love
Speaker 3: these little details and I and I take a different
Speaker 3: view of what they mean than some of the most
Speaker 3: sort of myth critical people do, who think that this
Speaker 3: is evidence of a kind of sloppiness in the storytelling.
Speaker 3: I instead interpret it as a as a sign that
Speaker 3: we should understand these stories in a more light and
Speaker 3: sophisticated way, and not that the original context was all literalism.
Speaker 2: Right right, Like, well, coming back to the idea of
Speaker 2: a cosmic egg, what laid the cosmic egg? That's the
Speaker 2: still a question. I mean that it does get into
Speaker 2: the whole egg and chicken thing, and you know that
Speaker 2: is a conundrum. But you know, think of it then,
Speaker 2: not as an organic egg. Think of it as enclosed substance,
Speaker 2: you know, and just go from there. Now, I do
Speaker 2: want to come back as we begin to reach the
Speaker 2: end of this episode, I want to come back again
Speaker 2: to what is the primary topic and play here what
Speaker 2: was the universe like prior to creation? And so we.
Speaker 3: Did talk about the vapor and the egg right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so I have a little bit more on that.
Speaker 2: So in most Chinese traditions, the answer is, of course
Speaker 2: chaotic formlessness. This vapor a place before heaven and Earth
Speaker 2: with images but no form. I really love that description.
Speaker 2: How am I to interpret that? You know, it's like
Speaker 2: information but no mass. You know, I'm not sure, But
Speaker 2: as an Barreau comments, the state is rather similar to
Speaker 2: the you know, you could even compare this to the
Speaker 2: modern cosmological idea of the singularity. So everything is there,
Speaker 2: but it is not ordered in the sense that it
Speaker 2: is anything yet or not. It is not like the
Speaker 2: world we know it but all but everything is there,
Speaker 2: it's just you know, it's contained in a different form. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 2: in Dallas cosmology, this undifferentiated and formless state is known
Speaker 2: as wuchi, the boundless emptiness, and it is the prime
Speaker 2: mol state of the taol the Tao. And I'm hoping
Speaker 2: that I'm pronouncing it correctly here wugi, because this is
Speaker 2: one of those things when you're dealing with the Chinese
Speaker 2: language if I use a slightly incorrect pronunciation that it
Speaker 2: means nonsense rather than limitless or boundlessness. It can also
Speaker 2: mean a type of chicken. It can means a stain,
Speaker 2: it can mean dancing skill, or it can mean to
Speaker 2: miss a plane, depending on exactly how it is being inflected.
Speaker 2: That's just you know the complexity of the language. But
Speaker 2: I believe it is bugi, So to whatever extent I
Speaker 2: actually hit that every time I say it, we'll see,
Speaker 2: but I am going to try and pronounce it correctly. Yeah, Ouji.
Speaker 2: So this state Wuji has the has, it has infinite potential,
Speaker 2: but is itself non being? And these concepts are also
Speaker 2: incorporated into Neo Confucism as well, And in this Wuji
Speaker 2: becomes Taji, the supreme ultimate. So movement begins based on
Speaker 2: the dualities of Yin and Yang. However, there's plenty of
Speaker 2: room to argue and disagree over whether Wuji really becomes
Speaker 2: Taji or if there are just these are just two
Speaker 2: sides of the same thing. And you know, we can't
Speaker 2: really apply line or logic to it in that case.
Speaker 2: But yeah, the dow runs through all things. Yin and
Speaker 2: Yang are in constant flux, competing but unable to exist
Speaker 2: without each other. And if that's that churning nature, you know,
Speaker 2: often depict it visually, you know, iconically as a churning
Speaker 2: as a movement, if that movement is not taking place,
Speaker 2: if everything is just like a sterile constant, like that
Speaker 2: is that is the the primordial universe in this case,
Speaker 2: like it's it's like everything that makes our universe work.
Speaker 2: Everything that's a part of the you know, observable separation
Speaker 2: of things and entities and conflicting energies, like, none of
Speaker 2: that is in place. So it's almost you know, unfathomable
Speaker 2: in that respect. At any rate, it'll be be a
Speaker 2: lot of fun to get into some additional mythological models
Speaker 2: here and continue to discuss, like which of these various
Speaker 2: creation tropes do they seem to be exploring and using,
Speaker 2: What new ideas are they bringing to it that we
Speaker 2: haven't discussed in this series so far. We have some
Speaker 2: some exciting examples to discuss in the future.
Speaker 3: Totally. This may be one of those series we need to,
Speaker 3: I don't know, break up and revisit at different times.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, this, in all likelihood, this may be
Speaker 2: one that we do a couple of episodes for and
Speaker 2: then we have to break and do some other content
Speaker 2: and then come back back again. So we'll see how
Speaker 2: it all plays out in the meantime, we would of
Speaker 2: course love to hear from all of you, because it's
Speaker 2: very likely that there's some great example that we haven't
Speaker 2: come across yet, or perhaps there's a great example we
Speaker 2: were thinking about covering and we just need a little
Speaker 2: nudging to point us in the right direction, So write in.
Speaker 2: We would love to hear from you. Just a reminder
Speaker 2: to everyone out there, This Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 2: is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes
Speaker 2: on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays we do a short
Speaker 2: form episode and then on Fridays we set aside most
Speaker 2: serious concerns, so just talk about a weird film on
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
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