Compare And Contrast The Iroquois Creation Story

How were humans created? Many different faiths and ethnicities have tried to answer this question, some creating outlandish theories, while others made stories that could realistically happen. Two of these creation stories that are relevant to American history are the Iroquois Creation Story and the Christian creation story, also known as the first three chapters of the book of Genesis. These two stories, if compared with an open mind, can be determined to have some surprising similarities, and some blatant differences. Firstly, these stories have some similarities and differences in the process of creation, including the making of the heavens and earth, the creation process, and the concept of time. In the book of Genesis, God created the

Directly within the stories, you can see a difference in the knowledge given to humans by the creators. In the Iroquois Creation Story, when the good twin and the evil twin came together, they created humans with knowledge of good in evil (Iroquois citation). Humans were created before this, but they most likely learned the difference between good and evil through observing the actions of the twins. This is in stark contrast to what happened in Genesis. In Genesis, when God created humans, he gave them a command to not feast from the fruit of the Tree of Life, but did not give them any knowledge of good and evil whatsoever. They only learned of good and evil after disobeying god due to the serpent’s temptation (Genesis Citation). The serpent is a symbol of evil as depicted here, and he is very similar to the evil twin in the Iroquois story in the sense that he is trying to undo the creator’s work. His trickery leads to another direct comparison that is different between both stories. When Adam and Eve listened to the serpent, they committed the original sin, which branded all humans as innately evil (Genesis Citation). In the Iroquois story, however, good and equal existed in equality from the beginning of the story to the end (Iroquois Citation). Sin isn’t even mentioned within the Iroquois creation story. An indirect comparison between these two stories is the existence of an upper and lower world. Heaven and Hell are not discussed in Genesis, but they are similar to the Iroquois depiction of a light and upper world. They both also have rulers, with God and the good twin ruling the upper worlds, and Lucifer and the bad twin ruling the lower worlds. Another indirect comparison is the brotherly feud of Cain and Abel that follows the creation story. The twins both have similar characteristics, but the evil twin wins