Compare And Contrast Iroquois And Genesis

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Each of the stories were developed with the same ideas in mind. Both stories start with a heavenly setting. God in heaven wanting to create the world and the rich Sky World featured in the Iroquois story. Soon the harmony is broken when women in both of the stories perform a malfeasance act. The women were to not touch a sacred tree in their world. In Genesis, that tree was the tree of knowledge of good and evil. God told his woman creation, Eve, to not eat from that tree, but curiosity got the better of her and she ate from the tree (New American Bible, Genesis 3.1-7). In doing so she broke the harmony of the world. In the Iroquois story, a woman dug up their sacred tree so she could eat its roots. She ended up falling through the dug up hole onto the turtles back and then started to create the Earth. …show more content…

In Genesis, the good and evil are represented by Cain and Abel. Abel the shepherd seen as good and Cain the farmer as evil. Due to their differences and God’s likeness to Abel, Cain kills his brother Abel. The Iroquois make the creators represent good and evil. The right-hand man makes all that is good, while the left-hand man makes all that is evil. Both of their modus operandi is needed to create the world, without synergy the world would have too much good or too much evil. However, the right-hand man breaks this synergy by killing his twin brother left-hand man. An even more striking similarity of the stories is the birth of the creators and Jesus. The lady’s daughter in the Iroquois story becomes spontaneously conceived to have twins, though no human male interaction is made to her. This spontaneous pregnancy is much like that of the Virgin Mary conceiving Jesus through the Holy Spirit without the interaction of her husband Joseph (New American Bible, Matthew.