Genesis And Birth To The People: A Comparative Analysis

Identity, as defined by Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, is “the fact of being who or what a person or thing is.” Millions spend their whole lives trying to figure out this abstract concept for themselves; for many, the answer is often revealed by examining how they came about. Why are they here? What is their purpose? The questions that plague each person’s mind have sparked ample debate throughout the world. Both Genesis, written during the 1400s BC by Moses, and Birth to the People, compiled in the sixth century BC and edited by Confucius, focus on this topic: the creation of the human race. Genesis and Birth to the People present different viewpoints to the topic of how humans were created, our role in nature, and the role of men and women. While Genesis (Chapters 1-5) and Birth to the People both give a point of view on

When God created human in Genesis, he said: “Let us make a human in our image, by our likeness, to hold sway over the fish of the sea and the fowl of the heavens and the cattle and the wild beasts and all the crawling things that crawl upon the earth… look I have given you every seed-bearing plant on the face of all the earth and every tree that has fruit bearing seed.” (Vol. A, pg. 29-30). This implied that God gave the humans dominion over all the fish, fowl, and beasts, making the humans the rulers of the earth with everything. While Birth to the People does incorporate some aspects of a human’s role, it never gives authority over the earth. Yuan and Hou Ji do not have a dominate position as Adam and Eve, in Genesis, but live in peace with nature, not harming it nor being harmed by it (Vol. A, pg. 1042). . The differing concepts of human control over nature, reflects the cultural mindsets of the hemispheres of which these works are popular. In the west, humans are seen as the rulers of the earth; whereas, in the east, humans try to co-exist with