flood 洪水神话

Compare and Contrast the Flood Myth between west and east

Guchuan Chang (Jetty)

Group 8

Matt Hildebrand

April 1, 2015

Abstract

Almost every culture have myth story about flood. However, part content of those are similar, partially are different. They are same in they all escape to high place and human reproduction after the flood. The differences are about the cause of the great flood and another one is what god played in the flood.

Currently, more and more people pay much more attention to an assumption that there was a universal flood sweep the globe in ancient time.I t’s a very strange and mysteriousphenomenon that every culture had at least one flood myth. Looking at all of the flood mythsover the world, they can be divided in two large divisions: the flood myths of western culture and the flood myths of eastern cultures. Again, according to different areas, western flood mythscan be divided into many different specific stories: Babylonian, Biblical, Sumerian, Mesopotamian and on and on. Also, eastern flood myth can be divided in Indian flood myth and the flood myth in China. There are many interesting differences and similarities in the flood myth between western and the other countries. There are different in so far as the cause of the great flood and what role god play in the flood, they are the same in they all escape to high place and human’s repro duction after the flood.

The reason of the great flood coming is different between western cultures and eastern cultures.In western culture, the flood coming allbecausehuman do a lot of bad things, thenflood coming because of god’s angry. The best known stories in the west is the story of the Noah’s Ark in the Bible, but it is looks like a copy of the flood stories of Mesopotamia recorded in the Epic of Gilgamesh. In these two stories, human evil leads god to want to give a punishment to humankind, then god determines to use the flood to wipe out humanity. According to Habel (1971), in his book Literary criticism of the old testament, “ In verses 5-8 the problem which god faces is the evil of man.This evil exists because of the“evil” in the “heart” of man”(p.13).In other words, in the western flood myth, flood coming is because the evil of the human, and god feel very angry that human don not have morality,their moral bottom line lower much than people in nowadays.Thus human crime is the only reason to cause the great flooding coming in western culture.

In contrast, the flood in eastern myth is not because of the sin of the humanity, it is because of the natural disaster.Because the world is out of balance, the flood is needed for creating a new world from the old, so the heaviest flash flood rushed down the mountain and destroy everything. According to Koppers (1940-1941), in his article “Bhagwan, the sup reme deity of bhils: A contribution to the history of India and Indo-european religions”, “Manu […] brings about the rise of a new humanity, of new gods, in fact of an entirely new world” (p.289). In China there are a well known story about the god Nv Gua tell us that in Dong sea there are four enormous pillars support the world. One day, the support is broken by two god fight together; the world will destroyed because there are a gap in the sky. Fortunately the god Nv Gua sacrifice her life for collect the five colored stones to fix the gap in the sky to avoid the coming flood. According to Lewis in his book The flood myths of early China,“In fusing these stones, Nv gua is restoring order to sky by bringing the phases back into the harmony that would underline the reg ular movement of the celestial light”(p.111). Consequently, the reason of flood in western culture more likely to focus on human crime, however; the flood myth in eastern culture tend to depict disaster as the reason of the great flood.

God plays different role between western culture and eastern culture. In western culture god is the decider, whodetermine the flood to punish human. In other words, they do “bad”things to humankind; they kill everyone except the most loyal believer of theirs. According to Habel (1971):

1.S o Yahweh said to Noah, “go aboard the ark, you and all your household, for I have

seen that you are righteous before me in this generation. 2. Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate, and one pair of the animals that are not clean,

the male and his mate […]. 4. For in seven days time I will cause it to rain upon the earth