Essay about The Shinto vs. Genesis Creation Story

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. …the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” In the Christian faith the world was created by God in the sequence of seven days. Throughout those days he made light and darkness, water and sky; he made the animals of the water and the animals

Throughout Genesis 1-11, one of the main subjects covered is the natural world. Genesis 1 in particular provides crucial information for understanding the origin of the natural world. In the first verse of the entire Bible (Genesis 1:1), the reader is immediately told that “God created the heavens and the earth.” Additionally, the reader is informed that “there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day” (Genesis 1:31), showing that God’s work of creation took six days. Because I believe that God created the world in six literal days, the foundation of my worldview is entirely different than the foundation of an atheist’s worldview. When I look at the world around me, I do not view everything around me as the product of random chance and evolution; instead, I see everything around me as the handiwork of God.

During the opening of Beowulf, the poet summarizes the beginning chapters of Genesis in the Bible. The poet tells about “ The Almighty making of the earth, shaping beautiful plains, marked off by oceans, then proudly setting the sun and moon to glow across the land and light it”(7-10). In the Bible, Genesis 1:1 reads, “ In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Immediately following this passage, it goes on to explain the history of Creation. Included in this description is how God made light and dark, land and ocean, plant and animal, and finally the ultimate creation, man.

The beginning of the Old Testament starts by explaining how God created everything within seven days. He creates night and day, the sky and the ocean, vegetation, the stars, sun and moon, sea creatures, land creatures, and for the seventh day he rests. The Garden of Eden was the paradise where man once lived until Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit thus creating the original sin. Eve listened to the serpent and gave into temptation leading to the fall of man.

By Faith we believe that God created the Natural World that He is the creator of all things. He is the source of all that live, and spoke the world into existence. The Bible begins with “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genisis1:1) In Romans 1:20 (NLT) Paul tells us “For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.” God took a blank canvas and used his brush to paint a masterpiece called planet Earth. With us in mind, he painted magnificent sunrises and sunsets, mountains, animals, the stars, moon and the sky. “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” (Psalm 19:1 NIV) Sadly man set to out to invalidate creation and to take the glory away from God. Man had become wicked and began to follow after their own desires. “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creation

He then made dry land to contrast with the waters and it was called Earth. He called the waters seas. Then he created vegetation. This marked the 3rd day.

When humans were in their primal state, before they could even comprehend calculus or geometry, they looked at the trees, bushes and plants and grabbed the fruit from their branches. They then looked to the stars and were fascinated the way we are today. Neanderthals reconciled the fact they could not reach these stars with the theory that they were a fruit for a much more powerful and an encompassing being. The point being humanity has a habit of explaining what we cannot fathom, by creating a construct of something greater than themselves, something omnipotent. The prominent religious books of our time, the new and old testament have struggled to explain what exactly the intangible being known as G-d can do as well as explaining the idea

The passage that I choose to write about was Genesis chapter 1 verses 1-5. I choose this passage because I was interested in studying how God supposedly created the earth and turned darkness into a world full of life and spirit. Genesis 1 begins by saying “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”(NKJV) I think that the purpose of this verse is to summarize the things that God would do in the future. This text tells us that God existed before the heavens and the earth. We also learn that before God started to create, the earth was empty, dark, and lifeless. The text also represents the beginning of everything earthly by saying God will create life on earth and in

The Drama of Scripture written by Bartholomew and Goheen takes the reader on a journey through the entire Bible in six short “acts.” The first Act discusses creation and the establishment of God’s Kingdom. In the beginning was complete darkness. Then, God created light and divided the heavens and the earth. He then split the waters and the seas, creating dry ground on which the rest of creation could walk. He proceeded to make plants and flowers and the sun, moon, and stars. He created days and seasons and animals of all shapes and sizes. And then, to add the finishing touch, God created men and women, male and female, He created them. The book states that “the Genesis story is given so that we might have a true understanding of the world in which we live, its divine author, and our own place in it” (Bartholomew, 29). Genesis 1-3, the story of Creation, is prevalent because it introduces the author of creation, humanity, and the creation upon which humanity’s drama unfolds.

On the third day god creates the land and the sea through the command to the water ‘be gathered together in one place and let the dry land appear'. Next he creates the grass and other foliage such as trees and plants with fruits and seeds.

We all know that our mothers and fathers gave us birth, and grandmothers and grandfathers gave our parents birth. However, what about the beginning? What does the beginning look like? Who created the sky, the earth, the mountains and rivers, the plants, the animals, and the human beings? How was the world created? What happened to the creator? These questions have puzzled and are asked by every people. However, no one has yet found the answers, and I have heard people saying that the creation of life is as impossible as the natural creation of an airplane from a stack of waste. With the willingness of knowing the self, ancient people tried to create mythological stories

The religion we know as Shinto is native to Japan and was first practiced sometime before the year 500 B.C.E. The name ‘Shinto’ comes from a Chinese phrase meaning “Way of the Gods”. It was first used to describe the native Japanese religion in the 8th Century C.E. It is currently the official religion of Japan along with Buddhism (Ono 1-3). There is a less common name for Shinto that comes directly from the Japanese language, which is “Kami no michi” which also means “Way of the Gods” (Renard 18). While Shinto has existed for more than 2500 years, there is no distinct founder, there is no body of religious law and there is no specific scripture as there are in other religions (Ono 2). Despite all of these differences,

The creation story for Shinto was recited orally for many decades, but was eventually written down and composed in the Kojiki. The origin tale of this religion all started with the formation of the Japanese islands. These islands were formed from two kami, the original male, Izanagi and female, Izanami. Out of left eye of Izanagi came the sun-goddess, Amaterasu, and from his nostrils emerged the storm god, Susa-no-wo. These two then started to cause a ruckus by fighting. Amaterasu was then worried and sent her grandson Jimmu Tenno, who became the first emperor to rule over the Japan. The Gods then ask the two original humans to complete the land that was now floating and drifting with the waves. In obedience, Izanagi and Izanami stood on the

Genesis 1:11-13 deals with the creation of plants and trees. To some this may not seem to be all that amazing, but if you really think about it God was preparing this earth for human inhabitation with all of these creations. Plants and trees are a staple of life and without them the human race would surly parish. We receive

Shintoism is an ancient religion that originated in Japanese culture. Shinto is a general term for the activities of the people of Japanese descent to worship all the deities of heaven and earth, and at the end of the 6th century the Japanese were conscious of these activities and called them the “Way of Kami” (the deity or the deities)'. The practice of Shintoism finally recognized when Yomei, the 31st Emperor of Japan, prayed before an image of Buddha for the first time as an emperor for recovery of his illness. Then Yomei accepted Buddhism, a foreign religion, the Japanese realized existence of a tradition of their own faith.