Reflections on the Psalms by C. S. Lewis

Author:C. S. Lewis
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Devotional, Old Testament, Bible study, Christianity, Religion, General, Inspirational, CS, Biblical Studies, ST
ISBN: 9780547544236
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 1964-10-06T22:00:00+00:00

R EFLE C T I O N S O N T H E P S A L M S

c an easily escape a modem reader if his studies

happen not to have led him in certain directions.

In the first place it is for us a platitude. We take it

for granted. Indeed I suspect that many people

assume that some clear doctrine of creation Widerlies all religions : that in Paganism the gods, or one of the gods, usually created the world ; even that

religions normally begin by answering the question,

" Who made the world? " In reality, creation, in

any unambiguous sense, seems to be a surprisingly

rare doctrine ; and when stories about it occur in

Paganism they are often religiously unimportant,

not in the least central to the religions in which we

find them. They are on the fringe where religion

tails off into what was perhaps felt, even at the time,

to be more like fairy-tale. In one Egyptian story

a god called Atum came up out of the water and,

being apparently a hermaphrodite, begot and bore

the two next gods ; after that, things could get on.

lri another, the whole senate of the gods came up

out of Nun, the Deep. According to a Babylonian

myth, before heaven and earth were made a being

called Aspu begot, and a being called Tiamat bore,

Lahmu and Lahamu, who in their tum produced

Anshar and Kishar. We are expressly told that this

pair were greater than their parents, so that it is

more like a myth of evolution than of creation. In

the Norse myth we begin with ice and fire, and indeed with a north and south, amidst all which, somehow, a giant comes to life, who bears (from his

arm-pit) a son and daughter. Greek mythology

starts with heaven and earth already in existence.

78

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