For a long time I have been watching the movement known as Creationism as they have attempted to push aside the teaching of evolution in the schools.  In its place, they would teach something called “creationism” which started out once upon a time as the creation story found in the book of Genesis.

That didn’t work, and so the they have re-cast and repackaged the idea in different guise.  The current form is known as “Intelligent Design,” but it has met the same fate as previous incarnations, mostly because it was just another form of creationism and therefore, a form of religion rather than science.

The Creation of the World. Giusto de Menabuoi (14th century), c. 1376. Fresco. Baptistery of the Cathedral, Padua, Italy.

The landmark ruling, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (download the decision here), established that ID is a form of religion and therefore violates the Constitutional separation clause.  But ID continues to pop up, most recently in the Texas textbook massacre fiasco, where a small group of conservatives have sought to insert creationism into school textbooks, which would then find their way to many schools outside of Texas, since the Texas market is so big is tends to drag the textbook market of other states along with it.  It is just the latest in a long, bitter struggle that goes all the way back to the Scopes Trial, and some ways prior to that.

But the more I observe the creationism/ID debate, the more curious I find it.  Allow me an extended tangent to try and explain what I mean.

In the ancient Near East, creation stories or cosmogonies served a very particular purpose.  That function was to establish political legitimacy.  So in ancient Mesopotamia, you have these great annual rites, called the Akitu festival, where the cosmos was symbolically renewed and a cosmogony was read or performed as part of the celebration.  But the Akitu was also about reaffirming the political power of the king and those who supported him.  The Babylonian Epic of Creation, the Enuma Elish, also elevated the god (in this case, Marduk) or gods associated with a particular ruling cadre, lending them legitimacy.

Likewise, a very short cosmogonic opening in the Epic of Atrahasis establishes the place of humankind in the greater scheme of things: humans were made by the gods to do the hard, dirty work of keeping the canals clear, making mud brick, and so on that the gods had grown tired of doing.  Humans were little more than worker drones.

You get the same thing in ancient Egypt, where the three major priestly centers of Memphis, Hermopolis, and Heliopolis, each had their own cosmogony by which they vied with each other for religious and political supremacy.

The Ancient of Days, by William Blake. Watercolor etching, 1794.

If we take a look at Genesis, we see similar hints but only if you get back to the original language.  Scholars have long known that the cosmogony in Genesis 1 and 2 is laced with references, wordplay, and so forth that assumes knowledge of Babylonian language and religion.  For instance, when God creates Eve out of one of Adam’s ribs, this employs a rather complex pun on the name Eve (“Life”), the Babylonian cuneiform sign for “Life” which also happens to mean “rib” and “woman.”  In other words, this creation story is in tension with Babylonian cosmogony and is asserting a different vision.  Another example is when Genesis asserts in highly forceful language that God created humanity in the divine image, this is, I believe a direct rebuke to the Babylonian vision of humans as made only for drudgery.

This goes some ways toward explaining why the Torah–a book of law, not science according to Judaism (and it is their book, after all)–starts with an account of the creation of the world.  Most biblical scholars agree that Genesis took its final form during and shortly after the Babylonian Captivity, and as such it had to assert itself from that influence.  In short, it had to establish itself politically before it could rightly be considered legitimate law.

To summarize, the ancient cosmogony was a political statement, designed to establish political legitimacy.

And now we have the creationists, who have fixated on the story of creation from Genesis, albeit buried under ever-deeper layers of prevarication, euphemism, and an increasing reluctance to actually invoke Genesis directly.  This particular flavor of Christianity has been struggling against the march of modernity for a long time, which at the end of the day is a political struggle, and they know this.

What I find so curious is that of all the positions they could use to assert themselves, they could embrace deliverance from sin, making the world better, fear of the eternal torment of hellfire, Jesus Christ as Savior of the World, and so on.  But in their effort to wrest back what they see as declining political influence, they turn to a creation story.

I am not certain why this is the case.  It could be driven by an intense fear and hatred of Darwin and evolution, but this answer does not quite satisfy me. I suspect that something more, something deeper is going on.  I am relatively certain that they would disagree with the idea that the ancient function of a cosmogony was political.  If I were fluent in Jungian psychology, I might wonder if they were tapping into some kind of archetypal image.  Some of the great scholars of cosmogony such as Mircea Eliade would probably think so.

I simply offer this as an observation that frankly fascinates the hell out of me.