Legends of Old Testament characters, from the Talmud and other sourcesBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Religion
Legends of Old Testament characters, from the Talmud and other sources
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Bible. Old Testament -- Legends; Jewish legends
In Greenland “the first man is said to have been Kallak. He came out of
the earth, but his wife issued from his thumb, and from them all
generations of men have sprung. To him many attribute the origin of all
things. The woman brought death into the world, in that she said, Let us
die to make room for our successors.”[76]
The tradition of the Dog-rib Indians near the Polar Sea, as related by
Sir J. Franklin in his account of his expedition of 1825-27, is that the
first man was called Tschäpiwih. He found the earth filled with
abundance of all good things. He begat children and he gave to them two
sorts of fruit, one white and the other black, and he bade them eat the
white, but eschew the black. And having given them this command, he left
them and went a long journey to fetch the sun to enlighten the world.
During his absence they ate only of the white fruit, and then the father
made a second journey to fetch the moon, leaving them well provided with
fruit. But after a while they forgot his command, and consumed the black
fruit. On his return he was angry, and cursed the ground that it should
thenceforth produce only the black fruit, and that with it should come
in sickness and death.
Dr. Hunter, in his “Memoirs of Captivity amongst the Indians,” says that
the Delawares believe that in the beginning the Red men had short tails,
but they blasphemed the Great Spirit, and in punishment for their sin
their tails were cut off and transformed into women, to be their
perpetual worry. The same story is told by Mr. Atherne Jones, as heard
by him among the Kikapoos.
The ancient Mexicans had a myth of Xolotl, making out of a man’s bone
the primeval mother in the heavenly Paradise; and he called the woman he
had made Cihuacouhatl, which means “The woman with the serpent,” or
Quilatzli, which means “The woman of our flesh.” She was the mother of
twins, and is represented in a Mexican hieroglyph as speaking with the
serpent, whilst behind her stand the twins, whose different characters
are represented by different colours, one of whom is represented slaying
the other.[77] Xolotl, who made her out of a bone, was cast out of
heaven and became the first man. That the Mexicans had other traditions,
now lost, touching this matter is probable, for they had a form of
baptism for children in which they prayed that those baptized might be
washed from “the original sin committed before the founding of the
world.” And this had to do, in all probability, with a legend akin to
that of the Iroquois, who told of the primeval mother falling, and then
of the earth being built up to receive her, when precipitated out of
heaven.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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