I was recently reading Peter Matthiessen's
The Tree Where Man Was Born, a travelogue and sociological/ecological commentary of East Africa. In it he recounts the following story, referencing Geoffrey Parrinder's
African Mythology:
Matthiessen writes:
Once the sky pressed so close to the earth that the first man took care when he lifted spears or tools, lest he strike God. In those times, so the Dinka say, God had given the first man and woman one grain of millet every day, and this was plenty, until the woman took more than her share and, using a longer pestle, struck the sky. Then the sky and God withdrew out of man's reach, and ever since man has had to work hard for his food, and has been visited by pain and death, for God is remote, and rarely hears him.
Hopefully it is obvious that this bears an uncanny resemblance to the story of "the fall" in the Christian Bible.
In other threads it has been mentioned that many "Biblical" stories are present in other cultures, some predating Christianity. Unfortunately, (though appropriately for those other threads), the stories themselves are rarely recounted.
My purpose in starting this thread are two-fold:
Primary: To provide a thread to recount these sorts of stories, which I find particularly fascinating. (As a side note, but not a strict qualification, I'm thinking of stories from native cultures that are generally less discussed in this forum - the Americas, Subsaharan Africa, East Asia, Australia, etc...)
Secondary: To allow discussion of the origin of these stories. I realize that the story I quote above is quite likely an adaptation of a Biblical story, though I would find it more interesting if an archetypal woman-causing-the-fall-of-mankind-by-taking-food story arose independently in various cultures.
Hopefully others find this interesting - thanks.
{Moved from "Proposed New Topics" - Adminnemooseus}