Essay Example 2

Rosemary Radford Ruether's Argument in "Three Classical Creation Stories"
	Rosemary Radford Ruether, in her essay on three classical creation stories, sets out to show how these stories influenced the cultures they were a part of. She analyzes how these stories created a blueprint for society, demonstrating how the culture was at the time of the creation story as well as dictating how the society the story spawned from would be conducted in the future. She particularly focuses on how these creation stories set up hierarchies in the societies they come from, not only interpersonally, but also how the people of that society interact with other animals. She also has a particular focus on how these creation stories focus on the masculine, and cast the women of these societies as lesser in the social hierarchies. All of these attributes are a focus in Ruether's analyses.
	In the Babylonian creation story is one of Ruether's best examples of the masculine elements of a story being used to 'demonstrate' that women were lesser in the social hierarchy of that society. In it, as Ruether points out on page 18 of the text, the "earliest world is seen as matriarchal... replaced... by one of the dominant male powers, with female consorts." She goes on to posit that the following events in the creation story (Marduk taking Timat's body and Kingu's blood and creating the cosmos and humanity with them) set up for the society a relation between the ruling class and their creations, as well as the relation between the ruling class and those who serve them.
	In the Hebrew creation story, things are slightly different. Reuther shows the distinction between man and woman and between people and animals. Man was created after the rest of the animals, and is set apart by being made "in the image of God." Women is set up as inferior to man in several ways in the story. First, she is created from but a part of Adam, his rib, implying her inferiority by framing the woman as "derivative," as Reuther puts it on page 21. Second, the first woman is the one who committed the original sin, and thus to blame for society's ills. Ruether goes on to explain that the creation story sets up no distinction between classes, as the creator both works and rests, suggesting that all men do the same.
	Ruether's argument can be summarized as such: Each creation story sets up a blueprint for the society it comes from, as well as demonstrating what kind of society it came from. The creation stories have in common several things, from their unfortunately patriarchal narratives which set up subsequently patriarchal societies, to the relation between man and animal, to their setting up of social hierarchies.