Reading Diary A: Folklore of the Holy Land

Mideast Unit: Folklore of the Holy Land

After reading about the Moslem Cosmogony, there are many similarities to the Christian belief about God but the Muslim people call their God, Allah.  They have an interesting beginning, starting with the creation of the Tablet of Destiny.  The next thing created was a giant pen.  After the pen and the writings in the tablet were full and the pen was dried up, they moved it and only Allah knows everything in the tablet.  Water was then created from a pearl by Allah.  The interesting thing about Allah is anytime he spoke, he had a voice like thunder and all the land trembled.  You know that he is a God to these people because he built his throne from the roof down, instead of starting with the foundation.  Just like the Christian religion, Allah created the wind and only He knows how much wind is there.  The only reason He created all of this was to display His glory.

            As the story continues, the land is created from the water because of the foaming waves.  The Earth is said to be surrounded by mountains to keep everything on earth from falling into space.  Have you every wondered how the earth is so stable in space? Well, according to this story, a strong angel is under the earth to support it in space.  Under the angel is a big emerald rock and under that rock was a giant bull with big horns for the emerald to rest on.  Then that bull stands on a great whale in the ocean.  The story then goes on to tell what will happen on resurrection day. 

            Adam was created out of a handful of dust from various places around the world.  Adam and a female were once the same person.  Half man and the other half woman but they separated into two perfect people.  The female failed to listen to the male and follow his orders so she was kicked out of the perfect place and became the enemy.  This story differs from the Christian story of Adam and Eve because the enemy female came into the story, too.  She was the reason why the serpent made Eve eat the forbidden fruit.  After eating the fruit, they were kicked out of the Paradise land and fell onto Earth.  This story continues by describing Adam in a way that is unhuman-like.  

            The next part of the story describes Noah and the Ark.  I always wondered why no body tried getting on the ark with Noah and all the animals when there was a flood coming.  Noah was sent to warn everyone about the flood but instead he was shunned and even his own family didn’t believe him.  Og is a very interesting character in this story, too.  Og was a giant and tried destroying the ark with Noah and all the animals in there but he was never successful.  He lived through the flood because he was so tall that he did not drown like the rest of humankind. His goal in life was to destroy the Israelites.  Og had a plan to destroy the land with a large rock. Many others saw that Og was trying to destroy then so they began to hit Og in the ankles with stones until he was killed.  After this story, the conclusion was made about the three different types of women.  There are the followers of  God who help their husbands, the stupid ones that don’t really understand what is going on, and the third type are the stubborn and mean women that do not do what they’re told. 

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