Creation Story Research Articles

Türk Evren Tasavvurunda Mitik Su ve Tükürük İlişkisi

İnsanın evreni anlama ve yorumlama çabası, kültürü şekillendiren önemli bir etmendir. Bugün değerli ve kutsal kabul ettiğimiz her şeyin arkasında bu anlamlandırma çabası olduğu görülür. Basit bir pratiğin bile altında, geçmişi mitolojiye dayanan bir düşünce yatabilir. Su, görsel ve yapısal olarak insanda mistik düşünce yaratan bir maddedir. Dünyayı algılama çabasının temeline suyun yadsınamaz bir rolü vardır. Bundan dolayı pek çok toplumun yaratılış öykülerinde su yer alır. Evren tasavvuru içinde su döngüseldir ve taşıyıcıdır. Suya ilişkin bütün ritüellerin, yaklaşımların ve düşüncelerin temelinde bu iki işlev vardır. Kültürü şekillendiren bu düşünce, suya dayalı pek çok söylemi de günümüze kadar taşımıştır. Günlük hayat içinde dikkat edilmeden sarf edilen; huyu suyu, yüzü suyu, suyu sert/yumuşak, suyuna gitmek vb. ifadelerin temelinde de bu düşünce vardır. Ayrıca Anadolu’da pek çok uygulamada kullanılan tükürük, uygulayıcısı ve amacı noktasında da mitoloji ile kesişmektedir. Çalışmada kültürel pek çok unsurda yer alan su-tükürük ilişkisi, evren tasavvuru ve yaratımı noktasında incelenecektir.

Çocuk edebiyatı eserlerinde mitik görünüm: “Yeşim Taşı Efsanesi Gizemli Kitap” örneği

Erken dönemde hem evrenin kökenini, geçmişini hem de insanoğlunun yeryüzündeki serüvenini tanımlamaya, anlamaya ve yorumlamaya çalışan mitler, zamansız bir yaratılış öyküsüdür. Hayatın temel konularını tanımlayan mitler, insan doğasını açıklamaya çalışırken insanlığın kendi dünyasını nasıl gördüğünü ortaya çıkarır. İnsanoğlunun ortak kaderini, inançlarını, uygulamalarını anlamasına doğanın güçlerini keşfetmesine yardım ederek insan olarak kim olduğumuz ve hayatın anlamının ne olduğu gibi temel sorulara cevap arayan mitler, birkaç farklı işleve hizmet eder. Bunu gerçekleştirirken dünya üzerinde her kültür mitolojide aynı temel temaları işlese de her millet kendi kültürüne özgü isimler ve açıklamalar kullanır. Bu zihinsel üretimin kavranmasında edebiyat, geniş imkânlar sağlar. Çocuk için mitler, hem hayal güçlerini besleyerek kendi köklerini anlamalarına yardım eden hem de yaşadıkları sorunlara farklı çözüm önerileri getirerek gelişmelerini destekleyen bir disiplindir. Dünyayı doğrusal olmayan terimlerle algılayan çocuğun bakış açısından ele alındığında mitik unsurlarla örülü bir edebiyat, çocuğun kültürel değerlerini tanıyarak kendi köklerini kavramasına katkıda bulunur. Bu yönüyle mitik ögeler açısından oldukça zengin içeriğe sahip eserlerden biri de Ömer Ünal’ın Yeşim Taşı Efsanesi- Gizemli Kitap adlı eseridir. Türk mitolojisine ait birçok ögenin, Türk kültürüyle ilgili karakterler ve olaylarla anlatıldığı eserde kültürümüzdeki inanç ve ritüeller sembolik bir dille verilir. Çalışmada önce serinin ilk eseri olan Yeşim Taşı Efsanesi -Karanlık Dünyaya Yolculuk ve ardından çalışmanın esas konusu olan Yeşim Taşı Efsanesi –Gizemli Kitap tanıtılmış, ardından mitik ögelerin kurgu dünyasındaki işlevi ve anlamı üzerinde durulmuştur. Mitik ögelerin esere yansıyan görünümü sınıflandırıldıktan sonra mitik ögelerin anlamları ve sanat eserindeki fonksiyonları ortaya konmaya çalışılmıştır.

İsa-Mesih ve Pavlus Ekseninde Hıristiyan Geleneğinde Kurtuluş

Salvation expresses the endpoint aimed at religious traditions. However, the meaning that religious beliefs and traditions give to salvation and the prescriptions of salvation they offer to their followers differ from each other. In these prescriptions, sometimes creed acceptances and sometimes rituals come to the fore. In this context, salvation in Christian theology is generally explained by accepting the redeemer role of Jesus Christ. However, there are some differences between the message of Jesus Christ and the message of Paul's Christianity, which was shaped after Jesus Christ, on how to achieve the promised salvation. This situation raised the question of whether salvation will be achieved by faith, rituals, or both. The answers given to this question in the historical process indicate that the ratio of faith-rituals differs on the way to salvation. Because when Jesus Christ began his teaching, he wanted to explain that his message was compatible with the prophets sent before him by stating that he was sent to the lost sheep of the people of Israel, and he saw the Israelites as the addressee in accordance with the Jewish tradition and directed his message to them. Thus, Jesus Christ, who determined the Jewish nation as the target audience of his message with an exclusionary attitude, also emphasized the fulfillment of religious orders and prohibitions based on the law of Moses. According to the Gospels, there was a significant change in the message of Jesus Christ after the crucifixion, and Jesus Christ, who appeared to his apostles, wanted his message to be delivered to all nations, stating that he had been given authority in the heavens and on earth. Warning his apostles about this issue, Jesus Christ willed that everything that was taught to them should also be taught to other nations. The first Christian community, which included people from different nations with this command, continued to live according to the law and tried to convey the message of Jesus Christ all over the world. As a result, the fact that many gentiles, as well as diaspora Jews, accepted Christianity brought up the problem of how to apply the law of Moses. Because while Jesus-Messiah ordered all nations to be invited, he did not specify which practices the gentiles would be responsible for, and this situation led to different interpretations. In this context, this study discusses the importance of faith in Jesus Christ and the Law of Moses in terms of salvation in the period of Jesus Christ and the first Christian community. The study is important in that it points out that the salvation doctrine put forward by Paul and generally accepted today does not coincide with the message conveyed by the Historical Jesus or the Jesus-Christ, according to Christian theology, when he lived in the human body. The subject has been discussed by focusing on the Bible passages. In this direction, it is tried to explain how the main figure in Christianity, Jesus Christ, was historically revealed by the theology of salvation and how the conception of Jesus Christ, who became the subject of salvation and was personally considered the savior, was put forward. In addition, the change in the faith-rituals ratio was emphasized by laying the groundwork for comparing the salvation theologies of the historical Jesus-Christ and Paul, who shaped the Christian tradition. The change in salvation theology was explained by Paul's reinterpretation of the creation story in the Torah.

Brothers of Coweta: Kinship, Empire, and Revolution in the Eighteenth-Century Muscogee World by Bryan C. Rindfleisch

Reviewed by: Brothers of Coweta: Kinship, Empire, and Revolution in the Eighteenth-Century Muscogee World by Bryan C. Rindfleisch Christian Gonzales Brothers of Coweta: Kinship, Empire, and Revolution in the Eighteenth-Century Muscogee World. By Bryan C. Rindfleisch. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2021. Pp. xvi, 194. Paper, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-64336-203-8; cloth, $89.99, ISBN 978-1-64336-202-1.) Bryan C. Rindfleisch's Brothers of Coweta: Kinship, Empire, and Revolution in the Eighteenth-Century Muscogee World examines the lives of two Muscogee brothers, Escotchaby and Sempoyaffee. He traces how they used their various leadership positions within the talwa (village) of Coweta to negotiate settler colonialism and empire in the eighteenth-century South. Rindfleisch argues that kinship was a foundational and immanent structure of the Muscogee world, and as a result, it was with family and clan interests consistently in view that Escotchaby and Sempoyaffee acted to confront colonialism and empire. Rindfleisch's narrative covers the period between the end of the Yamasee War in 1717 and the close of the American Revolution. The author contends that the story of Escotchaby and Sempoyaffee provides insight into the family dynamics of the eighteenth-century Muscogees and how such dynamics intersected with the broader currents gripping the South. The primary historiographical contributions of Brothers of Coweta are the assertions that Indigenous family and kin structures were complex and diverse and that family interests often revolved around the clan rather than the nuclear or extended family units. This book accomplishes the task it sets for itself. The first two chapters provide a good overview of the importance of family, particularly by relating what we know about Muscogee worldviews, kinship, and clan functions. They also provide a pertinent explanation as to why Coweta was well positioned to confront the forces of empire. Rindfleisch draws on the Muscogee Creation Stories and secondary literature to explain concepts like balance, to define structures like the matrilineal clan and huti (clan residence), and to delineate Muscogee gender roles. He also demonstrates that Coweta's location on the Creek Path was significant as it "further contributed to [Coweta's] influence in the deerskin trade and the Muscogee-British alliance" (p. 32). This foundation effectively sets the stage for the following chapters that trace Escotchaby and Sempoyaffee as they worked for the good of their clan by playing the French, British, and Spanish empires off against each other, toggling between alliance and war with the Cherokees, and sometimes working with, and at others against, rival clans in Coweta and other Muscogee talwas. Readers can readily perceive these tactics as driven by familial interests within the disruptive contexts of incessant Anglo-American and British demands for land and the chaos of the Seven Years' War and the American Revolution. There are, however, potential points of confusion for readers. The book highlights the importance of the matrilineal clan yet focuses on two men. What roles did Muscogee women play as Escotchaby and Sempoyaffee worked on [End Page 543] behalf of their huti? Though Muscogee women's voices are extremely rare in the archive, possible contextualizations of the brothers' actions relative to those of their female kin would have been helpful. The framing of the relationship between kinship and the twinned forces of settler colonialism and empire could also prove problematic. Some might read the brothers' pursuit of familial interests as a narrow, quaint, and consequently insufficient response to the existential threat of colonialism. From this potential perspective, the Muscogees were unable to resist dispossession successfully for lack of mounting an adequate defense. Rindfleisch seems aware of this lurking problem as he writes in the conclusion that "the United States was a settler republic, hell-bent on dispossessing the Indigenous Peoples" (p. 119). However, more thorough characterization of settler colonialism as an implacable, genocidal, and juggernaut phenomenon in the eighteenth century is needed to foreclose readers' possible misinterpretations of the decolonial history Rindfleisch proffers. Overall, Rindfleisch has provided a useful and interesting story about one Muscogee family's navigation of colonialism and empire that students of Indigenous history will find helpful. Christian Gonzales University of Rhode Island Copyright © 2022 The Southern Historical Association

Origen’s Understanding of Genesis 1:1–5

Abstract This essay addresses two key questions that Origen raised about the creation story: the nature of the heaven and earth referred to in Gen 1:1, and the identity of the abyss and the darkness mentioned in Gen 1:2. It argues that he understood the heaven and earth of Gen 1:1 to refer to an immaterial plan for creation conceived and held in God’s Wisdom, and that the abyss and darkness refer to the realm of Satan and the demonic elements. It suggests that Origen’s understanding, at least about the second set of questions, had shifted in his later thinking from what it was earlier.

Genesis 1 in the Book of Jubilees

Abstract The author of the Book of Jubilees rewrote the creation stories in Gen 1–2 and fashioned them in such a way as to stress several points: the importance of the Sabbath day, the idea that God alone, without assistance, created everything, and his conviction that God and Israel, who with the elite angels are the only ones who celebrate the Sabbath, are joined in a unique relationship of which the Sabbath is a sign.

An Insufficient Canon: The Popol Wuj, Book of Mormon, and Other Scriptures

An Insufficient Canon: The Popol Wuj, Book of Mormon, and Other Scriptures

Volcanoes in Old Norse Mythology: Myth and Environment in Early Iceland

Volcanoes in Old Norse Mythology: Myth and Environment in Early Iceland

The Philosophical Analogy of the Saksak Mundhum to Greek Mythology of Genesis Man's Ages and Its Allegorical Notation

Who was it that gave birth to existence and the universe? Curiosity is something that everyone has. It's an age-old question with no clear answer. We're reviewing myths for new information based on existing knowledge. Our forefathers and mothers wondered about this as well. It is impossible to know indeed what they were thinking. However, we discovered their expertise through folklore. Literary writers created stories with simile, sarcasm, and metaphors with symbolic significance from knowledge and wisdom. Shamans are singing the lyrics. In this way, people passed down creation stories. People of gold and Silver have been described by Kirat Saksak Mundhum, as has Greek mythology of human creation. According to legend, the two men did not succeed and clashed with the Creator. Then there's the story of a guy built of clay, ash, sky water, and a crucifix in Mundhum. Greek mythology has more bronze, heroic, and even iron men. The myth provides crucial information if we take it as a message. Since the Man of Gold and Silver period, the Kirats and Greeks have lived together. Kirat split off and went east after the Bronze Age or Bronze Man. As a result, Saksak mundhum lacks ages of bronze, Heros, and Iron Man, as Greek mythology describes. Per the mythological study, the Kirat community in Nepal and India who believe in mundhum is a mixed-age group. Accordingly, philosophical analogy and evidence imply that it was made present by Gold, Silver, Alloy, and Iron Age humans.

From Primordial Being into Genders: Ecofeminist Reading of the Biblical Human Creation Narratives in Rabbinic Literature

This article examines the biblical narrative regarding human creation in the light of rabbinic literature, contesting its hierarchical interpretations and calling for ethical rereading of the text. The novel reading is guided by fundamental Jewish principles—bal tashḥit (“not destroying”), tsaʻar baʻlei ḥayyim (“distress of living creatures”), and tiqqun ha-ʻolam (“repair of the world”)—promoting all-encompassing justice. Seeking support from ancient Near Eastern myths, the paper presents a systematic ecofeminist analysis of the biblical narrative describing, as is argued, the creation of a primordial being (Gen. 1:26–28), the formation of humanity into a sustainable part of the ecosystem (Gen. 2:7), and the construction of genders (Gen. 2:18–23). The close reading of the creation story is informed by postmodern hermeneutics emphasizing reader response and meaning making.

Bible Story Teachings: A Survey of Children’s Bible Stories about Creation in 19th Century Britain

Every retelling of a story is an interpretation, and children’s Bible stories are no exception. This paper analyzes changes made to the Biblical story of creation in a collection of thirteen Bible stories published in 19th century Britain. The aim of this paper is to answer two questions: what purpose did the story of creation serve in Bible stories in 19th century Britain, and what changes were made to the story to serve this purpose? Common themes and changes made to the Bible stories discussed here suggest that the story was told to children for various reasons. For many, the creation narrative was used to familiarize young children with the story, and changes were aimed to simplify the story. For others, the original sin was closely tied to Jesus’ atonement, and in stories that stress this, Jesus often shows up as an additional character. Moreover, many versions of this story add lessons to impart moral or didactic advice to their audience. Overall, analyzing changes made to children’s Bibles stories reveals how authors changed the story of creation to influence their intended audiences.

Poems translated from the Polish & Introduced by Joanna Trzeciak Huss: Side Commentary, and: Senses, and: Declaration, and: Joyful Mythology, and: Pride, and: Ascension of the Earth, and: At Sea

Poems translated from the Polish & Introduced by Joanna Trzeciak HussSide Commentary, and: Senses, and: Declaration, and: Joyful Mythology, and: Pride, and: Ascension of the Earth, and: At Sea Zuzanna Ginczanka (bio) Translated by Joanna Trzeciak Huss (bio) The seven poems translated here are a sample of the work of a poetic prodigy, Zuzanna Ginczanka (1917–1944), whose life was cut short by the Holocaust. Three of these poems, “Senses,” “Joyful Mythology,” and “Ascension of the Earth,” come from unpublished manuscripts she penned at the ages of 16 and 17. The rest, “Side Commentary,” “Declaration,” “Pride,” and “At Sea,” were likely written at around the same time or shortly thereafter. They were published in 1936 in her one-and-only collection, a thin volume titled On Centaurs. Here, I give a sense of the process of translating three of these poems, something ordinarily hidden from view. The fact that Ginczanka wrote in Polish is, in part, an accident of history, as her Russian-speaking Jewish parents fled Kyiv, the city where she was born, for the Polish city of Równe (now Rivne, Ukraine), home to a variety of ethnic groups, and a crossroads for those fleeing the Russian Revolution. It was in Równe where she adopted Polish as her language of poetic expression, and where Zuzanna Polina Gincburg became Zuzanna Ginczanka. Despite her efforts to acquire Polish citizenship, she remained stateless throughout her life. For many years, Ginczanka was known for a single untitled poem, commonly referred to as “Non omnis moriar” (“I shall not wholly die”), written in Lviv after she was identified as a Jew to the Nazis by her building’s custodian, Zofia Chomina, whom she calls out in the poem. It was to Lviv that Ginczanka had fled from Równe at the beginning of World War II. During the Soviet occupation from 1939–1941, she took part in the literary life of Lviv, translating poetry from Ukrainian and Russian into Polish, including, notably, that of Taras Shevchenko and Lesya Ukrainka. Following her capture, Ginczanka was able to bribe her way to freedom and move to Kraków, where she was arrested and imprisoned. It now appears most likely that she was executed in the labor camp at Płaszów on May 5, 1944. After World War II, “Non omnis moriar” was introduced as evidence at trial, resulting in a four-year prison sentence for Chomina. In post-war Poland, there was some attempt to collect and bring attention to Ginczanka’s verse, but it was not until the 1990s that a resurgence of interest in her life and poetry began to build. [End Page 163] The Genesis of Zuzanna Ginczanka A biblical streak runs through Ginczanka’s poetry. Hers is the feminine and feminist voice taking on the chorus of the patriarchal shul. In “Side Commentary,” Ginczanka takes issue with Genesis: “I was not made / from dust / nor unto dust / shall I return.” The “shall” was not my first choice, but rather emerged from a desire to underscore the biblical resonance of these lines, hard won through consulting various English translations of Genesis. Ginczanka does not stop at the creation story of Genesis but does away with its entire metaphysics. At the heart of the poem lies a rejection of the “meta,” be it a biblical metaphysics or any number of metanarratives (of creation, of divinity, of exodus and return). Because she reunites the heavens and the earth, restoring to them unity and materiality in her own person, I chose to render the second Polish niebo [sky, heaven, the heavens] as “the heavens” to capture the defiant tone of the line: “I am the heavens.” In so doing, I follow Ginczanka in evoking the ancient conception of the heavens as a solid, glassy dome (chosen over the initial “vault”), as in the Hebrew word raqija. Here, metaphysical mysteries are set aside in favor of an epistemology of empirically-grounded self-discovery: “I know of no other beyond, beyond myself.” A bundle of buds “Senses” arrests the reader from the start with its opening image, with its commitment to the world: “With eyes like safety pins / I safely pinned myself onto the...

Violence in Africa: Further Reflections on the Causes

This is not the first time that ESEAT has written on violence in Africa. In Fact, in 1999 a whole volume was devoted to violence. In 2010 I reviewed this volume. However, despite all these efforts, we see that inter and intra-state violence continues in many countries in Africa, including environmental violence. In this paper, while referring to what has already been written about, I try to reflect on what could have been left out in our search for causes of violence on the African continent. On the theoretical plane, I suggest that we should emphasise the fact that when theologising, we use and are influenced by our historical and cultural context. This comes out when we examine the root cause of environmental violence, where we argue that it is mainly to be explained by how the West has understood the bible, especially the creation story. Furthermore, I note that while looking for the root causes on the Africa continent, we have to revisit the way we conceive causality. Rather than limiting ourselves to the immediate and visible causes, we should also include remote and invisible causes in a way that we come to what I call cumulative causality, meaning that the different factors contributing to the phenomenon must be taken together. On the practical level, I refer to how Africa has been successively invaded since the 17th century BC. I argue that these invasions have negatively impacted Africa. I end by making suggestions on how to deal with this violence, by proposing the following: the importance of putting in place mechanisms and strictures for promoting justice; the importance of using the African worldview, including appropriate rituals, while working on the causes of violence; and cooperating with well-wishers from outside Africa in fighting the causes of violence

Staging Hurston's Heaven: Ethnographic Performance from the Pulpit to the Pews

It was May in Eau Gallie, Florida, and Zora Neale Hurston was headed to church. Shutting the door to her cottage near the shores of the Indian River, Hurston set out to join the local Baptist congregation, where she would hear a sermon delivered by its pastor, the Reverend C. C. Lovelace. Hurston had been pondering the question of how to represent the experience of a church service in a theatrical performance. “Know what I am attempting?” she had written to Langston Hughes a few days earlier, in April 1929. “To set an entire Bapt. service word for word and note for note.” Listening to Lovelace's sermon in Eau Gallie, Hurston admired how the preacher's oratory built seamlessly from a creation story into a fiery vision of divine retribution. She was so taken by the poetry of Lovelace's words that she transcribed his sermon in its entirety. This sermon later served as the centerpiece of the play The Sermon in the Valley, a work that testifies to Hurston's aim to render a Baptist service “word for word and note for note.” Like many of her plays, The Sermon in the Valley reveals the intimate entanglement of her ethnographic compositions and her writing for the stage.

Performing Turtle Island: Indigenous Theatre on the World Stage

Performing Turtle Island: Indigenous Theatre on the World Stage

Indigenizing Philosophy on Stolen Lands: A Worry about Settler Philosophical Guardianship

Indigenizing Philosophy on Stolen Lands: A Worry about Settler Philosophical Guardianship

Creation story

He makes the light and the primeval oceans and the rapturous Word, but I have the dirtthe ground the chthonic underbelly and sustenance of all. I have the jewel-toned beetles and cavern cathedrals and the slick blesmols. The translucent jellyfish and the elegant otherworldly bats. The velutinous darkness I see when I close my eyes and look out is what I create—that moment of descending into something unknownwith limitless possibility. Black calla lilies and thick root webs and lithe olms and the young coyotes with protruding ribcages.Before I sculpt the earthand the atmosphere tooI try to enjoy this night and remember my sliver of time before the labor of creation. The time of loving and crying and walking through snow floating down like tiny newborn stars. The time of waking up to the bright marmalade sunrise shining through the bathroom window and whispering to the daytime moon. I was a lover eating rabbit stewwondering how I could rupture so violentlyso completelyand still move forward through time.The old time of unknowing, of not knowing the unknown.On the first dayI made the starling and then let its feathers become the centerpiece of the highest worldglittering with iridescent specklesletting the undertones of violet and turquoise shine through.This(I thought)is the skythe world's favorite quilt: the starling as firmament.I rest tonight and think about my large-souled dayslike when my father taught me how to fishor when I picked bucketfuls of fresh strawberries in springor flew through gilded air on a bicycle in June.It is no coincidence thenthat the words soil and soul are nearly identical sonic twinsseeing as the layers of my soullike a stratigraphyread certain scales of timeexperienceand remember past lives fossilized in the sentient sensual sediment of the body. The strata run horizontal like long thin snakes with writhing bellies underneath my skinvarying in widthas some strands of time are denser with memory than others.This is where I will begin and endin remembering these moments of unknown beauty and quiet grit.Underneath the soul's many mineral depositsthe liquid core sends a pulse through the bodyspilling blood through an ecosystem of veins. Here, at the heart, I remember my shamewhich smells like cinnamon—sharp and harsh and cathartic. Memory may not be a realitybut it bends and melts into worlds both known and unknownpreserved in our salubrious soils.I recall that I am a world unto myselfslowly dissolving untilat last at last my burning center is exposedand burns hot and shimmers right before it erupts into a thousand shining pieces that float like meteors in an unknown reservoir.On the second dayI will make the dirta luscious loam with a dense liquid heart that beats and writhes and fuels the world forward. It is the origin from which everything else will flower and grow without my help, alone and unabated. I will make the ground strong and softfull of sculptures and sepulchres and pools of oil and iron. I will create sandstone red as summer cherries and rough as a man's stubble, like thistles.Worldmaking is an act of time grace and pain anger and patience love. It is a birthing. I trust my body and create the underworld the underneath the subterranean. The clay the silt the dirt the sand. Within the soil of the world is where the fleshy self iswhere secrets are whispered and sung. All things are taken into the soft world of the earth in a returninga homecoming that invites new life through transforming death. It is where things are made radical and rejuvenated and why mud spread over the eyes gives sight. A body placed into the ground is born anewmade supple through time and slithering annelids.

A Line of Blood and Dirt: Creating the Canada–United States Border across Indigenous Lands

A Line of Blood and Dirt: Creating the Canada–United States Border across Indigenous Lands

The Bible and Women’s Subordination

Abstract Tribal Christian patriarchal societies promulgate women subordination as biblical by using the creation stories in Gen 2–3. This paper re-examines the narrative of Gen 2–3, whether women subordination is promulgated in the text. Terms and logic often used for women subjugation—such as the woman created to be ‘helper’ for the man, the woman being created later and from the man, the man to ‘rule’ the woman—are not so straightforward as they seem. A close analysis of the biblical narratives demonstrates that these terms, in their root meanings, are rather ambiguous. Rather than subordination, sameness and togetherness between the man and the woman are emphasized throughout the narrative of Gen 2–3.

Breaking the Shell: Voyaging from Nuclear Refugees to People of the Sea in the Marshall Islands by Joseph H. Genz

Reviewed by: Breaking the Shell: Voyaging from Nuclear Refugees to People of the Sea in the Marshall Islands by Joseph H. Genz Julianne M. Walsh (bio) Breaking the Shell: Voyaging from Nuclear Refugees to People of the Sea in the Marshall Islands by Joseph H. Genz University of Hawai'i Press, 2018 BREAKING THE SHELL: Voyaging from Nuclear Refugees to People of the Sea in the Marshall Islands is a study of resilience and courage. Anthropologist Joseph Genz demonstrates the deepest appreciation of a Marshallese navigational community in this innovative and impressive volume. A reemergence of navigational knowledge and canoe-building skills after decades of decline is conveyed in sweeping context, detailed analysis, and personal anecdotes. The collaboration of Genz and Marshallese master navigators and their apprentices is nothing short of inspiring. With seventeen years' engagement (2003–2020) with the navigational community, Genz captures the resilience of a community irrevocably impacted by nearly a century of U.S. strategic interests, including twelve years of nuclear weapons testing. By centralizing the sacrifices, courage, and expertise of Captain Korent Joel, a Marshall Islander from Rongelap atoll (downwind of the nuclear tests), Genz offers a uniquely situated ethnography. Readers accompany Captain Korent as he strives to demonstrate and earn his identity as a master navigator, thus rejecting and reframing an identity imposed by U.S. imperialism and power. The title phrase, "Breaking the Shell" comes from the Marshallese expression, ruprup . Literally, breaking (ruprup) a shell (, also turtle shell), the phrase metaphorically refers to earning the ultimate recognition of accomplishment as a master navigator who comes out of a shell and into his own knowledge, experience, and understanding. Genz describes it as follows: "Through his own ruprup navigational trial, Captain Korent and a small group of surviving mariners from Rongelap and Bikini are, against one of the darkest hours in human history, 'breaking the shell' of their prime identity as nuclear refugees to begin recovering their most intimate connections to the sea" (5). Like the mariners he represents, Genz navigates the text with tremendous skill and knowledge. This volume not only addresses many facets of sailing, canoes, navigation, history, cultural knowledge and identity but also offers complex and competing histories of contact and colonialism; the devastating impacts of nuclear weapons testing; and the continuity of cultural [End Page 194] practices, values, and beliefs through a focus on the agency of Marshallese conveyed in moving accounts of courage. Accessible to a variety of readers, including those unfamiliar with the Marshall Islands, the text begins with a necessary and succinct overview of Pacific Islands settlement theories. The introduction leads to the most relevant conclusion of the volume: Pacific Islands were settled and explored intentionally, over centuries, by skilled sailors and navigators, including the gifted Marshall Islanders, whose unique navigational expertise is examined in later chapters. The notes, drawings, and interactions with Islanders of the early explorers in the region are covered thoroughly and succinctly. The emphasis on detailed foreign accounts recognizes Indigenous ingenuity and the innovation of Marshallese canoe builders, sailors, and navigators, who enabled vessels to sail close to the wind, at great speed, while avoiding being overturned by powerful seas. The unique asymmetrical hull of Marshallese sailing canoes is but one example of impressive Indigenous systems of knowledge (of aerodynamics, ocean physics, meteorology, and astronomy) passed down over generations. The text offers a broad context to appreciate the long trajectory of maritime knowledge and also offers detailed description and analysis of legends, proverbs, creation stories, terms for parts of canoes, navigational chants, sea-marks or signs to convincingly centralize the canoe within Marshallese culture. The canoe's depth and breadth of meaning across all aspects of Marshallese lives is made clear. An even greater accomplishment is the author's ability to lucidly explain the complex science required to navigate ocean wave patterns around and between atolls; the interaction of wind, sea, waves; and the essential components of a canoe and their functions. Breaking the Shell's focus on sailing and navigation is, shockingly, the first of its kind in a text about the Marshall Islands. This volume fills that remarkable absence in a manner that centralizes Marshallese as actors, riding waves caused by the...