Genesis Chapter 1: Folk tale, Fairytale, or Both?

At first I questioned why we were assigned to read this chapter of bible. I didn't see the relation to the theme of the class. However, I realized that stories of the Bible were first, spoken; word of mouth before it was written. Therefore I made the connection that the Bible would be considered a folktale. In order for the Bible to be what it is people had to speak of the stories, they had to hear from those who saw and experienced the events mentioned. Maybe others can classify the Bible or this chapter alone as a fairytale. However, to me, this isn't a fairytale. As I described in my previous blog, fairy tales were meant to be dark and reflect society and their current ways of being or status quo. Happy or perfect endings weren't the primary focus nor the prospective gain.

 The first chapter of Genesis is indeed what I believe to have described a perfect world God had intentionally created for humans. It describes how with just the speaking of his words things came to life and those things were without blemish. In order for the author, Moses to have known this story, to have known what happened before he existed he had to either hear stories from others (folktales) or get some divine, supernatural revelation.  It's a world that some people cannot grasp their minds around. Perhaps this gives notion as to why it can be classified as fairytale. It has ideas of enchantments, magic, and things only the imagination can create. For example, every time it says "And God said,  'Let there be...,'" what ever he said was done, in the same way how imagination and dreams work. In the same way fairy tales work.

From an academic perspective, I understand the correlation between the first chapter of Genesis (or entire Bible) and Folk/Fairy tales. It's imaginative, it's "enchanting," only to exist in the human mind and only to be passed from generation to generation as part of a tradition. However, from a spiritual point of view, I find this to be neither a Folk or Fairy tale but true part of history.

 In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, ²the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.

-Genesis 1:1-2