Learn about this topic in these articles:

African religions

In African religions: Worldview and divinity
…hold that there is one creator God, the maker of a dynamic universe. Myths of various African peoples relate that, after setting the world in motion, the Supreme Being withdrew, and he remains remote from the concerns of human life. According to a myth of the Dinka of South Sudan,…
Read More

Iranian religion

In ancient Iranian religion: Creation of the cosmos
Both the Avesta and the Achaemenian inscriptions have little to say about creation in the sense that they contain nothing comparable to the Babylonian Enuma elish or to the traditions of the first three chapters of the book of Genesis. What…
Read More

Judaism

In Judaism: Creation and Providence: God’s world
creation, it does not offer an entirely unambiguous view of the origin of the universe, as the debate over the correct understanding of Genesis 1:1 discloses. (Was there or was there not a preexisting matter, void, or chaos?) The interest of the author, however, was…
Read More

Bundahishn

Table of Contents

Introduction References & Edit History Related Topics

Bundahishn

Zoroastrian text

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Article History

Bundahishn, (Pahlavi: Original Creation), Zoroastrian scripture giving an account of the creation, history, and duration of the world, the origin of man, and the nature of the universe. Written in Pahlavi, it dates from the 9th century ad but is based on ancient material from a lost part of the original Avesta and preserves some pre-Zoroastrian elements.