How It All Got Rolling: A Survival Guide to Ancient Tales of the World’s Beginning

“Who knows it truly?”

Rigveda, X.129.6, hymn on the origin of the world. Own translation of an excerpt from the English translation by Ralph T. H. Griffith, accessible text.

What This Article Is About

In a hypothetical scene where a five-year-old before bedtime stumps an adult with the question of what was bubbling around before the very first day of creation, the adult’s nerves usually give out. One could, of course, mutter something about a singularity with a serious face, recite grandma’s sacred book, or bluntly confess: “Look, I can barely figure out my utility bills, leave me alone.” But behind that childish persistence hides an eternal itch: why on earth are we hanging around in the middle of this universe anyway, and did anyone bother to issue an instruction manual for it?

In the selected ancient works, the answers diverge significantly. Some laid everything out on neat shelves, others linked humanity's appearance to assigned hard labor, still others cataloged the squabbles of immortal relatives, and yet others preserved the question of who could possibly know the beginning at all.

In this article, we dissect Genesis, the Sumerian tablet Enki and Ninmah, Hesiod’s Theogony, hymn X.129 from the Rigveda, and throw in Plato’s Timaeus. There will be none of that sugary porridge claiming “all myths are essentially saying the exact same thing.” We will figure out what practical job each plot performed, what shelf they stuck human beings on, and where exactly we keep landing face-first in a puddle when skimming through texts. Most importantly, we will learn how to filter any pompous stories of origins (including the sacred lore of our own relatives) without mistaking a catchy yarn for a blueprint of the cosmos.

I. The Beginning Explains More Than a Sequence of Events

A story of the beginning can tether the familiar order of things to the foundation of its significance: “that’s just how it’s always been done.” When a myth explains where boulders, gods, and mortals came from, it can simultaneously demonstrate which relationships are considered significant. Origins turn into the most convenient pretext for declaring existing setups sacred and inevitable. Note well: this is an analytical question regarding how texts are built, not a one-size-fits-all rubber stamp for every myth across the globe.

Let us sort out the terminological mess straight away so we do not sound like flunking freshmen. “Cosmogony” is a tale about the birth of the universe at large. “Theogony” is the family tree of the gods (who spawned whom and who deposed whom). “Anthropogony” is the humble recipe for cooking up a human being. They might stew in the same pot, but they are under no obligation to fuse into one ecstatic lump. In Hesiod, everything revolves around divine family feuds, while in the Sumerian composition Enki and Ninmah, human beings are slapped together in an already existing world where the gods were simply fed up with breaking their backs on a construction site. Hence, the lazy habit of flattening all ancient texts into a naive attempt to sketch the Big Bang is nothing short of intellectual apathy.

In a hypothetical everyday scene, a similar leap looks like this. The family gathers around the dinner table, and out pops the founding myth: “In our bloodline, everyone worked their fingers to the bone and gave away their last shirt!” It sounds touching as a pious memory, but in practice, it can mutate into a normative bludgeon: “So don’t you dare refuse your second cousin an interest-free loan!” A hypothetical family scene is neither an ancient myth nor a clinical diagnosis, but it serves as an excellent illustration of how an innocent description of the past turns into an aggressive demand upon the present.

The connection is obvious, but falling for it is foolish. Just because an outfit was founded three hundred years ago by bearded zealots, it does not follow that its ridiculous bylaws must survive a nuclear war. Just because the biological species Homo sapiens originated in a certain manner, your modern civic or ethical duties do not automatically tumble out of it. A religious tradition may insist on such a link by its own internal rules, but historical and philosophical analysis is obliged to inspect those foundations under a magnifying glass rather than take them on blind trust.

Therefore, we will pose rather grown-up questions to the texts: What exactly comes into being here? By what method? Who is the primary stakeholder? Where was the human being stashed? And what did the author have the sheer nerve to pronounce with certainty? This method can help keep us from reducing masterpieces to drab cheat sheets before high-flown platitudes wipe away all real differences.

II. Genesis: Distinction, Naming, and the Human Place

The first chapter of the Book of Genesis unrolls with the pedantic precision of a seasoned site foreman: no brawls, no erratic tantrums, just an orderly sequence of divine directives. The light flips on, darkness is separated, borders between elements are drawn, flora is planted, and fauna is dispersed. And inside the narrative, the verdict repeats: it is solidly made, “good.” The human being appears not as disposable material, but created “in the image of God”—with immediate emphasis: male and female. This is a dry description of the literary composition of the first chapter, not an attempt to shove a single mandatory theological dogma down everyone’s throat Genesis 1, English version JPS 1917.

What does any sharp-eyed reader clock right out of the gate? We are looking at a masterclass in cosmic organization, where everything is neatly sorted into designated bins: day isn’t muddled with night, and dry ground isn’t blended with schools of herring adrift in primordial waters. Drawing clear boundaries sets up order without turning every fence into a bloody cage match to the death. Naturally, we are dissecting the literary staging of the narrative here, not peddling the notion that astrophysics and cosmic expansion politely clocked in according to a six-day workweek.

Then comes the most juicy part: the status of humanity. If we are fashioned in the image of the Creator, our existence clearly does not boil down to a bag of proteins and minerals. But the phrase “image of God” is hardly a selfie of the Almighty. Reading it literally as an inventory of God’s beard and nose, or stretching it into a ready-made modern declaration of human rights, is utterly laughable. Later thinkers interpret this expression in various ways; below, we will take a look at Maimonides’ philosophical reading.

And finally, there is the question of managerial rank: humans are granted a certain authority over the rest of creation. Still, one should not naively derive a finished environmental code or an excuse for clear-cutting forests from an ancient verse. Moving from an ancient line to a modern agenda requires real intellectual legwork, not casual quote-slinging.

Genesis is valuable precisely for its structural rigor: order is built through division, clear naming, high evaluation of the outcome, and a specific human status. Attempting to reduce this text to a generic metaphor of “light conquering darkness” gut-punches the whole point. We must compare genuine traits, not our own crude caricatures.

III. Hesiod: The World as Genealogy and the Allocation of Power

In Hesiod’s Theogony, cosmogenesis looks less like an architect’s blueprint and more like a sprawling epic family drama complete with toppling authorities. In lines 116–138, Chaos is named first, followed by Earth (Gaia) and the rest of the primordial kin, after which a turbulent vortex of reproduction and intergenerational conflict kicks off. In the selected later episode, the consolidation of Zeus’s rule is accompanied by handing out honors to the gods “Theogony”, 116–138 and 881–885, translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. These fragments provide ample support for our observations, though they make no claim to cover the whole vast history of Greek religion.

To a modern reader, the word “chaos” usually implies a messy bedroom, blown deadlines, or a financial crash. But replacing Hesiod’s ancient Chaos with this mundane meaning is strictly off-limits: in the chosen story, it is a beginning with its own slot in the genealogy and its own offspring. Do not confuse a cosmic category of lineage with a refusal to do the dishes; we will leave the philological hair-splitting to the specialists, but saddling the author with our domestic associations is bad form.

In Hesiod, order is not handed down by executive decree—it is quite literally endured and birthed through generations of deities. Power is not granted automatically: when Zeus consolidates his rule, the text showcases a distribution of honors among the gods. This is our analytical deduction from the composition, not proof that every Athenian verified their tax forms against Hesiod’s poems.

When comparing Hesiod to Genesis, the main trap is tumbling into a childish body count of gods (one versus many). The cleavage runs deeper: a single design and separation versus an explosive branching of kinship ties; a rhythmic stamp of “good” versus winners carving up spoils and honors. By flattening everything into an uninspired list of “well, there's sky, and there's earth,” we throw out the window the very reason anyone bothered to open these texts.

Hesiod clearly illustrates how a myth cements the legitimacy of authority. But keep your guard up: explaining how Zeus came out on top inside the plot and philosophically justifying tyranny are two completely different operations. One can dissect the mechanics of a narrative without becoming a fanboy of Olympian despotism.

IV. Enki and Ninmah: The Human Gets the Dirty Work

While in the chosen biblical fragment human beings are fashioned in the image of God, in the Sumerian composition Enki and Ninmah we run into a far more gritty slice of life: in the selected episode, humans are engineered to take over the gods’ hard labor. The junior gods grew sick of digging canals and hauling dirt, raised a racket, and the ancestral mother Namma woke the wise Enki. Enki offers a fix: mix some clay and dump the heavy baskets onto the shoulders of mortals ETCSL, composition 1.1.2, lines 1–37. Let us stress: this is a narrow anthropogony explaining where the manual laborers came from, not an all-inclusive Sumerian cosmic creation story.

Here, the mortal doesn’t step into some vast open playground for soul-searching, but drops straight onto a roaring factory floor with a non-negotiable contract. Zero onboarding needed: you are handed a shovel, a dirt-hauling basket, and a rigid job description that happens to be the sole reason you were kneaded out of wet clay in the first place. Once again, this is an analysis of a specific narrative about divine outsourcing, not a sweeping claim that every ancient Sumerian across the board found spiritual bliss in hauling mud bricks for management.

Equating this to Genesis through the fluffy bromide that “humanity is always linked to the divine” misses the point entirely. A link exists, but the terms of the contract differ: in one chosen story, human identity is framed through the image of God; in the other, through substituting for toiling deities. These answers regarding the human place stand miles apart.

Further on, the Sumerian text features a boozy banquet of the gods and the shaping of people with various physical peculiarities, for whom Enki finds social niches. The tablet is riddle-marked with lacunae, damaged clay, and contested readings. Squeezing early Mesopotamian disability rights legislation out of these ancient lines—or, conversely, denouncing them for barbaric discrimination—is a symptom of severe anachronism. A frank acknowledgment of the gaps in the tablet is vastly smarter than plastering modern political labels all over it.

This ancient myth holds up an uncomfortable mirror to modern society: aren’t we still prone to valuing a living person strictly by their output and corporate KPI? The myth highlights the predicament, but figuring out humane ways out of our office cubicle grind is something we will have to manage with our own brains.

V. The Vedic Hymn: The Beginning as the Frontier of Knowledge

Hymn X.129 of the Rigveda (the famous Nasadiya Sukta) elegantly pulls the rug out from under anyone addicted to absolute certainties. Instead of putting on authoritative airs, the hymn’s poet asks bluntly toward the close: who actually saw how it all kicked off, given that the gods themselves were born after the visible cosmos? And he deals the finishing blow by suggesting that even the supreme overseer in highest heaven might not possess the full story Hymn X.129 in full, translated by Griffith. Keep the boundaries in mind: this is one specific poem, not a license to slap total atheism or a rejection of religion onto the entire Vedic tradition.

This piece is brilliant because it demolishes the tired stereotype about myths—that the ancients swallowed every fairy tale hook, line, and sinker, while skepticism was invented by the Greeks on their lunch break. Here, doubt is woven into the very fabric of a sacred hymn. The narrator hits the brakes at the edge of the cliff: where is a mortal supposed to dig up raw facts about what happened before any eyewitnesses existed?

Do not jump from Vedic honesty to the trendy postmodern takeaway that “since nobody knows anything, any drivel will do.” The text merely marks the frontier of cognition. It is not a modern epistemology manual with formal rules of verification, but a poetic acknowledgment of mystery.

In a modern reading, such caution helps sort out different types of questions. Not having a definitive answer to the birth of the quantum vacuum does not mean chucking physics into the incinerator. For example, scientific testing of claims, philosophical analysis of terms, and religious trust tackle different tasks; this is not an exhaustive definition of each domain. None of these fields has the right to ruthlessly monopolize the entire mental arena just because scientists have not solved every mystery under the sun.

The Vedic hymn models an exceptional caliber of mind: the ability to fall silent before the unutterable, without plastering over the hole in knowledge with cheap fairy tales for the sake of a snappy rhyme.

VI. A Philosophical Tale Also Has Its Status

In Plato’s dialog “Timaeus”, 27d–30c, the argument is built upon a tight system of concepts. First, Timaeus draws a hard line between eternal, unchanging Being (grasped only by the intellect) and ever-shifting Becoming (grasped by perception and unsteady opinion). If our cosmos is tangible, it must have come to be and must be subject to change. And since it is splendid, its demiurge must have kept his gaze fixed on an eternal, perfect paradigm. From this, the fundamental status of the speech emerges: an account of a changing likeness can never possess unshakable mathematical precision; it will always remain a “likely tale.” This is no casual excuse from a lazy lecturer, but an inevitable conclusion stemming from Plato’s philosophy.

Furthermore, the Platonic demiurge does not roll up his sleeves on a whim: being good and utterly void of envy, he desires to bring maximum order out of disorder, fashioning the visible world as closely to perfection as possible. A philosophical cosmogony does not merely throw around fancy jargon; it ties the structure of the cosmos to the goodness of its maker. Therefore, the status of a “likely story” does not authorize anyone to invent arbitrary hogwash: the system is bound to logically unite the ideal pattern, the benevolent craftsman, and the physical copy.

Yet this elegant construct carries its own soft underbelly. If you swallow Plato’s dichotomy of the world of forms versus the world of stuff without blinking, the deductions seem airtight. But why should we sign off on this metaphysics in the first place? The internal tidiness of the text does not constitute empirical proof that the universe operates in this manner.

Comparing Timaeus with the Vedic hymn shows that while the doubt in the Rigveda stems from a poetic interrogation of the witness, in Plato the limitations of the narrative are philosophically grounded in the relation between the stability of what is described and the certainty of the discourse about it. Indian poetry does not morph into an early draft of the Academy, nor does Platonic skepticism become a verse lifted from the hymns. There is no need to hammer disparate trains of thought together under the banner of “perennial wisdom.”

Timaeus remains valuable as a masterclass in intellectual discipline: it never pretends to be a textbook on quantum mechanics and stays well aware of its constraints. In reading it, one does well to inspect the integrity of its philosophical premises rather than simply swoon over the charming metaphor of a kindly cosmic carpenter.

VII. Two Orders: Distinction and Genealogy

Place the first chapter of Genesis and Hesiod’s verses side by side. We are confronted with two ordered worlds, but their architecture is profoundly different. In Genesis, the tools of choice are the scalpel and the seal: divide, name, appraise. In Hesiod, we find a storm of passions, clan vendettas, bloodlines, and the eventual triumph of Zeus distributing honors among the gods. The lazy amateur slogan “order out of chaos” explains nothing here: it simply tosses both unique systems into the dumpster.

In the biblical text, navigation follows the axis of “how does one thing differ from another”: light is separated from darkness, land from water. In Hesiod, the guiding question is “who fathered whom and who settled the score with whom”: Heaven and Earth here are not passive components, but living kin with tangled grievances. The identical words “heaven” and “earth” are playing completely different games in the two texts.

The nature of order differs as well. In Genesis, order is the intrinsic goodness of the created cosmos, rubber-stamped by God. In our analytical reading of Hesiod’s selected lines, order is bound up with the wrestling of divine forces and the consolidation of the thunderer’s rule. Order as an ontological quality, or order as victory in a power struggle? Those are two drastically different answers that should never be dumped into one bucket.

Throw in the Sumerian composition Enki and Ninmah, and the canvas broadens: here, the cosmos is not built from scratch at all; it already exists and is groaning under the unbearable manual labor of the gods, crying out for extra hands. In the chosen Sumerian episode, the focus is not on stars, but on assigning labor to humanity. That is an entirely different scale, and treating it as some “half-baked cosmogony” is pure intellectual snobbery.

Under no circumstances should these parallels be cooked up into theories of clandestine historical borrowings—for that, you need hard historical data regarding chronologies, trade contacts, and avenues of transmission. What we have before us are three distinct perspectives on origin, value, and purpose, and each is fascinating on its own merits without the forced hunting for a mythical “common denominator.”

VIII. Who Tells the Story and Which Text We Are Reading

Any serious talk about ancient texts crashes into a plain truth: we are not reading tablets handed straight down from the sky, but the end product of centuries of scribal copying, editorial reshaping, and academic translation. Sumerian tablets in Oxford’s ETCSL project bristle with brackets, question marks, and gaping lacunae ETCSL publication used. Genuine scholarship honestly leaves gaps as gaps instead of ghostwriting an entertaining Hollywood screenplay on the ancients' behalf.

Why does this matter? If one translator renders a term as “abyss” while another uses “void,” an armchair philosopher will promptly bang out a dissertation on “the Nothingness.” Yet in reality, this might merely reflect divergent translation choices or our own modern associations. We risk arguing over the quirks of the English vocabulary while imagining we have plumbed the depths of ancient minds.

In this article, the brief quotes are translated from the specific English editions cited. This is a compromise, and we put our cards on the table: the author does not pretend to read fluent Sanskrit or decipher cuneiform before breakfast. A candid perimeter of competence is the best shield against embarrassing quackery.

The exact same thing applies to the volume of text chosen. A dozen lines from a hymn of the Rigveda give us license to discuss the poetic skepticism of the author of those lines, but they do not allow us to make sweeping proclamations about Indian civilization wholesale. Owning up to the modesty of one’s sample makes conclusions testable, whereas blowing oneself up like a pufferfish is just embarrassing.

Textual scrupulousness is not pedantry; it is one of the few ways to double-check our own assumptions. When handling high-flown matters, critical thinking has to run on overdrive, lest runaway emotions crowd out the facts.

IX. Different Questions Demand Different Foundations

Certain debates over the birth of the world resemble a shouting match between the deaf and the blind: the physicist argues inflation theory, the clergyman talks about the ultimate meaning of existence, and the moralist demands the salvation of the soul. Everyone uses the word “beginning” and they tear into each other, convinced they are disputing the exact same proposition.

Picture a hypothetical exchange: a believer confesses that the biblical account fills them with hope and inner serenity. The atheist smirks back: “Your hope isn't corroborated by spectral analysis of cosmic microwave background radiation!” The retort sounds smart, but it completely misses the mark: the first speaker was not offering an astrophysical hypothesis. However, if that believer turns around and insists that on the authority of their radiant hope, geology textbooks must be shredded and the age of the Earth reset, then the critique lands squarely on target. One must spot the exact juncture where the sleight of hand takes place.

The reverse holds just as true: calculating particle trajectories in an accelerator does not tell you whether you should visit your aging parents. Science is under no obligation to supply a moral code, but neither do ethical tales have the jurisdiction to overrule the laws of gravity. Keep your categories distinct.

A fruitful dialogue gets off the ground only when the speakers candidly tag their statements: “I am citing a sacred text,” “I am proposing a philosophical construct,” “I am reporting an empirical fact,” “I am sharing a subjective experience.” Nobody is accusing anyone of lying—it is just that every single one of these assertions relies on totally different rules of validation.

Ancient myths provide a grand scale, but they do not relieve us of intellectual integrity. Unless we clarify the status of each claim, the debate can degenerate into useless barking and personal insults.

X. A Tale of Origins Must Not Eclipse the Present

Origin stories have a tricky dual nature: they can inspire, but they can just as easily become a prison. The moment a particular version of the past is declared absolute, the living present is outlawed: “The world has always been this way; know your station and pipe down.” Behind such rhetoric might stand deep, genuine faith, or simply a cynical ploy to shut down uncomfortable grievances. These things must be judged by their real fruits and underlying grounds, not by the solemnity of the prose.

Yet throwing all origins out the window does not automatically make a person free and progressive. We still tell stories: about family heritage, the unyielding grit of our nation, or our personal identity. A person might proudly march under the banner: “In our clan, I am the only level-headed savior who cleans up everyone’s mess!” A flattering yarn, right up until it prevents that helper from admitting that they need a break or some help themselves.

Our reading of ancient cosmogonies is not an excuse to look down on personal or family stories as naive fairy tales. Its goal is far humbler: learning to spot what a story is actually trying to explain, and what demands it is sneaking in through the back door. Reverence for one’s roots can comfortably coexist with refusing to follow outdated dogmas.

Engaging with ancient texts teaches us to tell the difference between deep conviction and self-righteous arrogance. One can cherish sacred poetry without mining it for uranium decay equations. One can respect science without demanding that physics crack the mystery of love. And one can compare civilizations without drowning them in a syrupy swamp of imaginary uniformity.

When a child asks what was going on before day one, the adult needs to figure out first: what kind of answer is actually needed right now? An empirical fact, a comforting parable, or a mature confession: “You know, we don’t know everything, and that’s perfectly fine.” A candid conversation about beginnings does not put an end to thinking—it clears a path for living in the present.

What This Means in Practice

Pick one short origin story you are familiar with: an ancient fragment from this article or a standard family mantra like “why our folks have always done things this way.” Sit down and calmly write out: what exactly comes into being, who are the primary actors, and what niche is reserved for humanity. Resist the urge to jump straight to a profound moral lesson. Attention to detail will expose what is actually written on the page rather than what you dreamed of finding there.

Next, draw a sharp line: where does the statement of fact end and the moral prescription begin? The story illustrated how an order arose; but why are you obligated to break your neck upholding that order in the twenty-first century? If you believe you must, name the additional solid foundation: personal faith, a signed agreement, a moral argument, or sheer practical utility. The word “originally” by itself lends zero weight to any command or excuse.

For comparative analysis, select a second text and line them up along a single axis: the mechanism of world-building, the function of humanity, or the humility of the narrator. Pinpoint one sharp similarity and one substantial difference. If the difference suddenly vanishes, congratulations: you just rigged the game and produced meaningless mush. And for heaven’s sake, do not invent secret influences without historical evidence: tracing parallel tracks of thought is valuable in its own right.

Now for the uncomfortable part: return to your personal founding myth. What does this story help keep afloat? And what real emotions or experiences does it forbid you to acknowledge? Does the story itself belong in the trash, or do you simply need to stop treating it as an ironclad mandate for your every move? This exercise neither validates nor invalidates cosmogonic beliefs. Its modest aim is to help you read origins more carefully and catch those hidden demands.

If you decide to hash out these texts with another reader, shut your mouth first and let them share which detail struck them as paramount. Your partner might latch onto the status of the author while you were obsessing over hard labor. That does not mean one of you is an idiot. Head back to the source text and verify: does the text actually substantiate that reading, or did you both just stretch the evidence past the breaking point? Then draw a firm boundary: where the words of the source end, and where your own personal projections begin. This simple habit can help sustain a meaningful discussion without demanding total surrender or forcing your conversational partner to bend the knee to your one true interpretation.

Key Quote

“He, verily, knows, or perhaps He knows not.”

Rigveda, X.129.7, own translation of a brief closing fragment of Griffith's English translation. The uncertainty pertains to a specific poetic phrasing of the question of origins; it does not claim that all knowledge is impossible.

Connections Across Traditions

This map outlines our analytical comparisons. It does not posit any historical influence.

Specific Passages	What the Comparison Illuminates	The Boundary
Genesis 1 and Hesiod, “Theogony”, 116–138	The beginning renders the cosmic order distinguishable.	Divine creation and the emergence of divine forces possess distinct structures; shared words like “heaven” and “earth” do not erase this.
Genesis 1:26–27 and “Enki and Ninmah”, 24–37	Origins are linked to the human place.	The image of God and the assignment to carry the gods’ labor are fundamentally different answers regarding the human function.
Hesiod, 881–885, and Plato, “Timaeus”, 29e–30c	The cosmic order possesses a foundation.	The distribution of honors upon Zeus’s consolidation of power is not equivalent to a philosophical structuring of the world by a benevolent creator.
Rigveda, X.129.6–7, and Plato, “Timaeus”, 29b–d	The narrator articulates the limit of their certainty.	An open poetic question differs from a philosophical explanation of the status of a likely story.
Genesis 1:27 and Maimonides, “The Guide for the Perplexed”, I.1	A single image receives a new philosophical reading.	This is an example of internal interpretation within a tradition: the image is understood via form and intellect, not bodily resemblance.
Rigveda, X.129 and Daodejing, Chapter 1	Discourse on the beginning encounters the limits of language and knowledge.	Vedic skepticism regarding origins and the distinction between the named and the eternal Dao do not yield a single shared doctrine.

Primary Sources

Genesis 1, biblical text, English version JPS 1917 at Mechon Mamre. The chapter was read, with special attention to 1:1–27; used for composition and the human place, not as a physical model of the universe.
“Enki and Ninmah”, ETCSL 1.1.2, Sumerian primary text in the academic English translation of the Oxford ETCSL project. Lines 1–101 were read, with central reliance on 1–37. Lacunae and alternative readings are not papered over into a tidy retelling; the entire corpus was not read.
Hesiod. “Theogony”, translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, 1914, Project Gutenberg No. 348. Lines 116–138, 820–906, and adjacent context were read; used for the origin of forces and the distribution of power. Not the entire anthology.
Rigveda, X.129, translated by Ralph T. H. Griffith. The hymn was read in its entirety; used for the question regarding the limits of knowledge, not the entire Vedic corpus.
Plato. “Timaeus”, translated by Benjamin Jowett, Internet Classics Archive. The opening of the cosmological discourse, 27d–30c, and adjacent context were read; role: the status of a likely philosophical story.
Maimonides. “The Guide for the Perplexed”, I.1, translated by M. Friedländer. The chapter was read; role: an example of philosophical interpretation of the image within the Jewish tradition.
Daodejing, Chapter 1, traditionally attributed to Laozi, translated by James Legge. The chapter was read; role: a limited comparison of language, beginning, and naming.

About the Authors

Andrey Zarinsh — author and founder of the United Wisdom project. Explores themes of inner transformation, the unity of traditions, intercultural dialogue, and contemporary spiritual discipline. Instagram: @andrey.zarinsh.

Maria Evilkut — co-author of United Wisdom. Alongside her research work, she strives to test these ideas in practice and observe how principles of unity and mutual understanding operate in real life between people and across cultures. Instagram: @ilkutki.