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The Yakuts (also known as the northern Turks) were corrupted by
Christian missionaries late in the eighteenth century. The
following story represents the Yakut's version of the Christian
teachings:
"Satan was the older brother of Jesus, but he was bad while Jesus
was good. When God wanted to create the earth, he said to Satan:
'You brag that you can do everything and that you're greater than me.
Well then, see if you can bring back a bit of sand from the bottom of
the ocean.' So Satan dived down to the bottom of the sea, but
when he came back up again he noticed that the water had torn the sand
out of his grasp. He dived down twice more, always in vain, and
on the fourth time he transformed himself into a swallow and managed
to bring up a bit of ooze in his beak. Then Jesus blessed the
ooze, which became the Earth. And the Earth was beautiful and
flat and smooth. But, wanting to create a world of his own,
Satan had kept a bit of mud hidden in his beak. Jesus saw
through his trick and hit him in the neck. Then Satan spat out
the mud, and when it fell it made the mountains."*
*V.L. Serosevskii, Yakuty (Petrograd, 1896), cited by Joseph
Campbell in Primitive Mythology: The Masks of God (New York:
Viking-Penguin, 1959). ~Taken
from: "The History of the Devil," Gerald
Messadie, (c)1998.
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