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In my reading today of Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing, Rosemary Ruether critiques three influential creation accounts: the Babylonian creation story Enuma Elish, Genesis 1, and Plato's Timaeus. For Ruether, Enuma Elish (which, according to her, influenced Genesis 1) kills the female Tiamat, justifies the rise of Babylon as a power, and supports serfdom, so it promoted the values that Ruether opposes, such as patriarchy, domination, and exploitation.
Ruether sees Genesis 1 as a step up, since it promotes stewardship of creation, which is good for the environment. Plus, the ancient Israelites' heritage as former slaves led them to limit slavery---or at least the slavery of Israelites. But Ruether believes that the priestly author of Genesis 1 was sexist, and that he attached Genesis 2 to his own creation account in order to make clear that women were second-class to men.
Ruether dislikes the Timaeus because it elevates the souls above the physical. While the creator Demiurge made souls, he left to the lower gods the task of creating the bodies. Such a cosmogony is not overly friendly to the environment, for it lessens the value of the material world. Plato also believed in a hierarchy in which women and slaves were inferior. According to Plato, those who fail to control their "body and its sensations" will be reincarnated as women, rather than ascending to their "native" star to live a godlike existence.
But Ruether also looks at scientific accounts of origins, but I have more to read on that in this book.
