The puppet play Afsane-ye afarinesh (The Myth of Creation) is among the earliest satirical works of the Iranian modernist writer Sadeq Hedayat (1903--1951). Written in 1930, in Paris, and featuring a cast of puppet characters with names like Khaleqoff (“Creatov”), Jebra’il-pasha (“Gabriel –pasha”) and Monsieur Shaytan (“Monsieur Satan”), it appears to have pushed past the boundary between the irreverent and the blasphemous, which Hedayat’s writings do approach at times, but never cross. Perhaps for that reason, this parody of the Creation story has been quietly circumvented by publishers and critics alike: After its first publication in Paris in 1946, in 106 copies marked “Not for Sale,” it has never been published in Iran, and only recently was published in Persian and in Englisbn in the West. Is Hedayat aiming his satirical barbs at religion as such? The present paper offers an alternative reading of this controversial work. It takes a close look at Afsane-ye afarinesh and the cultural context of the period between the two world wars, and contends, that The Myth of Creation is Hedayat’s tongue-in-cheek commentary on the furious DEBATES over the roles of religion and science in modern society, which in the 1920s dominated the public discourse both in his native country, and in France where he was residing at the time.