About the Book
Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 133. Chapters: Genesis creation narrative, Joseph Campbell, Miraculous births, Monomyth, Mother goddess, Proto-Indo-European religion, Axis mundi, Jesus Christ in comparative mythology, Creation myth, Kesh temple hymn, Solar deity, Hymn to Enlil, Gudea cylinders, Lament for Ur, James George Frazer, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Debate between Winter and Summer, The Power of Myth, Song of the hoe, Flood myth, Genesis flood narrative, Enlil and Ninlil, King in the mountain, Weaving (mythology), Hamlet's Mill, Sacred bull, Debate between sheep and grain, The White Goddess, Apple (symbolism), Rainbows in mythology, The Golden Bough, Paul Rebillot, Dying god, Milky Way (mythology), Underworld, Sky father, Barton Cylinder, Trifunctional hypothesis, Mother Nature, Sacred king, List of death deities, List of lunar deities, Vegetation deity, Self-praise of Shulgi (Shulgi D), Fertility symbol, Legendary creature, List of tree deities, Lightning in religion, Jonathan Young (psychologist), Historical Atlas of World Mythology, Fyodor Buslaev, List of thunder gods, Alexander Veselovsky, Mythological king, World Mill, Old Babylonian oracle, Joseph Campbell Foundation, Theft of fire, The Flight of the Wild Gander, The Hero's Journey (film), Ichchhadhari Nag, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, Thou Art That (book), Creation of man from clay, The Hero's Journey (book). Excerpt: The Genesis creation narrative is the creation myth of both Judaism and Christianity. It is made up of two parts, roughly equivalent to the first two chapters of the Book of Genesis. In the first part, Genesis 1:1 through, Elohim, the generic Hebrew word for God, creates the world in six days, then rests on, blesses and sanctifies the seventh day. God creates by spoken command ("Let there be..."), suggesting a comparison with a king, who has only to speak for things to happen, and names the elements of the cosmos as he creates them, in keeping with the common ancient concept that things did not really exist until they had been named. In the second, Yahweh, the personal name of God, shapes the first man from dust, places him in the Garden of Eden, and breathes his own breath into the man who thus becomes, a living being; man shares nephesh with all creatures, but only of man is this life-giving act of God described. The man names the animals, signifying his authority within God's creation, and God creates the first woman, Eve, from the man's body. A common hypothesis among biblical scholars is that the first major comprehensive draft of the Pentateuch (the series of five books which begins with Genesis and ends with Deuteronomy) was composed in the late 7th or the 6th century BC (the Yahwist source) and that this was later expanded by other authors (the Priestly source) into a work very like the one we have today. (In the creation narrative the two sources appear in reverse order: is Priestly and is Yahwistic). Running through the combined narrative is a critique of the Mesopotamian theology of creation: Genesis affirms monotheism and denies polytheism, borrowing themes from Mesopotamian mythology, but adapting them to Israel's belief in one God. Robert Alter described the combined narrative as "compelling in its archetypal character, its adaptation of myth to monotheistic ends." Cuneiform tablet with the Atra-Hasis Epic in the British Museum Although tradition a
