and other anomalous elements in the Hebrew Creation Myth
The premise of this book is that the book of Genesis was written as a sort of synthesis of myths and stories that were current about 400-600 BC. The idea is that the other stories were reprocessed and reordered into a story that was of, at the time, of no great importance. The idea that Genesis was not considered of importance is interesting…it was a non-theological introduction to the major text which covered the rites, rituals and rules that were to apply to the Jewish people.
I have no real issue with the idea that parts of the story were floating about in the region…after all, my favorite story of all time, the Epic of Gilgamesh, was 3000 years older than Genesis.
The book has three parts:
- an introduction and background discussion
- a graphically presented version of the Genesis story
- a graphically presented alternate story, the author’s version of the original story
The background is well done, but, I found the new and improved version to be quite unimpressive and not at all convincing.
One thing I do not recall from the old stories is a lot of killings of sons and fathers and brothers…
References:
Hesiod: Theogony…..the geneology of the Greek Gods in one place
Plutarch: Convivial Questions….Jehovah & Dionysus
One side note….the illustrations were plain enough with a lot of bare-breasted women….such that I had to be discrete while reading it on Metro…LOL