GarColga

Hi everybody, this is my very first post here! During a discussion on Noah's Ark on another forum, I got to thinking. If, as Christian fundamentalists insist, everything recorded in the Old Testament is true, where is the mythology of the Hebrews? Is it possible they were the only ancient people without a mythology? Or do they have one that is recorded elsewhere? Signed, 'Suspicious'

ShottleBop

"Legends of the Jews" by Ginzberg, Louis - seven volumes of Jewish myth, folklore, and legend [1956].

Wonderful stuff in there.

GarColga

I have a book on Jewish legends, and while a lot of them deal with Biblical themes, they are more recent than what I am interested in. The people contemporary with the Old Testament, the Israelites, while they were supposedly interacting with god, didn't they have fables and stories? Am I making any sense?

Vorkosigan

The mythology of the jews is recorded in the Old Testament very clearly. Are you asking about the beliefs of ancient jewish polytheism? Or Canaanite beliefs about the various interchangeable gods of the Middle East? Or what?

David Gould

I think he is saying that if the Old Testament is indeed factual then the Jews do not have any mythology - they have facts, not myths.

They would therefore be the only such culture in history not to have myths.

I think this is a little circular, however: if any cultures myths were true, they would not have myths.

Of course, I could be wrong about what is being meant here.

FunkyRes

If the Bible is true, than Israel came up out of Egypt at the beginning of the recording of the Bible.

This means there is plenty of time before Moses for them to have had myths, and they may even have had Egyptian myths which sufficed the community (as they lived in Egypt) until Moses took them out.

Those myths very likely were left behind in Egypt.

If the Bible is true, there isn't a lot of time between Jabob and the Hebrew people going to egypt- for it was Jacob's children that (according to the Bible) moved there when there was famine (Joseph moving there much earlier)

As such- the myths of the Hebrew people would have been the same as the land that Abraham was in, with possibly some Egyptian myths added later on.

I don't know if any of these myths would have survived outside the Bible.

If they gave an alternate explanation to what Moses was teaching, then they would not have survived- the Mosaic law was pretty strict.

Hope this helps shed some light on why there wouldn't be any strictly Hebrew myths if the Bible is true.

The two creation accounts could be a recording of two myths that did not contradict what Moses was teaching.

ShottleBop

"Legends of the Jews" records myths about multiple creations, Lilith, the first woman (before Eve)--the one created out of dust, like Adam, who ran off to spawn demons, etc. Do you mean that these myths come from a time more recent than you want? I would guess probably little, if anything, exists in writing from the time you have in mind--other than possibly the OT. To the extent that any portion of early Jewish mythology survives in writing, it exists in the OT and, to a certain extent, in the Talmud, which includes some folklore. I would check out Ginzberg's bibliography to see where he got the myths recorded in his collection.

Radcliffe Emerson

I read a myth today about the Egyptian god Anubis, where Anubis' wife desires his younger brother, the brother refused her advances, so she told Anubis the brother had advanced on her.
Similar to the story of the Pharoah's wife wanting Joseph, also an Egypt-centered story.