Bible Myths and their Parallels in other Religions.

Where do the stories of the Bible come from, and how far do they echo the older myths of the ancient world? This ambitious comparative study takes up that provocative question and pursues it across the religions and legends of many cultures.

What it's about

The book sets biblical narratives side by side with the myths, legends and religious stories of other and older traditions, arguing that many familiar episodes have parallels far beyond the pages of scripture. Ranging widely through ancient mythologies and belief systems, it compiles resemblances, creation stories, floods, virgin births, miracles, resurrections and more, and marshals them to argue for a shared mythological inheritance underlying religious story. It is a work of nineteenth-century rationalist and comparative scholarship, written to persuade as much as to catalogue.

Themes

At its heart lies the question of origins: whether sacred stories are unique revelations or variations on far older human myths. The book is concerned with the borrowing and recurrence of religious motifs across cultures, with the relationship between myth and belief, and with a sceptical, comparative approach to scripture that was gaining ground in its era. Its argument is pointed, reflecting the confident rationalism of the age that produced it.

Why it still matters

Whatever a reader makes of its conclusions, the book stands as a substantial document of nineteenth-century comparative religion and the era's debates between faith and rationalist criticism. It gathers an enormous body of mythological parallels in one place, and raises questions about the sources of religious story that scholars have continued to explore. As a period work of freethought and comparison, it remains of real interest.

Who it's for

For readers interested in comparative religion, mythology and the history of religious scepticism, and for anyone drawn to the great nineteenth-century debates between faith and reason. A provocative and wide-ranging study for the curious and open-minded.