Dear Colleagues,

Many of us likely remember the first time we learned about ancient Near Eastern stories from “the World of the Bible”. These stories invoked curiosity with their unfamiliarity as well as their unmistakable similarities with biblical and classical stories. The way that cosmogonic, anthropogonic, and etiological stories account for human lived experience and our observable world is intriguing to a broad audience. Certainly, the topic of myth remains of interest in the general public, as evident in popular books and movies, and across many scholarly areas. Among biblical scholars, many of us recall the first time we heard about Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, the title of Frank Moore Cross’s impactful book as well as his nuanced contextualizing contrast that some have taken as a dichotomy. Cross’s work utilizes the categories of myth, epic, and history, while analyzing his data in ways that cut across such genre distinctions. Cross’s work was initially published in 1973, and it remains essential reading for biblical scholars interested in the topic of myth-making. 

The focus of this volume is analysis of myth-making in the Hebrew Bible, with the purpose of demonstrating how attention to myth-making improves our historical and comparative studies of the Hebrew Bible in its ancient Near Eastern context. The scope is inclusive of historical, cultural, sociological, literary, and cognitive perspectives. Because myth is a topic that appeals to a popular audience as well as scholars in diverse areas, it is important to foster conversation between Religious Studies more generally, Biblical Studies, and those who study myth theory within any scholarly discipline. The topic of myth has been central within Religious Studies as is discussion of theories of myth. It is often partnered with the study of ritual and theories of ritual within Religious Studies, for many fitting reasons. In Biblical Studies, there has been strong engagement with ritual theory, while the study of myth has remained somewhat sidelined, even as many scholars over the past 40 years have promoted discussion of myth, including Rogerson, Oden, Childs, Roberts, Parker, and Wyatt.

This Special Issue features biblical scholars working directly with myth-making in the Hebrew Bible, engaging with past theorization of myth and theorizing myth-making themselves. The study of myth-making in the Hebrew Bible is central to interdisciplinary work on ancient Near Eastern and ancient Mediterranean literature and religion. Therefore, a primary aim of this issue is for biblical scholars to speak to scholars within our field as well as scholars in adjacent fields, who might have had less exposure to how far discussion of myth-making in the Hebrew Bible has come: far beyond outdated popular dichotomies of the Bible, as proper history and Truth, versus Myth, as false or others’ stories. This Special Issue will contribute to existing scholarship on the topic of myth-making in the Hebrew Bible by building on foundational discussions of the category of myth within Biblical Studies and taking up the charge of past scholars to continue to scrutinize how we implicitly and explicitly use theories of myth. The work represented in this issue will reflect substantial scholarly conversation with the 2014 volume Myth and Scripture as well as the annual conference proceedings of the Society of Biblical Literature unit “The Bible, Myth, and Myth Theory.”

Dr. Debra Scoggins Ballentine
Guest Editor

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• Hebrew Bible
• myth
• myth theory
• myth-making
• ancient storytelling, cosmogony
• anthropology
• ancient religion
• ancient literature