The Old Testament Hebrew Scriptures in Five Minutes - Philippe Guillaume
14. Are There Myths in the Hebrew Bible?
The Old Testament Hebrew Scriptures in Five Minutes - Philippe Guillaume
James Linville [+]
University of Lethbridge
James Linville received a Ph.D. in Hebrew and Old Testament from the University of Edinburgh and is currently an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Lethbridge in Lethbridge, Canada. He has written on myth in the Hebrew Bible’s prophetic and historiographical writings, e.g., “On the Authority of Dead Kings,” in Deuteronomy-Kings as Emerging Authoritative Books: A Conversation, Edited by Diana Edelman (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2014) 203–222; “Myth of the Exilic Return: Myth Theory and the Exile as an Eternal Reality in the Prophets,” in Concept of Exile in Ancient Israel and its Contexts, Edited by Christoph Levin and Ehud Ben Zvi (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010) 295–309.
Description
Scholars have long resisted the idea that the Old Testament transmits myths. However one define myth, we have come to appreciate the way the Hebrew Bible integrates mythological compositions to build a world of meaning of its own.