Parallel Myths
, by Bierlein, J.F.
- ISBN: 9780345381460 | 0345381467
- Cover: Paperback
- Copyright: 10/11/1994
An entertaining and thought-provoking look at the common threads woven through the world's greatest myths -- and the central role they have played through time.
The author of Parallel Myths and The Book of Ages, J. F. Bierlein teaches in the Washington Semester and World Capitals Program at American University in Washington, and also works for a social sciences consulting firm. Multilingual, he is deeply interested in theology, existentialism, art, opera, and the study of classical Greek, Sanskrit, and Hebrew, as well as other languages. Professor Bierlein and his wife, Heather Diehl, live in northern Virginia.
| Acknowledgments | |
| Preface | |
| An Introduction | p. 3 |
| What Is Myth? | p. 3 |
| Language and Myth | p. 6 |
| Time and Myth | p. 11 |
| History and Myth | p. 17 |
| The Civic Myth | p. 19 |
| Morality and Myth | p. 21 |
| The Sense of the Sacred | p. 22 |
| The Cast of Characters | p. 24 |
| The Greek and Roman Pantheon | p. 24 |
| The Norse Pantheon | p. 29 |
| The Gods of India | p. 30 |
| The Egyptian Pantheon | p. 32 |
| The Hawaiian Pantheon | p. 32 |
| The Aztec Pantheon | p. 33 |
| Beginnings - The Creation Myths | p. 37 |
| Creation Myths of India | p. 37 |
| The Creation Myth of Iran | p. 41 |
| The Norse Creation Myth | p. 44 |
| Greek Creation Myths | p. 46 |
| Creation Myths of Africa | p. 48 |
| Creation Myths of Egypt | p. 51 |
| The Creation Myth of Finland | p. 53 |
| The Chinese Creation Myth | p. 53 |
| The Creation Myth of Japan | p. 54 |
| The Polynesian Creation Myths | p. 56 |
| Creation Myths of the Americas | p. 59 |
| The Babylonian Creation Myth | p. 71 |
| The Biblical Creation Stories | p. 73 |
| The Talmudic Creation Story | p. 76 |
| "The Creation" | p. 78 |
| Some Notes on the Creation Myths | p. 80 |
| The Earliest Times | p. 91 |
| The Biblical Fall | p. 91 |
| The Talmudic Fall | p. 95 |
| The Story of Poia (Blackfoot Indian) | p. 97 |
| The Four Ages of Man (India) | p. 100 |
| The Five Ages of Man (Greece) | p. 103 |
| The Five Suns (Aztec) | p. 104 |
| The Five Worlds (Navajo) | p. 105 |
| North American Indian Myths of Emergence | p. 108 |
| Three Stories of Maui the Trickster (Polynesia) | p. 111 |
| Prometheus and Epimetheus (Greece) | p. 114 |
| The Origin of Medicine (Cherokee) | p. 115 |
| Murile and the Moonchief (Kenya) | p. 117 |
| The Human Race Is Saved (Iroquois) | p. 118 |
| The Flood Myths | p. 121 |
| The Story of Noah | p. 121 |
| Manu and the Fish (India) | p. 125 |
| Utnapishtim (Babylonia) | p. 125 |
| The Flood Myth of Hawaii | p. 126 |
| Tata and Nena (Aztec) | p. 127 |
| Deucalion (Greece) | p. 128 |
| North American Flood Myths | p. 129 |
| The Flood Myth of the Incas | p. 133 |
| The Flood Myth of Egypt | p. 134 |
| Tales of Love | p. 136 |
| Greek and Roman Love Myths | p. 136 |
| Two Peruvian Love Stories | p. 147 |
| Angus Og (Scotland and Ireland) | p. 151 |
| Algon and the Sky-Girl (Algonquin Indian) | p. 153 |
| Morality Tales from the Myths | p. 155 |
| Morality Tales from the Mahabharata (India) | p. 156 |
| Anansi the Spider (West Africa) | p. 159 |
| Greek Morality Tales | p. 165 |
| Four Parallel Stories | p. 171 |
| The Story of Two Brothers (Blackfoot Indian) | p. 171 |
| The Story of Two Brothers (Egypt) | p. 173 |
| Bellerophon (Greece) | p. 175 |
| Joseph and Potiphar's Wife (Genesis 39) | p. 176 |
| Some Brief Myths of the Hero | p. 179 |
| The Story of Siegfried (Norse/Germany) | p. 179 |
| Theseus (Greece) | p. 185 |
| Hiawatha Tarenyawagon (Iroquois) | p. 191 |
| The Myth of Sisyphus (Greece) | p. 194 |
| The Journey to the Underworld and the Path of Death | p. 200 |
| Ishtar in the Underworld (Babylonia) | p. 200 |
| Marwe in the Underworld (Kenya) | p. 203 |
| Savitri (India) | p. 205 |
| Pare and Hutu (New Zealand) | p. 209 |
| Sayadio in the Land of the Dead (Iroquois) | p. 210 |
| The Spirit Bride (Algonquin) | p. 211 |
| Osiris and Isis (Egypt) | p. 212 |
| Blue Jay in the Land of the Dead (Chinook) | p. 217 |
| The Greek and Roman Afterlife | p. 220 |
| Peruvian Death Myths | p. 223 |
| Socrates on the Greco-Roman Afterlife | p. 224 |
| Persian (Zoroastrian) Death Myths | p. 226 |
| Nachiketas (India) | p. 227 |
| Jewish Death Myth | p. 229 |
| Tibetan Death Myths | p. 229 |
| Baldur (Norse) | p. 231 |
| The Death of Moses (The Talmud) | p. 233 |
| The End - Visions of the Apocalypse | p. 237 |
| How Rudra Destroys the Universe (India) | p. 237 |
| The Persian Apocalyptic Myth | p. 239 |
| The Islamic Apocalyptic Myth | p. 241 |
| Maitreya (Tibet, Korea, Mongolia) | p. 245 |
| Ragnarok: The Twilight of the Gods (Norse) | p. 246 |
| North American Apocalyptic Myths | p. 248 |
| The Old Testament | p. 249 |
| The New Testament | p. 250 |
| Views of Myth and Meaning | p. 257 |
| Parallel Myths and Ways of Interpreting Them | p. 267 |
| The Discovery of Parallel Myths | p. 267 |
| Myth as a History of Prehistory: The Matriarchal Theory | p. 271 |
| Transitional Thinking in the Interpretation of Myth | p. 275 |
| Psychological Theories of Parallelism in Myth | p. 279 |
| A Modern Nonpsychological Approach: Structuralism | p. 296 |
| Philosophical Perspectives on Myth | p. 299 |
| The "History of Religions" School of Myth | p. 302 |
| Myth - Yours, Mine, and Ours | p. 304 |
| Modern Questions of Faith | p. 304 |
| The Demythologization of Judeo-Christian Culture | p. 314 |
| The Legitimacy of the Supernatural | p. 325 |
| Notes | p. 327 |
| Bibliography | p. 333 |
| Index | p. 339 |
| Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved. |
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