Michelangelo’s Pieta, St Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City – photograph donated to public domain

TOP 10 MYTHOLOGY BOOKS (HONORABLE MENTION: BIBLE & BIBLICAL MYTHOLOGY)

That’s right – I don’t just have a top ten mythology books, or my usual twenty special mentions. I also have honorable mentions.

My usual rule is that I have no cap on the number of individual entries I can list as honorable mention for any given top ten if there are enough entries beyond my top ten or special mentions – and I tend to just list them in chronological or date order, usually date of publication for books.

However, for mythology books, I have some different rules, except the lack of any cap or numerical limit on honorable mention.

My primary rule is that I have honorable mentions for books in selected subjects of mythology, where there are enough entries for that subject (potentially racking them up for a top ten in that subject) – as here, with the subject of the Bible and Biblical mythology.

And where I have honorable mentions for particular subjects, I quickly recap the entries on that subject from my top ten or special mentions first before moving on to my further honorable mentions, in tier rankings and numerical sequence albeit with some degree or chronological or date order.

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

TO RECAP BIBLICAL ENTRIES FROM MY TOP 10 MYTHOLOGY BOOKS (INCLUDING THE PRIMARY SOURCE OF THE BIBLE ITSELF)

The title page to the 1611 first edition of the King James Bible

(1) BIBLE

Obviously the primary source for Biblical mythology or other Biblical subjects, as well as top place entry in my Top 10 Mythology Books with Biblical mythology also in top spot in my Top 10 Mythologies – and those entries go into more detail.

This is the big one – genesis and apocalypse, alpha and omega, allelujah and amen!

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER – WHAT ELSE?)

(2) BARBARA WALKER – WOMEN’S ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MYTHS & SECRETS (1983)

She is the goddess and this is her body!

And this book is also third place entry in my Top 10 Mythology Books, where you can read more detail about it there.

While the book is essentially comparative mythology to variations on the theme of goddesses or the goddess, it has a substantial number of its encyclopedia on Biblical subjects or broader subjects within Jewish or Christian folklore.

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER – OR IS THAT GODDESS-TIER?)

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

TO RECAP BIBLICAL ENTRIES FROM MY TOP 10 MYTHOLOGY BOOKS (SPECIAL MENTION)

(3) JONATHAN KIRSCH –

THE HARLOT BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD / A HISTORY OF THE END OF THE WORLD (1998 / 2006)

My personal favorite book of the Bible is the Book of Apocalypse, or as I like to call it, Babylon and the Beast – hence my special mention for Jonathan Kirsch, who wrote about it in A History of the End of the World.

It doesn’t stop there. As I like to quip, it’s the book that doesn’t stop giving, even after you stop believing – and Jonathan Kirsch is the author of some of my favorite studies of the Bible. Not of the whole Bible, mind you – for one thing, he tends towards a Jewish focus on the Old Testament (with that one notable exception for the Book of Apocalypse).

There’s his first such book, The Harlot by the Side of the Road, for which the subtitle says it all – Forbidden Tales of the Bible.

There’s his books on Moses and King David respectively, arguably the two leading figures of the Old Testament – well, apart from God.

And there’s his books on subjects not so much from Biblical mythology but Biblical religion – such as his book God Against the Gods, as stated in its subtitle, a history of the war between monotheism and polytheism (in the Roman Empire).

RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

HONORABLE MENTION 

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Harper Perennial edition 1983

(4) MANFRED BARTHEL –

WHAT THE BIBLE REALLY SAYS (1982)

This book is summed up in its subtitle, “casting new light on the book of books” – or as per the longer blurb or precis this edition (which is the one I have) has on its front cover for some reason, “fascinating archaeological discoveries and surprising new translations are enriching our understanding of what the Bible really says. Here readers of all religious persuasions will find fresh insights to illuminate and make the Bible more meaningful and exciting reading”.

Given the book was published in 1982, that light is not so new anymore but it remains highly, well, illuminating. I’m not so sure about “readers of all religious persuasions”, or the Bible as “exciting reading” for that matter – as I like to quip, the Bible may be the Word of God but in that case He needed a good editor. Barthel is forthright from the outset that any serious study of the Bible has to abandon any notions of fundamentalism or literalism – that the Bible is literally true in every aspect. However, those inclined to skepticism towards any historicity in the Bible may find their views challenged almost as much.

What the Bible Really Says is the source of my hot take about the Bible, to antagonize both believers and skeptics – that the Bible is a lot less historical than fundamentalist believers usually maintain, but more historical than skeptics usually give it credit.

Among other things, it proposes more naturalistic explanations of apparently supernatural miracles. For example, it queries that people have proposed all sorts of different explanations, allegorical or otherwise, for the burning bush, until only recently thinking to ask a botanist whether there was a plant capable of matching that description. And indeed there is – a species of plant that accumulates an oil on its leaves, which can then ignite in the sun and burn off, harmlessly without affecting the leaf or plant.

And so on – with little interpretative nuggets like that throughout the book, literally from genesis to apocalypse.

RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

(5) IAN JONES –

JOSHUA, THE MAN THEY CALLED JESUS (1999)

This honorable mention essentially reflects a narrower subset within the subject of the Bible and Biblical mythology for Jesus as the most prominent Biblical figure in my reading, reflecting the prolific number of books on him. That’s particularly for analysis or studies of what is often termed the historical Jesus (as opposed to the mythic or religious Christ). Essentially we’re talking historical biography as best can be parsed or reconstructed from the available sources, primarily the Gospels.

Funnily enough, this book remains one of my favorite historical biographies of Jesus – essentially Jesus and his disciples as Ned Kelly and the Kelly Gang!

No, really – but not literally, although I’d love to see the latter. This biography of Jesus sticks out like a sore thumb from Jones’ bibliography that is almost entirely about Australian outlaw bushranger Ned Kelly and his Kelly Gang. But you know what? It works.

For all that the specialty of Jones, an Australian writer, was Ned Kelly and the Kelly Gang, it would seem that adapted well to constructing a historical biography of a figure from layers of legend and reverence from sources originating from that figure’s followers.

Jones even makes a reference to this effect in his introduction to this book, saying that in his youth he argued with a priest that using the Gospels as the source of a historical biography of Jesus was like using the closest members of the Kelly Gang as your source about Ned Kelly – an argument he admits he finds embarrassing now for its lack of tact.

Lack of tact perhaps but not a bad approach for gleaning nuggets of fact from legend – or glowing hagiography, although messianography might be a better word in this case. Although as Jones notes from the outset, the Gospels were not actually written by the disciples for whom they are named, albeit he advocates the Gospel of John has consistent signs of originating from a source close to the historical Jesus, perhaps not unlike the favorite disciple for whom it is named.

This book remains my favorite such historical biography of Jesus, in part due to a deft prose style, and one of the biggest influences for my view of the Jesus in the Gospels essentially as a (tragic) figure of what I dub the great messianic ghost dance.

RATING:

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

*

*

HONORABLE MENTION 

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

(6) DONALD ATTWATER –

PENGUIN DICTIONARY OF SAINTS (1938)

Exactly what it says on the tin, except that it originated from the Dictionary of Saints by British Catholic author Donald Attwater in 1938, hence the date for my honorable mention. It was apparently revised as the Penguin Dictionary of Saints in various editions since.

Saints are one of the most prolific elements of Christian folklore, particularly within Catholicism. The most fundamental saints are those within the New Testament, notably the apostles and other figures directly associated with Jesus in the Gospels – although one of the most fundamental, St Paul, was never directly associated with Jesus as a person rather than through visions. Indeed, the writers of the books of the New Testament (as attributed or nominated) have also all been sainted.

Beyond the Bible (as there are Christian saints drawn from the Old Testament as well as the New), there is a plethora of saints, ranging from mythic to historic figures. Saints of course overlap with martyrs – those killed for their faith – and both overlap with relics.

Saints are so prolific that I’ve always been reminded of the observation of John Ralston Saul that for a religion that is identified as monotheistic, Christianity has moved through the trinity of its godhead with a potential fourth divine figure in Mary to the twelve apostles and such a plethora of saints that it rivals the polytheism of Hinduism. (To which Saul might well have added a comparison to the classical paganism that probably inspired the proliferation of saints, at least in part, what with its various levels of gods through to demi-hemi-semi-gods).

RATING:

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

(7) GUSTAV DAVIDSON –

A DICTIONARY OF ANGELS (1967)

*

Again, exactly what it says on the tin.

Which is harder than you might think, given how few angels are actually named in the Bible – even if you count, as this dictionary does, the fallen angels, or where the use of star connotes an angel as with Star Wormwood in the Book of Apocalypse.

In fairness, the book admits as much in its introduction – so it teases out all canonical references to angels and ranges through non-canonical or extra-biblical writings and folklore.

RATING:

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

*

HONORABLE MENTION

X-TIER (WEIRD / WILD TIER)

*

*

(8) TIMOTHY FREKE & PETER GANDY –

THE JESUS MYSTERIES: WAS THE ORIGINAL JESUS A PAGAN GOD?

Given how prolific books about Jesus are, it is not surprising that there are books with theories about Jesus that are, shall we say, a bit out there – or indeed, a lot out there.

I suppose this arises from the uncertainty about him as a historical figure. While the consensus of scholarship (and my own opinion) is that he was a historical person, many or perhaps most, if not all, of the details of his historical biography are up for debate, often highly contested.

That does extend to whether he was a historical person at all as opposed to an entirely mythic figure, with theories of the latter often dubbed the Christ myth theory – albeit a minority viewpoint. However, it is this viewpoint that has the most fringe theories – indeed, with some very wild theories indeed. That includes the theory of John Allegro in The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross of Jesus as magic mushroom and the theory of Joseph Atwill in Caesar’s Messiah of Jesus as creation of imperial Roman propaganda.

And then there’s this book, which proposes Jesus was not a historical person but essentially a syncretic creation or re-interpretation of a long line of dying-and-rising pagan divine figures worshipped in “mystery cults” from Osiris to Dionysus (such that the authors even label the generic figure as Osiris-Dionysus). As the authors quote a historian, from a historical perspective, Christianity is a Greek hero cult devoted to a Jewish Messiah. The authors attribute this syncretic creation to gnostic Christians, whom they identify as the original Christians as opposed to subsequent ‘literalist’ Christians.

I don’t buy their Jesus Mysteries thesis – few people do, and many have been quite caustic in their criticism, even other proponents of the Jesus myth theory – but you can’t deny it’s a hoot.

RATING:

X-TIER (WEIRD / WILD TIER)

Oxford University Press, 3rd edition

(13) PHILIP JENKINS – THE NEXT CHRISTENDOM: THE COMING OF GLOBAL CHRISTIANITY

This book was – dare I say it? – a revelation.

That is not to say it was positive or negative, given the word revelation is often used to imply the former, but it was a dramatic paradigm shift for me. Previously, I had assumed that the world was slowly but steadily becoming more secular, with religion inexorably on the wane – perhaps with Islam as something of an outlier but particularly for Christianity, such that the world might be seen as increasingly post-Christian.

As I like to quip, I live in a Nietzschean world with a Freudian mind, so it was all too easy for my own assumption to follow the influence of Nietzsche’s pronouncement that God is dead, with increasingly fewer people showing up to the wake.

So did the revelation of this book prove that assumption to be true or false? Well…yes and no, but mostly yes.

The assumption is by and large true for the West, with some outliers – notably the United States, where there is substantial resistance to the more advanced secularization in Europe.

However, it is not true elsewhere and this book’s essential thesis is that, due to demography, the West is an increasingly smaller part of the world as a whole – waning in population in proportion to the so-called global South, certainly in relative terms and potentially even in absolute terms. And the assumption definitely does not hold for the South, where religion is booming – which looks to remain the case for the foreseeable future, until at least later in this century.

Not all religion mind you, as the book identifies three predominant religious currents booming in the global South – conservative Catholicism, fundamentalist Protestantism and Islam. The first two of course are currents within the religion of Christianity, which is the book’s primary focus. To sum up the book’s thesis in a nutshell, while Christianity West is waning, Christianity South is booming. (One was tempted to say Christianity East as well as Christianity South, particularly to connote Christianity in Asia as well as the symmetry in opposition with Christianity West, but that risked confusion with Orthodoxy).

Two interesting points stick most in my mind from this book. The first and more substantial point was that this was not some radical redirection of history, but in many ways history turning full circle to Christianity’s origin – where, for the first centuries of its existence, Christianity was predominantly an Asian and African religion, not a European one.

The second point, less substantial but more amusing as irony, is its reference to a work of SF satire, in which a future Christian Africa sends missionaries to a non-Christian Europe – a work that, as the book points out, may resemble satire less and less in the foreseeable future.

The book’s author Philip Jenkins is an American historian of religion with a focus on Christianity and has written a number of books on it, both for its future (as here) and its past. This is the only book of his that I have read so far, but hope to read more in the expectation that they prove to be as engaging as this one.

RATING: 4 STARS****
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)