ABSTRACT
This chapter intends to contribute towards the clarification of a term which is to-day enjoying frequent use in reference to Bible, religion and theology. The recent discussion of "mythology" has been to a great extent dominated by New Testament studies and general philosophy and theology. For this reason BarrJames suggest that Old Testament scholarship has a special contribution to make to this study. A definition of myth for the purposes of Old Testament study would not be built upon universal theoretical considerations, or even upon the universal phenomenology of religion at all times and in all places. Myth has to be seen as a totality within the relevant cultural group. The centre of mythology, or at any rate its characteristic which is specially significant in relation to the Biblical material, is its doctrine of correspondences. Mesopotamia and Egypt also had their times of disaster but produced no eschatology; their mythology remained relatively stable through it all.
