"Inquiry into the meaning and function of myths... has long played an important role within biblical scholarship. However, since many scholars have proposed that any society's myths are an integral part of the ways in which that society presents to its members and to the wider world a full articulation of its deepest values and beliefs, the study of myths has also found a place in other disciplines.

"It is... surprising that for many decades the clear majority of biblical scholars displayed a noteworthy hesitancy either to admit the presence of complete myths within the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament or to investigate fully the resources of other disciplines that might aid them in their attempts to interpret biblical myths.... There were some quite specific reasons for this hesitancy. This has been the tendency to distinguish sharply between stories in the Bible on one hand and the myths of all other cultures on the other hand. This distine-tion is of obvious theological usefulness. If biblical stories are unique, this offers supportive evidence to the confessional claim that these stories and the entire religion of Israel stem ultimately from divine instruction. Further, the distinction is itself a result of the understandable restric-tion of biblical study to theological concerns alone that has existed until quite recently.

"This separation between theological interpretation of biblical stories on the one hand and the wider analysis of myths on the other meant that for the better part of a century the advances suggested in mythological analysis by anthropologists and others were only slowly utilized within biblical scholarship. Indeed, even when these suggested advances were applied to biblical materials, the application was most often accom-plished in quite piecemeal fashion" - The Bible Without Theology