| 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. |
