Hebrew Myths

This is a comprehensive look at the stories that make up the Old Testament and the Jewish religion, including the folk tales, apocryphal texts, midrashes, and other little-known documents that the Old Testament and the Torah do not include. In this exhaustive study, Robert graves provides a fascinating account of pre-Biblical texts that have been censored, suppressed, and hidden for centuries, and which now emerge to give us a clearer view of Hebrew myth and religion than ever.



Venerable classicist and historian Robert Graves recounts the ancient Hebrew stories, both obscure and familiar, with a rich sense of storytelling, culture, and spirituality. This book is sure to be riveting to students of Jewish or Judeo-Christian history, culture, and religion.



ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robert Graves (1895–1985) was an English novelist, poet, and translator of Classical Greek and Roman literature, and one of the most prominent English writers of the 20th century. He was an extremely prolific writer, who published more than 140 novels and collections of poetry. In addition to novels and poetry, he published groundbreaking analysis of Greek mythology, as well as a memoir of his time in combat during World War I, where he was gravely wounded at the Battle of the Somme. Graves is best known for his historical novels, which include I, Claudius, Claudius the God, The Golden Fleece, King Jesus, and Count Belisarius. In 1934, Robert Graves was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his historical novels dealing with the Roman Emperor Claudius.



Raphael Patai (1910–1996) was a Hungarian-Jewish ethnographer, historian, Orientalist and anthropologist. While Patai’s work was widespread, ranging from the development of ancient Israelite culture to modern Arab studies, his primary focus and first passion was Jewish folklore. Among his other books are Myth and Legend of Ancient Israel, The Hebrew Goddess, and The Myth of the Jewish Race. He was a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and founded the Palestine Institute of Folklore and Ethnology, where he served as the research director for four years. After he became a U.S. citizen he held visiting professorships at many esteemed universities, including Princeton, Columbia, New York University, and the University of Pennsylvania. In 1936, Raphael was granted the Bialik Prize for Jewish thought jointly with Moshe Zvi Segal.