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Indra and Vṛtra — The Waters Behind the Dragon
Indra kills the serpent that holds back the waters, and the rivers run free. Then the hymn asks the victor why he ran.
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The Snake and Eve — The Eyes That Were Opened
The serpent says three things in Genesis 3 and all three come true; nobody questions it, the man and the woman are not cursed, and the tree of life was never forbidden. Beside Genesis 3: Adapa refusing the bread of life, the serpent of the Hesperides that guards the fruit instead of handing it over,…
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Semele — The God She Asked to See
Semele asked her secret lover to prove he was Zeus. The proof killed her, her sisters said she had lied, and her son came home to Thebes as the answer.
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The Light That Was Not the Sun — Consciousness and the Cosmic Temple
Genesis makes light on the first day and the sun on the fourth. Paul quoted that first light and applied it to the light that shines in the heart. Beside Genesis 1:1–2:3: Tiamat and the deep, Ptah’s creating word, Isaiah’s God who creates the darkness, the sun and moon left without their divine names, the…
Every ancient culture tells stories about a god who fathered a son on a mortal woman. This site reads those stories beside one another, and beside the Bible.
One way of reading them is very old and entirely Christian. The Church Fathers held that the seed of the Word had been scattered among the nations, so that people who had never heard of Israel still managed to say true things. Lewis and Tolkien called the myths good dreams, and called one of them fact. Taking that seriously means going to look for the same shape in Greece, India and Egypt, and it is there.
The second way of reading asks what a story was for. A miracle can cover a crime, and an account of slaying giants can be the tidied version of killing people. Whoever wrote these things down had usually won.
Both readings run here at once. New readers should start with Why do different cultures have similar myths?