Customer Reviews

Gods and Goddesses: A Treasury of Deities and Tales from World Mythology

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The approach of this book is neither that of comparative religion nor a study of mythology; it is not written from the standpoint of any religion and, in keeping with modern scholarship, makes no value judgements.

This book is nicely illustrated, with images of original ancient art of the gods/goddesses. nice 1/2 to 2 page descriptions. I could write a lot of nice stuff about everything that _is_ in this book.

My only complaint was that there is no inclusion of modern western gods like Yahweh (YHWH) or Allah. I would have expected to see these in the "Supreme and Creator Gods" section of the book near the 1st chapter, for contrasting and comparing against the other ones. (These 2 were also not in the indexes in the back, so I assume they are not covered).

Is this book making a statement that these 2 gods are not mythological? This would put the book in a non-academic and biased position... Because of this omission I docked the book a star. (why omit 2 of the most obvious gods?). To it's credit, the book doesn't seem to claim it is academic and unbiased anywhere on the back, flaps, or introduction, though since it is written by a PhD in medieval monastic history, you'd expect it to be unbiased and academically written.

Otherwise, it's a nicely illustrated book, with nice photos for each god, many from ancient art. With a good amount of writeup for each one. Just what I was looking for. Though it omits 2 gods I was hoping to contrast against the others, I'll need to find this in another book.