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Book Review: Myth and Mystery: An Introduction to the Pagan Religions of the Biblical World

With this volume crowning a long and productive career as an archaelogist and student of the world of the Bible, Jack Finegan exhibits once again a gift for making the difficult look easy. He not only covers an immense field, ranging from ancient Babylon and Egypt to the early fifth century of Christian history, he does so with erudition but in a manner the unskilled as well as scholars can appreciate. The word "pagan" in the subtitle bears a more negative nuance than Professor Finegan intends and perhaps should be deleted, for he identifies here and there ideas and customs Jews and Christians both appreciated and appropriated from other religions, just as many of the latter absorbed biblical ideas and customs. The names of God in the Old Testament, for instance, had ample antecedents in Canaanite religion. Myth and Mystery is a mine of data not only on the religions but on the culture of the ancient Near Easthistory, languages, social patterns, literature, etc. Maps and a few wellselected pictures supplement the text in several places. The most useful aspect of the book, however, may be careful digests of literature not readily accessible to non-specialists. Bibliography and indexes make the