SOURCE: “Abraham and Agamemnon: A Comparative Study of Myth,” The Humanities Association Review, Vol. 25, No. 4, Fall, 1974, pp. 290-97.

In the following essay, Booth analyzes the commonalities between the Greek myth of Agamemnon's sacrifice of Iphigeneia, and Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac in the book of Genesis. In particular, Booth studies the similarities in story patterns and aetiological features.

The myths of Agamemnon's sacrifice of Iphigeneia and Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac have much in common. Out of similarities in story patterns emerge narrative unities of comparable primary characteristics suggesting variations on a single theme, a common matrix, and a spiritual dimension not characteristic of particular and independent legends.

Myth may be defined as traditional oral narrative transmitted from generation to generation by a pre-literate society or an illiterate segment of a society. Myth is a social not an individual phenomenon arising from group experience and reflecting, recollecting or expressing that...