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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How does Leeming say the Supreme Being is frequently characterized?
(a) As a snake.
(b) As the sun.
(c) As a thunderbolt.
(d) As the earth.

2. What does Leeming say about cosmogonies?
(a) That they are typically female.
(b) That they are typically moral.
(c) That they are typically allegorical.
(d) That they are typically linear narratives.

3. Where does Leeming say the Great Mother began to play a role over time?
(a) In folklore.
(b) In primitive culture.
(c) In modern art.
(d) In industrial religion.

4. What does Leeming say the Great Mother personifies?
(a) The pains of childbirth.
(b) Grains.
(c) The planet earth.
(d) The process of being born.

5. How does Leeming define cosmology?
(a) The study of the structure of the universe.
(b) The scientific study of the universal order.
(c) The study of beauty aids.
(d) The study of the history of the heavens.

6. What does Leeming say had to happen before the Olympian gods could reign in the Greek pantheon?
(a) The Olympian gods had to create humans.
(b) The flood.
(c) Humans had to offer their worship.
(d) Two dynasties of gods had to be overthrown.

7. What evidence does Leeming cite to argue for a single matriarch at the beginning of the Greek pantheon?
(a) Gaia created her own mate.
(b) Gaia fought to enthrone each of her husbands.
(c) Gaia killed her husbands.
(d) Gaia devoured her offspring.

8. Where did the first creation story Leeming cites come from?
(a) India.
(b) Germany.
(c) Egypt.
(d) Greece.

9. Who is Frigg, in the Norse pantheon?
(a) The goddess of the hunt.
(b) The goddess of cultivation.
(c) Odin's wife.
(d) The earth mother.

10. What reconciliation does Leeming say the Greeks' creation myths described?
(a) The reconciliation between warring fathers and sons.
(b) The reconciliation between warring brothers.
(c) The reconciliation between male and female principles.
(d) The reconciliation between ancient and modern ideas.

11. What does Leeming say the Roman pantheon is rife with?
(a) Anxiety about the Greeks' supremacy.
(b) Legalistic language.
(c) Prophecy of Christ.
(d) Political metaphor.

12. What does Leeming say suggests a desire to escape from earthly existence?
(a) The development of technology.
(b) The transition from struggle and creation to fall from grace.
(c) The transformation from instinctual to moral consciousness.
(d) The evolution of morals and laws.

13. What does Leeming say the flood was for in Mayan culture?
(a) As a way to help cultivate the earth.
(b) Destroying an experimental form of humankind.
(c) As a punishment for sins against the gods.
(d) As an attempt to avert a war against the gods.

14. How does Leeming describe the Boshongo culture?
(a) As communal.
(b) As patrilineal.
(c) As warlike.
(d) As matriarchal.

15. How does Leeming say the Greek pantheon differs from other pantheons?
(a) The Greek gods had a great number of human attributes.
(b) The Greek gods were imposed on cultures Greeks influenced.
(c) The Greek gods were not always more powerful than humans.
(d) The Greek gods retained their local origins and cults.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is an ontological reason for myth?

2. Who was the oldest divine being in the Greek pantheon?

3. Whose behavior does Leeming say explains the behavior of the Olympian gods in the Greek pantheon?

4. Which narrative is not an aspect of cosmogony?

5. Who does Leeming say is the archetypal helper god in the Meso-American pantheon?

(see the answer keys)

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