Part I: Chapters 1-5 Summary and Analysis

"The World of Myth: An Anthology" by David Adams Leeming begins by defining cosmic myth. According to Leeming, "Cosmic myths are myths of the cosmos." The word cosmos comes from the Greek "kosmos," which means "order." Cosmic myth belongs to cosmology, the scientific study of the universal order as a whole. Some of the topics that fall under cosmology are Creation, the Great Flood, the concept of afterlife, the Fall, and Revelation, which predicts the end of the world. Although cosmologies tend to be very different from one another, they all hold the basic concept of universal human concern from how the world was created, to the cleansing of sin, to the Apocalypse and the afterlife.

Leeming first analyzes the myth of Creation. This is referred to as a cosmogony, which also comes from the...