Michael #Witzel book: The Origins of the World's Mythologies, furious backscratching by wendy #doniger

i can predict with considerable confidence that witzel, who in his private life probably loves to say achtung!**, would not have included christian mythology in this book. why? because the myth of jesus and noah's ark, and god creating the world in 4004 BCE at 10am on oct 25th is not 'myth' but 'scripture', that's why.

i am betting mircea eliade and joseph campbell and turning around in their graves.

well, eliade must be positively spinning around in his grave considering the havoc wendy doniger (flaherty) has wrought upon his research area. 

and just as the ramachandra guhas and harsha manders and arundhathi roys of india do, doniger and witzel are furiously promoting each other's garbage. there will soon be some award for witzel, possibly from the templeton foundation or the pew trust, for having faithfully pushed certain antediluvian religious agendas.

** i don't want to use the n word, but i tell you, it's tempting

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: sri 
Date: Sun, Dec 16, 2012 at 7:32 AM
Subject: Michael Witzel book release: The Origins of the World's Mythologies
To:

FYI

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Michael Witzel <witzel@fas.harvard.edu>
Date: Sat, Dec 15, 2012 at 1:42 AM
Subject:  book release: comparative mythology

 

Dear All, 

I am happy to announce the release today of my long-delayed book (final version: March 2009):

The Origins of the World's Mythologies

OUP (NY), Dec. 2012, pp. 688

ISBN13: 9780199812851 ;  ISBN10: 0199812853

Available at Amazon, paperback $ 29. 

See the (habitually overdone) blurb:

http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/ReligionTheology/MythologyFolklore/?view=usa&ci=9780199812851

OUP says:

Description

This remarkable book is the most ambitious work on mythology since that of the renowned Mircea Eliade, who all but single-handedly invented the modern study of myth and religion. Focusing on the oldest available texts, buttressed by data from archeology, comparative linguistics and human population genetics, Michael Witzel reconstructs a single original African source for our collective myths, dating back some 100,000 years. Identifying features shared by this "Out of Africa" mythology and its northern Eurasian offshoots, Witzel suggests that these common myths--recounted by the communities of the "African Eve"--are the earliest evidence of ancient spirituality. Moreover these common features, Witzel shows, survive today in all major religions. Witzel's book is an intellectual hand grenade that will doubtless generate considerable excitement--and consternation--in the scholarly community. Indeed, everyone interested in mythology will want to grapple with Witzel's extraordinary hypothesis about the spirituality of our common ancestors, and to understand what it tells us about our modern cultures and the way they are linked at the deepest level.

Features

• Demonstrates the prehistoric origins of most of the Eurasian and Laurasian mythologies.
• Establishes a basis for much of our ancestral spirituality.

Reviews

"Not since Frazer's Golden Bough, not since Casaubon's Key to All Mythologies, has anyone achieved such a grand synthesis of world mythology. Boldly swimming upstream against the present scholarly emphasis on difference and context, Witzel assembles massive evidence for a single, prehistoric, Ur-mythology. An astonishing book"      --       Wendy Doniger, Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago and author of The Woman Who Pretended to Be Who She Was 

ENJOY!

Michael

============

Michael Witzel

witzel@fas.harvard.edu

<www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm>

Dept. of South Asian Studies, Harvard University

Wales Prof. of Sanskrit &

1 Bow Street,

Cambridge MA 02138, USA

my direct line:  617- 496 2990