PPT Slide

What seems to characterize these mythico-religious accounts is that the physical world is explained in terms of the actions of the gods. Physical explanation takes the form of divine biography.

Yet there is a tension in these myths that has something to do with the origins of philosophy.

If the physical world arose from the acts of gods, where did the gods come from? From water, from primordial darkness.

Here we see a shift from biography to universal principle. Even in the Genesis account the word of God, Davar, in Greek, logos or reason, begins to emerge as being of paramount importance.