A certain school of historians of religion to which the writer of this pretentious book adheres maintains that myth evolves from ritual. According to this school the rituals which aim at reassuring the seasonal renewal of vitality follow definite and universal "patterns" that are inherent in human nature. They comprise mortification, purification, invigoration and jubilation and involve sham battles and communal meals. These patterns, we are told, are "mythologized" and thereby the human experiences of which they are the expression are placed in the realm of the timeless, i.e. the eternal. In a further step then, people are moved to act out myth and thereby transform it into drama. Thus many mythical (and "epical") texts which we possess are in reality textbooks for ritual "dramata" or at least reflect such textbooks. It is Gaster's thesis that this is true of the texts from the Ancient Near East of which he offers translations.l They comprise, from Ras Shamra-Ugarit, the texts of the "Ba'l cycle," the poem of Sahar and Salem, and the texts of the "Danel cycle" by others called "Aqhat cycle"; from BoAazkoy-Uattusas, the Illuyankas text, that of the socalled Yuzgat tablet and the Telepinus text; from Egypt, the "dramatic" texts; from Israel, certain psalms.
The basic concepts of the author trace back through Gilbert Murray who contributed a foreword to the present volume -, S. H. Hooke,2 and Joh. Pedersen3 to J. G. Frazer and his famous "Golden Bough." Gaster acts as the protagonist of "cultural anthropology" and "folklore." He sets these disciplines against "philology." For the "philologist" he seems to have a deep-seated contempt and apparently considers him as narrow-minded, only concerned with words and unwilling or unable to penetrate to the real meaning behind the texts.