Examines myths concerning dragons and dragon-slaying throughout proto-Indo-European cultures, ancient Near Eastern and Mesopotamian traditions, Indian mythology, and the Bible.
This book is about myth—a myth that plays a major role in the Hebrew Bible and a substantial role in the New Testament. This myth has a hoary ancestry, extending back long before its appearance in the Hebrew Bible, and a vast range, extending as far as India and possibly even to Japan. This book is a chronicle of its trajectories and permutations. The target of this study is the biblical myth. This target, however, is itself a fluid tradition, responding to and reworking extrabiblical myths and reworking its own myths. In this study, Miller examines the dragon and dragon-slaying myth throughout India, the proto-Indo-European cultures, Iran, the Hittites, other ancient Near Eastern and Mesopotamian traditions, and then throughout the Bible, including Genesis, the Psalms, Daniel, and ultimately the New Testament and the book of Revelation. He shows how the myth pervades many cultures and many civilizations, but always with the goal of showing that the dragon is always conquered, despite its many manifestations. In his conclusion, Miller points out the importance of the myth as a hermeneutic for understanding key parts of biblical literature.
