Female Social Behaviour: Two Descriptive Patterns Within the "Birth of the Hero" Paradigm

Abstract

The of the myth, or paradigm, is a well-known and widely used model. As defined by O. Rank,' J. Campbell,2 A. Dundes,3 and others, it is a widespread literary (be it oral or written) pattern which tells how a hero is born despite many hardships and how he spends his early formative years. The difficult circumstances attending the birth and childhood stories serve, of course, to enhance the miraculous elements of the fact that the future hero manages to attain maturity: the more severe the circumstances described, the more impressive the results are. The birth stories of Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Samson and others all belong to the same category, or literary paradigm. Each particular instance may contain all the themes that make up the complete literary structure, or only some of those pertinent to the structure of the genre and its message. The of the myth is obviously not a unique pattern exclusive to Old Testament literature. The myth is an almost universal one which crops up in chronologically and geographically disparate cultures, while common themes link its various manifestations together; and dissimilarities accentuate differences of origin and cultural circumstances. The birth stories of Sargon the Great or King Oedipus are as legitimate members of the genre as the birth story of Moses-with individual differences, of course. However, the recurrent appearance of this type of story, albeit with modifications, is indicative of the popularity of the genre in Hebrew