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While these two books differ radically in orientation and presentation, from the point of view of content, they draw, each selectively, on the same general body of data.
Graves and Patai's Hebrew Myths is a scholarly approach to sixty-one of the stories of Genesis, following in the lucid format of Graves' well-known The Greek Myths. Typically, a brief passage from Genesis is quoted, followed by a sampling from the Midrash, that part of the Talmud with sayings and tales appended to biblical verses, and accumulated for a millennium and a half following the canonization of the Five Books of Moses in the Fifth Century B.C. The authors then briefly comment on this material, pointing out illuminating parallels from other mythologies and historical events which may be represented therein.
Basic to this arrangement is the concept that the editing of the Pentateuch was in the service of a well-advanced monotheism, but that the Midrash was a channel for the return of the suppressed and the repressed. While the authors do not write or think in the psychoanalytic theoretical framework, their work can be considered valuable as a modest digest of important sources, upon which psychoanalytic interpretation can be safely made within the precincts of professional higher biblical criticism.
In contrasting the Hebrew myths with the Greek and Roman, they point out that only in the former is there an acute sense of national history and destiny. But they lead us no further into the fascinating question of the unconscious cultural factors operating in Judaism, which are related to its remarkable longevity.