Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Conventions and Abbreviations -- Chapter 1 Canonical and Alternative Creation Myths -- Chapter 2 Pandora or the Creation of a Greek Eve -- Chapter 3 The Birth of Paradise -- Chapter 4 The First Crime: Brothers and Fratricide in the Ancient Mediterranean -- Chapter 5 Greek Fallen Angels: Kronos and the Titans -- Chapter 6 Near Eastern and Native Traditions in Apollodorus' Account of the Flood -- Chapter 7 Don't Look Back: From the Wife of Lot to Orpheus and Eurydice -- Chapter 8 Balaam, Mopsus and Melampous: Tales of Travelling Seers -- Chapter 9 Hebrew Lishkah and Greek Leschê -- Chapter 10 The Scapegoat between Northern Syria, Hittites, Israelites, Greeks and Early Christians -- Chapter 11 Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Heliodorus in the Temple and Paul on the Road to Damascus -- Chapter 12 Persian Magoi and the Birth of the Term 'Magic' -- Chapter 13 Anaphe, Apollo Aiglêtês and the Origin of Asclepius -- Chapter 14 Attis: A Greek God in Anatolian Pessinous and Catullan Rome -- Chapter 15 The Myth of the Golden Fleece -- Appendix I Genesis 1.1: A Jewish Response to a Persian Challenge? -- Appendix II Magic and Religion? -- Appendix III The Spelling and Meaning of the Name Megabyxos -- Bibliography -- Index of Names, Subjects and Passages.