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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Where does Leeming say the Great Mother began to play a role over time?
(a) In modern art.
(b) In folklore.
(c) In industrial religion.
(d) In primitive culture.

2. What does Leeming say the Roman pantheon is rife with?
(a) Prophecy of Christ.
(b) Anxiety about the Greeks' supremacy.
(c) Legalistic language.
(d) Political metaphor.

3. When was the Book of the Dead made?
(a) 2134 BCE.
(b) 1200 CE.
(c) 1550 BCE.
(d) 1400 CE.

4. How does Leeming describe the Boshongo culture?
(a) As patrilineal.
(b) As communal.
(c) As matriarchal.
(d) As warlike.

5. What is cosmogony?
(a) Myth of the end of time.
(b) Myth of the beginning of humanity.
(c) Myth of creation.
(d) Myth of beautification.

6. What does Leeming say the flood was for in Mayan culture?
(a) As an attempt to avert a war against the gods.
(b) As a punishment for sins against the gods.
(c) As a way to help cultivate the earth.
(d) Destroying an experimental form of humankind.

7. How does Leeming say the Greek pantheon differs from other pantheons?
(a) The Greek gods were imposed on cultures Greeks influenced.
(b) The Greek gods had a great number of human attributes.
(c) The Greek gods retained their local origins and cults.
(d) The Greek gods were not always more powerful than humans.

8. What is an ontological reason for myth?
(a) To understand the goal of existence.
(b) To compensate for the loss of instinct.
(c) To beautify existence.
(d) To understand existence.

9. Where is the Norse pantheon first described in writing?
(a) The Elder and Younger Eddas.
(b) The Kalevala.
(c) The Nibelungenleid.
(d) Tacitus' Germania.

10. What does Leeming say about cosmogonies?
(a) That they are typically linear narratives.
(b) That they are typically moral.
(c) That they are typically allegorical.
(d) That they are typically female.

11. For what does Leeming say the gods are metaphors?
(a) Elements of society, as well as human emotions.
(b) Timeless laws of the universe.
(c) Earth, wind, water and fire.
(d) The collective unconscious.

12. What does Leeming say the Hebrew creation myth was concerned with?
(a) The possibility of justice in dealings with people.
(b) The indifference of the creator to his creation.
(c) The role of humanity in the universe.
(d) The morality of human beings.

13. How does Leeming say earth religions still worship the Great Mother?
(a) In the constellations.
(b) In the seasons.
(c) In the form of nature.
(d) In modern agriculture.

14. What does Leeming say is consistent from one set of myths to another?
(a) Universal human concerns.
(b) Monsters and angels.
(c) Heroes and heroines.
(d) Transcendent truths.

15. The first recorded creation myth was part myth and part what else?
(a) Funeral dirge.
(b) Celebration of the high Marduk.
(c) Rite of passage.
(d) Wedding ode.

Short Answer Questions

1. Who does Leeming say is the main god in the Norse pantheon?

2. What does Leeming say the Great Mother represents?

3. What evidence does Leeming cite to argue for a single matriarch at the beginning of the Greek pantheon?

4. Where is the first recorded creation myth from?

5. During whose reign was the first creation myth recorded, according to Leeming?

(see the answer keys)

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