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

Multiple Choice Questions

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

2. What is the end goal of human development in Hopi myth, in Leeming's account?
(a) Converting non-believers to the Hopi perspective.
(b) Manifesting the divinity on earth.
(c) Growing into the light of the Sun God's power.
(d) Winning glory for their god.

3. What does Leeming say cosmogonies represent?
(a) Future predictions.
(b) Scientific truths.
(c) Historical realities.
(d) Cultural truths.

4. What does Leeming say the Hebraic people's monotheistic god focused on?
(a) The dangers of disobeying God.
(b) The sublimity of God.
(c) The importance of being on a mission.
(d) The importance of proselytizing.

5. What problem or question does Leeming say cultures were addressing in cosmogonies?
(a) The question of why men are stronger than women are.
(b) The question of how man rose to the summit of power over nature.
(c) The question of birth from nothing.
(d) The question of how life forms evolved and differentiated.

6. What creation myth does Leeming say modern people favor?
(a) The Big Bang.
(b) Intelligent design.
(c) Evolution.
(d) Creation ex nihilo.

7. How does Leeming define gods?
(a) They are metaphors for human experiences.
(b) They are projections of human dreams into enduring characters.
(c) They are immortal beings who personify the transcendence of the laws of nature.
(d) They are manifestations of the collective unconscious.

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

9. What does Leeming say happened to the figure of the Great Mother over time?
(a) It lingered at the periphery of industrial culture.
(b) It became merely decorative.
(c) It acquired new faces.
(d) It lost significance.

10. To what does Leeming say the oldest myth refers?
(a) Primeval gathering places or mounds that become fused with the sun.
(b) Caves where men are reunited with the earth.
(c) Plains where men sow seeds that unite earth and water.
(d) Oceans where life first developed.

11. How does Leeming describe the mythic concern with creation?
(a) As a metaphor for history.
(b) As a metaphor for maturity.
(c) As a metaphor for storytelling.
(d) As a metaphor for birth.

12. How does Leeming say the Zeus and Hera represented humanity in Greek culture?
(a) In a caricature of male and female spirits.
(b) In a realistic yet skeptical portrait.
(c) In an idealized portrait of man and wife.
(d) In an essentializing portrait.

13. Where does Leeming say the world originates in the Christian creation myth?
(a) Chaos.
(b) God.
(c) Language.
(d) Itself.

14. When were creation myths repeated in the culture that created the oldest myth Leeming cites?
(a) During weddings and births.
(b) During rites of passage.
(c) During coronations and funerals.
(d) During wars.

15. How does Leeming define cosmology?
(a) The scientific study of the universal order.
(b) The study of the structure of the universe.
(c) The study of the history of the heavens.
(d) The study of beauty aids.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Leeming say the Supreme Being is frequently characterized?

2. Whose behavior does Leeming say explains the behavior of the Olympian gods in the Greek pantheon?

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

4. How do the Greeks explain the presence of winter?

5. Who is Frigg, in the Norse pantheon?

(see the answer keys)

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