Jewish Mythology - in The Tanakh

In The Tanakh

The Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) are the foundational Jewish texts. They contain all of the sacred Jewish knowledge from Creation to statehood and loss of sovereignty, including the direct intervention of God, His covenants, laws, requirement for rituals, and miracles contained in the Torah, and the allegedly largely historical account of the nation of Israel that traces the histories of the twelve tribes of Israel back to Adam and Eve. While the vast majority of the world's myths take place before recorded history of the respective societies begins, the bulk of Tanakh is an allegedly written record of Jewish history, with only a small part dedicated to pre-Jewish history. While Tanakh does contain a significant amount of knowledge that can be said to be "a sacred narrative in the sense that it contributes to systems of thought and values, and that people attach religious or spiritual significance to it", it also contains a large amount of knowledge of strictly practical value in application such as building codes, regulations on hygiene and dietary intake, finance and standards of measurement, and others . In fact what is considered spiritual by modern society, the Jewish Kabbalah, had not become evident until the Mishnaic period, and had not reached peak of acceptance as part of the religious system as a whole until the Middle Ages.

Even if the larger interpretation of Mythology as folklore is accepted, the nature of Jewish traditions, or minhagim that would constitute the "transmissible entity" rarely reach to the Tanakh period.

The "material culture" of Judaism is mandated by its general rules or Halakha that include the Mezuzah as its earliest example, and the Tefillin as the most often seen example. Neither are considered to be "folklore artifacts" with both manufactured by qualified scribes.

Almost no "culture" can be traced from modern observant Jewish communities to the Tanakh. The wide differentiation observed even within the normatively "orthodox" haredi societies underscores the lack of common "culture" despite the commonality of Kol Torah among its leaders such as the World Agudath Israel.

Although "behavior" is something that is derived from the Tanakh by the observant Jews, the many rituals that could be considered folklore can not be practiced due to the lack of availability of the designated place, the Temple in Jerusalem. These rituals have been replaced by other, rationalized rituals that bear little resemblance to accepted forms of folklore or mythology in other societies.