When Myths Became Holy

Before they were holy, they were stories. How did they come to shape the world?

Why does a story survive for thousands of years? How does it become sacred truth? And what happens when it gains the authority to define right and wrong, crown rulers, promise salvation, or demand sacrifice?

When Myths Became Holy follows the passage from human experience to shared memory, ritual, scripture, and power. Across ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Iran, India, Greece, and the traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, it explores how people gave meaning to life's deepest uncertainties-and how those meanings changed as they crossed borders and generations.

Through creation stories, floods, miracles, prophets, heavenly journeys, and visions of the afterlife, the book investigates how sacred narratives take root. When do similarities reveal contact between cultures? When do they reflect the same human fears and hopes? And what can history tell us when evidence is fragmentary and belief is deeply held?

This is also a story of religion's profound human consequences: its capacity to inspire compassion, beauty, and belonging, alongside its use in justifying exclusion, obedience, and violence.

Written for curious readers of history, mythology, and religion, When Myths Became Holy invites believers, sceptics, and those in between to examine how sacred stories were preserved, transformed, and entrusted with authority.

To understand the stories we inherit is to understand something of ourselves.