Of course, another option, in contrast to the preceding four views, is that the biblical writers absorbed mythical worldviews unconsciously, reproduced them in their writings, and believed them to be reliable descriptions of the real world and events occurring in the past real world (creation account, flood narrative, etc.) because they were part of their socially constructed reality.⁸ Divine inspiration did not limit such cultural, mythical influence.

Does Enns agree with this latter view, still nevertheless contending that God used myths to convey truth? Does Enns believe that these Old Testament "mythical accounts" do not contain essential historicity, so that he uses the word myth with its normal meaning? The following analysis of Enns will contend that his view, while sometimes consistent with some of the four above views, does not primarily align itself with any of them. He appears to give an affirmative answer to the preceding two questions, though one must work hard at interpreting Enns to come to these conclusions, since, at crucial points in his discussion, he is unclear. It would have been helpful to readers if Enns had acknowledged the above variety of ways that the Old Testament interacts with ANE myth and where precisely he positioned himself with respect to various Old Testament passages.

According to Enns, the ancient peoples around Israel asked questions about their ultimate being and meaning, "so, stories were made up," especially about the creation (p. 41). The Genesis account of creation "is firmly rooted in the [mythological] worldview of the time" (p. 27); in other words the Genesis passage presupposes and utilizes the mythological creation stories circulating in the ANE (including, presumably, the background of the account about "Adam's" creation?). The main point, according to Enns, is to show that Yahweh is the true God and not the Babylonian gods (p. 27). The same conclusion is reached with respect to the flood account (pp. 27-29).

Enns likes the use of the word myth to describe these biblical accounts, but how does he define myth precisely? Enns says that not all historians of the ancient Near East use the word myth simply as "shorthand for ‘untrue,' ‘made-up,' ‘storybook,'" a position with which he appears to align himself (p. 40). Yet, enigmatically, he goes on to define myth in the ANE as something apparently very close to this. His formal definition of "myth" is as follows: "Myth is an ancient, premodern, prescientific way of addressing questions of ultimate origins and meaning in the form of stories: Who are we? Where do we come from?" (p. 50; so likewise p. 40).

Note well that there is no reference to history or actual events in this definition. But then Enns proceeds to affirm, despite his earlier apparent qualification about "made-up" stories, that ANE myths were "stories [that] were made up" (p. 41, my italics) and were composed by a process of "telling stories" (p. 41), and that "the biblical stories" of the "creation and flood must be understood first and foremost in the ancient contexts." This means, interpreting Enns by Enns, that the biblical stories had "a firm grounding in ancient myth" (p. 56, my italics); to reiterate, with specific reference to the Genesis creation account, he says it "is firmly rooted in the [mythological] worldview of the time" (previous page). So, what is Enns's view of myth in relation to real events of the past?

In this respect and in connection with some of Enns's directly preceding statements, he poses a difficult question:

"If the ancient Near Eastern stories are myth (defined in this way as prescientific stories of origins), and since the biblical stories are similar enough to these stories to invite comparison, does this indicate that myth is the proper category for understanding Genesis?" (p. 41)