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