Religious Studies?

If you are considering 'religious studies' in college, reconsider 'classics' (at least as a minor). When you read the greater Greek, and lesser Roman, classics you put in place a firm a foundation upon which further studies may be built. The Iliad is but one collection (attributed to Homer). This book was considered a bible in its day. Alexander the Great carried a copy in a jeweled box. The Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, and recent Egyptian histories (especially Akhenaten) have much to tell us about the folklore of the Levant. Clay tablets do not burn (as other histories which fell to the Roman torch).

Considering the mythical magnitude placed upon the Levant today, that area is best approached at the post-graduate level. Truth be known, historically the Levant was a god-forsaken wilderness with mushroom-eating nomads and very few large settlements.

What we have in that "constrained collection of regional folklore" that evolved into the Western Bible of 1611 is quite obviously "cultural borrowing" without any interest whatsoever (thus avoiding usury). On close examination this book is thereafter properly shelved next to Grimm's.