The Masks of God

I've recently been reading Joseph Campbell's four-volume work The Masks of God (which is in the New Lynn library, if you happen to live in Waitakere City).
Campbell is best known for his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, where he puts forward his theory of a "monomyth" about the hero's journey which recurs in all cultures. (It was used as the basis for the plot of Star Wars). He is also well known for a documentary series called The Power of Myth. Both have attracted widespread admiration and almost equally widespread criticism.
The Masks of God is also about myth. The four volumes are Primitive Mythology, Oriental Mythology, Occidental Mythology and Creative Mythology.
I have to say I didn't get through all of volume 4, which looks at how, through art (particularly literature), modern people have formed their own mythology. I got bogged down in his references to the heavy 20th-century novelists (especially James Joyce) whose works I hadn't read. But I did read about half of the fourth and all of the other three volumes. It was a wild ride, all over the world and through thousands of years, and I enjoyed it. I have some reservations, though.
Firstly, the books were written in the 1950s and 1960s, and lean heavily on the archaological knowledge and theories of the time. I'm not very well up with current archaology but I know that knowledge has advanced, and theories have changed, considerably in the 4 or 5 decades since the books' publication. In at least some cases this will have undermined Campbell's conclusions.
Secondly, Campbell doesn't use his very extensive references (the books bristle with footnotes) so much to argue a case for his theory as to illustrate his statement of it. He certainly gives no time to assessing or engaging with other theories, particularly the theories of conservative Christian and Jewish scholars who consider the Bible historical  - he dismisses them as obvious idiots who don't know myth when they see it and (a clear case of projection) aren't able to acknowledge contrary evidence. Perhaps this is what one reviewer on Amazon meant by calling the books "populist", because, with all the footnotes and Campbell's rich vocabulary, they're not a light read. They are "populist" in that they aren't scholarly in method and purpose (though they are scholarly in appearance).
What I found was that, on the whole, the more I knew about something he was talking about, the less likely I was to agree with him. The exception was his thoughts about the structure and effects of ritual, which I found very interesting and am planning to use as a springboard for some writing of my own. The first volume, in particular, draws some general anthropological conclusions which may be dubious in specific cases but (I think) have an overall validity. (It's also the shortest volume, so if you are daunted by the whole series, I'd suggest just reading Volume 1.)
Campbell is a bit inclined to see everything and everywhere as connected, and a few great themes running through it all, which means he ignores a lot of diversity. I did find it fascinating to consider that there may have been much more contact between diverse culture areas in ancient times than I was previously aware of; I'd often wondered, for instance, how it was that no knowledge of Buddhism had come west before about the 18th century. Turns out King Ashoka, a Buddhist king in India, sent missionaries to several places including Alexandria (in Egypt) about 300 years after the Buddha's death. It appears that their teachings just didn't take.
So, in summary, fascinating reading, but heavy, and keep the salt pot handy. You'll want to take it with plenty of grains.