one of the reasons our books are unique.
i do need to say that pointing out that there are mythologized elements in the tanakh (from both a secular and anthropological level. i'm a religious jew and someone with anthropology and jewish studies credentials) is not saying anything is a fairy tale. fairy tales are european in origin. fairy tales developed with certain messages and much of the time, they were antisemitic. i know you were using the term casually btw, but i wanted to point this out.
(i should add that some non-european cultures have tales that are similar to fairy tales...but they're not the same thing. they fall under folklore. fairy tales also have different cycles, etc. it's a whole thing)
myths and FOLKLORE are different from fairy tales and universal. myths and folklore also have heroes with fatal flaws. look at gilgamesh. look at odysseus from the odyssey. neither of these stories are fairy tales and both explain certain events that actually happened. both have heroes with flawed personalities who must learn the error of their ways and, in their own cultures, repent. gilgamesh also doesn't have a happy ending.
also, take the exodus story. at the estimated time period of the exodus, there were cataclysmic events that caused mass movement of insects and animals and changes in water, tide, etc. the bloody water could have been connected to minerals in the sediment.
ancient cultures, including us, created myths to explain things that we would consider logic today because of science. that is one of the purposes of a myth.
or say kashrut laws. eating pigs in the desert was not a great thing, since ancient pigs ate the dead. eating dairy and meat together when we had no way to refrigerate the meat and that was one of the top causes of death before fridges were invented, was not a good idea. we had a combination of logical laws like these and moral laws, like how to treat slaves and women and spouses, and animals. (another reason our books are unique). also how to treat the land.
the tanakh is not JUST mythologized versions of certain events though, as we all know. it's biographies and autobiographies of leaders, it's poetry and songs, and of course, it's a compendium of laws.
it's a very unique set of books, because other indigenous cultures that have anything similar usually have it in an oral tradition. usually, not always.
we could say the tanakh is basically a scrapbook history and ethnography of the jewish people, compiled by our own hands, in our own words. it's a beautiful thing for religious reasons and those reasons too.
