Is There a Set of Common Mythological Themes?

Each choice is guided by some intuition of narrative suitability or beauty, or there's some higher ideal motivating it. That was certainly the case with the disney movies, for example. And so i would say, well, something like that guided the writing and the selection of the stories in the biblical canon. Could it have been different? It could have been different at some levels, but the same at others. You know....