The bible is really quite different from other ancient religious or mythic texts. Here, Shemaryahu Talmon (quoted by Robert Alter) proposes that this is very intentional on the part of the writers.
The ancient Hebrew writers purposefully nurtured and developed prose narration to take the place of the epic genre which by its content was intimately bound up with the world of paganism, and appears to have had a special standing in the polytheistic cults. The recitation of the epics was tantamount to an enactment of cosmic events in the manner of sympathetic magic. In the process of total rejection of the polytheistic religions and their ritual expressions in the cult, epic songs and also the epic genre were purged from the repertoire of the Hebrew authors.
They were trying quite deliberately to distance themselves from paganism, including the literary genres typically associated with it. The story of Exodus could have been written in a style very similar to the Odyssey. In fact, that’s how everyone else would have done it! But the people of the one true God are different and they didn’t want their history lumped together with the other myths. They invented a new story-telling style. It’s more like raw history, but more intimate.