Including oral tradition/mythology? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_magical_weapons

@DVK-in-exile Yes to oral tradition +1 (see edit), but answers in answers not in comments. :)

When was the first sword made... I bet there as a magic one a day later.

The Christian bible (specifically Genesis, which is derived from an older work than the 'main' bible) includes a flaming sword: Genesis 3:24 (KJV) "So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life." Sounds fairly magical to me.

@K-H-W OP might want to clarify whether "divine" counts as "magical". The earlier comment about mythology suggests the flaming sword might not count.

Gilgamesh (2100 B.C.) had a really big sword. It weighed 8 talents (210Kg) but it wasn't magical.

@Era -- A sword turning "every way" on its own seems pretty magical to me :) -- Hard to imagine a sword without a wielder that isn't anything but magical... Let alone a fire-brand!

While the sword in the Bible certainly qualifies as supernatural, not everyone considers the Bible to be fiction. It'd be at best indelicate to assume that a sincerely held worldview is patently false. It also wouldn't qualify as an answer, based on this site's policy.

@Matt -- From the OP Question -- "What is the first work of fantasy, myth, legend to feature a magic sword?" -- I think, irrespective of ones view of the biblical text, the story qualifies for either the myth or legend adjective. As a plain literal reading would require the sword to still be there (somewhere) for anyone to see. -- Also, the answers so far are all using religious stories. ;)

In that case, it may be appropriate to change or close the question. The other answers should also be closed, based on the policy outlines in the meta. Whether or not any given religion qualifies as "fantasy" is WAY outside the scope of this site. Questions about works that aren't fiction are ALSO outside the scope of this site.

@Matt I explicitly stated fiction in the question. However, I have revised the question to help address your concerns. Good?

@Matt -- Although the policy may be against calling a religion fiction, I should point out that this question's title includes Legend as a possibility, and Legends are not necessarily fictitious. That said, sadly, the question stipulates 'Where in fiction', so it may still be out. (And why I posted it as a comment to begin with instead of an answer.)

Perhaps asking for an answer from "non-religious" texts / oral tradition will give something appropriate?

@Lexible That's fine. It needs to be clarified. If your question includes NON-fiction works (as one user reasonably argues "legends" to include), then it's "Off-Topic." If your question does NOT include non-fiction works, then the religious answers are "Not An Answer." Regardless "Any answer which implies that a religious work is a work of fiction should be immediately flagged for moderator attention (pending deletion)."

@K-H-W altered "speculative fiction" to "fiction entailing magic".

@Matt I don't see how it can include non-fiction, if I explicitly asked for fiction?

@Lexible -- Look up (e.g.) Richard Dawkin's opinion of ANY religion and you'll quickly see why such questions / answers are off topic for SciFi SE.

@Lexible Sorry, I didn't see your edit. It's totally fine, now. I always assumed that you did not intend to include non-fiction. I was just trying to be circumspect with user<somenumbers>

@user23715 If we do that, then we're out of options for the first ~7000 years of writing. Almost all of our most valued myths are still religious to some people.

@Axelrod -- Yes. BUT the same question could be asked on the Religion SE, no? "Problem" solved. :)

@user23715 No, it couldn't.

Because then we'd exclude fiction!

Well, yes. I was assuming the question here would be modified to include only expressly fantasy/fiction writing.

And I wasn't, because it was a question which primarily fits inside SFF, but has awesome roots religions.

SFF only exists because of those religions inspiring writers. The question didn't include fiction when I answered, and I'd very much like to keep it.

If you ask about a fantastic element in literature, you're going to come up with an answer that is religious to someone at some time.

I say keep the question nondescript. There's certainly older (in terms of publication) answers in other religious texts.

I'm with you @Axelrod , but technically it does violate the SE rules governing this SE. -- And yep, the rules are hardly ever enforced equitably. MODS are volunteers and human.

@Axelrod reminds me of my answer to the "first magic wands" question.

What's the argument against the inclusion of religion-based texts? That some people would argue that they are not fiction?

Apparently. Although even if there were historical non-religious non-fiction documentation of a magical sword, I am pretty sure the OP would still want to know about it

@Tyrannosaur The idea of writing fiction is fairly new, though.

I had the thought "this sounds like a literature question more than a sci-fi/fantasy question" -- and then I read your comment-- there isn't a Literature.SE, which makes this the most accurate site to ask the question, regardless of whether some people believe religiously in it or not...

It might be hard to find enough interest in Lit SE given the nature of the Internet.

@Loong -- Thank you for that clear vindication of my mere opinion. :^D

@Axelrod The question included fiction from its first iteration forward.

@Lexible It doesn't even specify fiction now.

@Axelrod Third word: "Where in fiction..."

Hell, it's history-of. Which wouldn't be a tag if we couldn't use religious answers.

@Axelrod So... yes it includes fiction now. And it has through all three edits.

@user23715 Where is the question in violation of site policy? It is explicitly concerned with "fiction entailing magic"... so concerns about religions settled? Trying to get it in acceptible form.

Just get rid of the history-of portion and ask to have all three answers removed.

meta.scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/1053/… -- The answer is a clear "no" but, like I've said, it will only get used to enforce troll or near-troll type questions / answers / comments. -- There are so many SciFi stories about religion that how could this ever be enforced equitably and still have a functioning SE? <-- Rhetorical question btw. :)

... It seems pretty clear that the whole point of a ban on having questions or answers about religious texts is the potential to cause deliberate offence (i.e. by mighty internet atheists). That's clearly not the spirit of the question or any of the answers in this case. To state that a frequently-used element of fiction has antecedents in religious texts does not imply anything about said religious texts.

To fit in with the spirit of the rule, it would make sense to change the wording of the question from 'Where in fiction entailing magic...' to something like 'What's the earliest known story involving magic or the supernatural...' (assuming such a change would accurately reflect the OP's intention).

@evilsoup Apparently he wanted it to be fiction only, so we'd have to remove upwards of all the answers.

Beowulf might have been a conversion piece, like the Thor's Hammer / Cross necklaces they used to make.

It's great to see the "move comments to chat" function working as it should, and people talking constructively about the issue in chat :-) This is just a gentle reminder to be nice and respect each other's differing beliefs, and remember that there's always meta if you want to formalise any of this discussion or get a site consensus out of it.

@Axelrod -- well, in that case the religion-based answers would be incorrect... But I believe the standard policy on stackexchange sites is for incorrect answers to be dealt with via votes rather than moderation tools.

Also, that meta post is nearly five years old and seems to me to be primarily about preventing trolling from obnoxious atheists. I'm not really sure that it's entirely relevant to this case... or might be worthwhile putting up a new question on meta?

Both to clarify and to see what the current usage

Rand is always for a new Meta question, but we have to ask with the framing of the old answer being questionable or they'll just mark it as a dupe.

I'll... consider doing it, if no one else does in the next hour.

There was a new meta post about this issue only last week:

@Randal'Thor That's not a proper answer to the situation either, because the answers don't imply that the works are fiction. They're answering the History-Of aspect of the question.

@evilsoup Sleep well, soup which is also evil.

At what point does myth and religion separate? Is the Epic of Gilgamesh considered a religious work? Is the Illiad or the stories of the ancient Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Greeks, Norse, etc?