Comments on: Pandora and Adam. Hm.

By: Lucie

Lucie — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 16:52:27 +0000

(Just for this post I’m going to define myths as specifically creation stories)
The problem that people have with myths is that there isn’t a ‘formula’ of sorts for figuring out how much of a myth is true. Some myths are completely true (Genesis) and others have very little truth at all (the creation story that the Mayans believed in comes to mind…)

My idea that might explain why society likes to laugh at myths (Of any sort. Not just creation stories.)
People generally like easy answers. All or nothing. Believing in all the myths isn’t that pleasant a thought, and since many contradict each other, it’s not a very sensible thought either. So I think that many choose to believe that there can’t be any truth at all, or that there’s so little that it’s of negligible importance.

Granted, that’s a rather broad statement, but I think that there is some amount of truth to it. Just like the myths. (;

By: Daniel H. Anderson

Daniel H. Anderson — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 08:05:07 +0000

This is a very fascinating topic for me. Being a fan of history and theology I delight in looking at cultural archetypes and see how they coincide with the Biblical account of creation, the flood, and various other oddities and worldwide events in history. This is why the Silmarillion is one of my favorite books.
St. Athanasius touches on this subject in ‘On the Incarnation’ when he talks about the methods of revelation. He states that there are three main ways, apart from sharing God’s image, by which God reveals Himself; creation, prophets and the law. Additionally, Romans 1:19-20 declares that truth is evident within man and through creation. If, then one can gain a knowledge(though not, perhaps, a saving knowledge) of God apart from Scripture, why shouldn’t it also be true that one can gain a knowledge of history in this way?
Just because Scripture does not touch on a specific topic does not mean that what another source says should be disqualified. It is true that myths should be taken with a grain of salt, but this should not lead to the wide spread idea that myths hold little to no truth. I would agree with John R. Ahern that the modern culture has developed an unhealthy disbelief of myths. As a general rule, I think it is better to give myths the benefit of the doubt. Innocent until proven guilty as it were.
I also found Nathan Speare’s comment about how we worhip God to be quite fascinating. I had never really heard about worshipping God in quite that way.

By: 42

42 — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 18:17:06 +0000

It would lead us to wonder…

By: R. A. Byrd

R. A. Byrd — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 01:29:08 +0000

Isn’t your usage of pink for girls stereotypical? Tsk tsk tsk.

By: H. G. Roorda

H. G. Roorda — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 01:23:01 +0000

“I bet one legend that keeps recurring throughout history, in every culture, is the story of Popeye.” – Jack Handy.

By: Nathan Spear

Nathan Spear — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 07:12:24 +0000

“To put it another way, how on earth did Greece know about the three archangels? Or Apollyon?” ~John Ahern.

Simple. The Jewish Diaspora after the Assyrian invasion: the Jews spread throughout the world, many coming to Greece (hence the Hellenistic Jews).

Hannah: As a Tolkienist, I think that myths are reflections, however faulty, of the Great Myth (a myth is a story of the supernatural interacting with the natural), and therefore one may gain insight to the Great Myth by looking also at the myths (I know I have). Not all Christians can use myths in the way; perhaps this falls into what Paul was talking about in Romans 12: to believe and serve Christ with what He has given us, the measure of faith He has given. You worship Christ with your mind, not Lewis’, and I worship Christ with the mind that He has given me, a mind closer to Lewis’ in regard to Myth and myths. Lewis worshiped God according to the mind that God gave him, a mind that can worship with myths.

I hope that made sense.

SDG!

By: H. G. Roorda

H. G. Roorda — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 05:50:34 +0000

James Jordan has some interesting stuff on the Zodiac which you should look up, by the way.

By: H. G. Roorda

H. G. Roorda — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 05:49:35 +0000

I’m not completely against saying that there are myths that did happen but don’t feature in the Bible. But I am against Lewis’s elevation of them. You ask the same question I did– what’s true, and what’s false?

There’s enough cool stuff in the Bible that I don’t find other myths to be exciting, interesting, or worth devoting much time to (on my own part). I think studying mythology and fairy tales is an excellent pursuit; provided one does not take it too far when relating discoveries, theories, or ideas to other people (as I am inclined to believe Lewis did in the Space Trilogy).

Frankly, I think you want us to disagree with you more than we’re doing, and so you’re projecting things onto us that we don’t believe. :P

By: John R. Ahern

John R. Ahern — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 05:37:50 +0000

Hannah and Sarah — You have to face some uncomfortable options, then. I mean, it’s all very well with the flood because you can point to Bible and say “It happened to the whole world, of course everybody has a myth about that.” But the others are slightly different—if you admit that there’s truth behind the some of the Greek gods or Greek myths or something like that, you’ve already gotten yourself halfway to C. S. Lewis’ position, which is that these things are, in a way, Platonic (in a veeeeeeeeeerry broad sense) representations that make their way into other religions. To put it another way, how on earth did Greece know about the three archangels? Or Apollyon? I would of course agree that putting these myths on the same level as the Bible is absurd. They are distorted by inaccuracy and sin at every turn and just as likely to have diabolical as angelic origins. I think the question is, where do these stories represent something true and where something false? And, just because it isn’t essential, theological truth we’d be looking for doesn’t mean it’s necessarily gnostic truth (if such a thing exists).

James — That dragon theory seems like a modern-science-informed interpretation of some pretty straight-forward passages of Scripture. I could just say, I think when it says “fire-breathing dragon”, it means “fire-breathing dragon”. But that might sound a trifle young-earthy. :-P (Being old earth gives me a lot more time for exciting things to happen. I like that.)

Nick — I wasn’t meaning to imply that the field of anthropology is full of people who think myths are childish, although I think that insofar as they’re influenced by logical positivism, they inevitably do. I don’t know…I’m not familiar with the field, but I have heard that LP, though its influence remains, has definitely waned in popularity. I am saying, from the perspective of studying humans, how can we assume these myths are childish? Here, I’m simply attacking the notion that this is (a) something comparable to Medieval superstition or looking up your horoscopes in the daily newspaper or (b) not profitable for any real truth beyond simply an understanding of the culture it came out of and perhaps some dull didactic application.

I think we need to consider the possibility that these really carry an element of truth, perhaps one that, above all, our present culture would do well to learn from. The mistake would be to formulate doctrine from the knowledge of that truth, much like the wilder moments of St. Thomas’ angelology or Neo-Platonists like Bernard Sylvester. Be that as it may, could these common mythical themes be key to understanding the nature of revelation in pre-Abrahamic-covenant times? Or perhaps, more broadly, the way in which early human cultures can pick up on subtle aspects of divine revelation simply through general revelation?

By: Sarah

Sarah — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 04:59:12 +0000

I agree with Hannah on this one. There’s an obvious commonality in these myths, but what’s not obvious is what the truth is behind them or what we should do with them. Stories gets garbled remarkably quickly. Sometimes history seems like and enormous game of “telephone”

For instance, the flood myth. We have the true story and a bunch of false ones, and it’s hard to see what the false ones convey other than to back up that a real flood probably did happen. Beyond that the only trustworthy information we’re going to get will come straight from the source (the Bible, of course).

On the other hand, supposing the grain of truth in these stories, they are going to be useful in learning to tell good stories. Because most of the good stories that get told use bits and pieces of these things.