Volume 1, Issue 2, May 1994

MYTHOLOGY

Myths are pictorial presentations of enduring and essential truth about the unseen forces with which humankind has to do, and of our relations with them. Usually they are stories that account for the origins of beings, things, situations, or events. Many myths are prehistorical in origin; others were created in subsequent historical periods. It is an art which is being found again, ie, the programme Star Trek.

Myths are metaphorical of spiritual potentiality in the human being, and the same powers that animate our life animate the life of the world.

Professor Joseph Campbell in his book, "The Power of Myth", stated science and mythology do not conflict. He said, "Science is breaking through now into the mystery dimensions. It's pushed itself into the sphere the myth is talking about. It's come to the edge, the interface between what can be known and what is never to be discovered because it is a mystery that transcends all human research. The source of life - what is it? No one knows. We don't even know what an atom is, whether it is a wave or a particle - it is both...
That's the reason we speak of the divine. There's a transcendent energy source. When the physicist observes subatomic particles, he's seeing a trace on a screen. These traces come and go, come and go, and we come and go, and all of life comes and goes. That energy is the informing energy of all things. Mythic worship is addressed to that.

WHAT BECOMES OF THE AUTHORITY OF THE BIBLE if any part of it can be described to myth? The answer is found in reflection upon the distinction between conveyers of truth and truth itself. In any age our means of expression are imperfect; we feel realities which

cannot with any mathematical rigidity be defined or described. So we need the poet and the artist, gifted with divine inspiration to suggest by symbolic words and forms the truths which no flat pose or scientific measurement can represent.

The imaginative stories, including the element of myth, which form parts of the Bible are the efforts of persons to put truth into pictures. These wondering thinkers were sure that humankind is not the first or greatest reality in existence. There was and is Something or Someone greater than them. The biblical writers took imaginative forms which had come down in tradition, used the metaphorical language of their day, and made their reflections of spiritual truths.

Therefore, biblical myths are not fantasy, or illusions of primitive mentality; they are an unique way of communicating what is created and perceived by the imagination. Myths are believed in faith; though they cannot be proved to be true by reason, they are accepted by reason as pointing to truth.

As suggested above, the day of the usefulness of mythology is not over. John Spong in his book, "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism", states we need to demythologize the myths of the Bible in order that we might remythologize them in today's metaphors.

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"Religion NOW" is published in limited edition by the Rev. Ross E. Readhead, B.A., B.D., Certificate of Corrections, McMaster University, in the interest of furthering knowledge and participation in religion. Dialogue is invited and welcomed.