# Definition of the word "myth"



## cih1355 (Dec 1, 2009)

When I was in college, I took a course in World Mythology and I remember the professor saying that a myth is a story that explains the worldview or values of a culture. A myth does not necessarily have to be a false or fictitious story. A myth can be a true story. What do you think about this?


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## Grillsy (Dec 1, 2009)

cih1355 said:


> When I was in college, I took a course in World Mythology and I remember the professor saying that a myth is a story that explains the worldview or values of a culture. A myth does not necessarily have to be a false or fictitious story. A myth can be a true story. What do you think about this?



Yes, in standard academic talk this is true. As a guy with a BA in Humanities who has spent far too much of his life studying and writing about that subject I can tell you, that is the accepted definition.

It is even common to hear people like Lewis or Tolkien refer to the Christian story as "myth".


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## JennyG (Dec 1, 2009)

It may be technically or academically true, (I;m sure you're right) but I wouldn't even consider using that term for the Christian story, knowing that 99.9% of people hearing the word "myth" are going to hear "untrue"


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## DTK (Dec 1, 2009)

cih1355 said:


> When I was in college, I took a course in World Mythology and I remember the professor saying that a myth is a story that explains the worldview or values of a culture. A myth does not necessarily have to be a false or fictitious story. A myth can be a true story. What do you think about this?


The Greek word *μῦθος* (myth), often translated as "fable" or "legend" is always used in a negative sense in the NT, and is contrasted with ἀλήθεια (truth) in 2 Timothy 4:4, where the Apostle Paul makes reference to "fables" or "mythical doctrines." It is translated as "fables" or "tales" in 2 Peter 1:16. In commenting on 2 Timothy 4:4, the early church father Theodoret described the plural of this word, τὰ μυθώδη, as "mythical doctrines" in contrasting them with the truth of Holy Scripture. See _Interpretatio Epist. II Ad Tim_., Cap. III, PG 82:852. See also Robert Charles Hill, _Theodoret of Cyrus: Commentary on the Letters of St. Paul_, Vol. 2 (Brookline: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2001), p. 247. Theordoret also authored a work titled, _Haereticarum fabularum compendium_ (A Compendium of Heretical Mythification), the Greek title being, Αἱρετικῆς κακομυθίας ἐπιτομή., κακομυθίας being a cognate of μῦθος, meaning "evil-speaking" or "falsehood" according to Lampe's _A Patristic Greek Lexicon_.

I believe this word occurs some five times in the NT...
1 Timothy 1:4
1 Timothy 4:7
2 Timothy 4:4
Titus 1:14
2 Peter 1:16.

DTK


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## Wayne (Dec 1, 2009)

David:

Thanks for that helpful background. 

It would be interesting to who started this modern usage or redefinition of the term _myth_. 
My strong suspicion is that it was done with a purposeful intent to denigrate Scripture, and I assume it arises out of the German higher critical movement.


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## Peairtach (Dec 1, 2009)

It's used alot by Liberals and the Neo-Orthodox who want to be "Christians" without accepting certain parts of the Bible as literally/historically true which are presented as literally/historically true.

You end up with a different religion to Christianity as Machen showed in his "Liberalism and Christianity"

E.g. the story of Adam and Eve will be viewed as myth, Noah and the Flood, the Resurrection of Christ, will be viewed as myth, i.e. it doesn't matter whether these things actually happened or not says the Neo-Orthodox, but what matters is the "religious truth" they contain.

All the miracles and more may be treated in this way.

Needless to say there is evidence in the Bible itself which helps us to decide whether something in it is historical or not. 

Just because a part of or story in the Bible involves miracles or the supernatural that our sinful minds find hard to accept, does not mean that this story did not really happen in history.

It's usually/always(?) necessary for the historical stories to be truly historical for the religious truth therein to be true truth and therefore of any relevance to mankind. 

God isn't playing mindgames with His Word or with the readers of His Word. When something is a parable or a story which never actually happened, but contains religious truth, we have all the information we need in the Bible to know that. Likewise if it's literal history.

Since the Enlightenment (circa 1700s), anything in the Bible deemed to be non-rational, i.e. not to comport with Man's fallen, finite and fallible, reason must be questioned and rejected, if not the whole idea of Biblical divine revelation itself.

The truth is that Man needs divine revelation, general, or general and special, in order to know anything. See e.g. John Frame, Van Til and Bahnsen, and others, on apologetics.

Enlightenment thought/thinking is starting to show signs of crumbling, viz. e.g., Post-modernism.


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## Grillsy (Dec 1, 2009)

Wayne said:


> David:
> 
> Thanks for that helpful background.
> 
> ...



One of the earliest places that I encountered the term used in its modern sense is later in the enlightenment period. Then It really came into popular use at the beginning of the 1900s.

You are right that it does have some serious roots in higher criticism. But the word "myth" as it is used is also a standard term in the Humanities today. I understand the opposition to using the word from those here, I myself shy away from it when possible. 

However, for certain "theologians" to refer to Christianity as myth was and is en vogue. The professor that I studied under for most of my humanities degree was big into this philosophy. He learned it all from Lewis. That reason, among others, was why I eventually came to abandon almost any endorsement of Lewis beyond reading for the enjoyment of his literature.


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## Philip (Dec 1, 2009)

Lewis was not original in his idea of "myth become fact" in the Gospel story--as far as I can tell, he got it from Chesterton's _The Everlasting Man_, which presents all of history as a giant myth (metanarrative in postmodern terms) with Christ at the center.


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## Hebrew Student (Dec 1, 2009)

cih1355,

I deal with this a whole lot. I agree that the term "myth" has a different meaning in the academic community, and so, when you are talking to a scholar, that is the terminology they will use.

However, I have difficulty with this knowing that Peter said that they did not follow cleverly devised myths. Hence, it is hard for me to use this terminology. I generally understand what a scholar is saying, but will, instead, use my own terminology, one that both he and myself can understand without using the term "myth."

Also, I find it funny that, given this definition, evolution is a myth.

God Bless,
Adam


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## DMcFadden (Dec 1, 2009)

Our division of time into 24 hours as represented by the hands on a clock face, the sun rising and setting, etc. also partakes of some of the "mythology" of our culture. They are conventional ways of organizing the external data and making sense of it. The definitions offered so far are true of its use in the academy. I would add that deeply profound cultural myths occupy an inconic place in the popular mind and cultural memory and are often represented by stock figures (e.g., the jester, the Good Samaritan, the Noble Savage). 

In contemporary popular use, however, myth is indistinguishable from falsehood. I avoid the term like the plague for reasons of likely misunderstanding (cf. the term "the cult/cultus" in Old Testament studies). Words should communicate, not obuscate. Terms that do not do that adequately should be avoided.


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## Philip (Dec 1, 2009)

I tend to prefer the term "metanarrative" to myth for this kind of a story just for clarity's sake, particularly when referring to the Christian story. However, when reading Lewis or Chesterton, it's important to realize that this is their view of all myth. This view of mythology is useful for understanding pagan myth, but is dangerous (though technically accurate) when used for the Christian story.


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## Peairtach (Dec 1, 2009)

I thought Lewis put up an apologetic for the Resurrection of Christ somewhere, saying that he (Lewis) knew what the language of myth was, and that this (the Resurrection story in the NT) wasn't myth (?)

I'm sure I read that somewhere.


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## Philip (Dec 1, 2009)

My reading of Lewis suggests that he saw the resurrection account as simultaneously factual and a myth. He saw the death and resurrection of Christ as a historical event that all previous myths had been pointing to. He wrote an essay entitled "Myth became fact" that sheds light on this (I believe it's found in _God in the Dock_).


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## Grillsy (Dec 1, 2009)

P. F. Pugh said:


> My reading of Lewis suggests that he saw the resurrection account as simultaneously factual and a myth. He saw the death and resurrection of Christ as a historical event that all previous myths had been pointing to. He wrote an essay entitled "Myth became fact" that sheds light on this (I believe it's found in _God in the Dock_).



Indeed he did. It is not Lewis' theory per say that I think is bad but what has been extrapolated from it in certain circles. Namely that since all myth has pointed to Christ then those who believed in the false mythologies have the possibility of salvation apart from hear the truth Gospel.


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## JennyG (Dec 1, 2009)

Hebrew Student rightly points out 


> given this definition, evolution is a myth.


Lewis has an essay called _The Funeral of a Great Myth_. I haven't read it for a while (think it's in Christian Reflections) but I think it shows he really grasped the truth about the evolutionary myth, even though he wasn't able to fight it head on, in that era of its greatest ascendancy.
anyone know the essay?


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## Peairtach (Dec 1, 2009)

So the way the word "myth" is being used by different people is rather confusing anyway. From this thread I seem to gather

(a) That a "myth" may or may not be factually true, or may be partially true and partially false (legend?) - but re "biblical myths" the Liberal or Neo-Orthodox would say it doesn't matter if it's factually true or not, as long as the religious truth it contains is true.

(b) A "myth" may be held by some to be definitely factually false, and yet be held to be religiously true.

(c) A "myth" may be held by someone like Lewis to be definitely factually true and for it to be important that it is factually true for it's religious content to be valid, and yet he (Lewis) calls it a "myth"

The amount of twisting there is by people of various stripes to get round the plain meaning of Scripture!

And yet this word or its Greek approximation is always used negatively in the NT in comparison with truth!

The (dangerous) games that are played with God's Word! this is why Schaeffer had to speak of the "true truth" of God's Word in distinction to the Barthians' "religious truth".


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