Archlute
Puritan Board Senior
I'm pretty much with Dennis here. "Myth", at its core, is a literary genre, and the Genesis creation account certainly fits into that genre's definition (loosely, "stories that a particular culture believes to be true regarding supernatural explanations for natural events").
But, it's also the truth.
But, Rae, your initial statement, and your final statement would not gel in any academic discussion of "myth". The genre of mythology/myth has been shaped largely by sociologists who use the category as a way by which to explain any person or people group's explanation of the "true" secular and materialist view of the universe by means of anything divine, supernatural, and by their definition "false". They would not put it that way, of course, but it is the essence of what they convey in their writings.
Myth, as it was used during my time in the university, was always taken in that way. It was never used in a way that would lend credibility to the myth makers' ideas. At best, the academics would look down in sympathy upon the folk who used these stories as a way of explaining their environment, knowing that although they did so in sincerity, they also did so in ignorance.
Applying the terminology of "myth" to any part of Scripture, knowing how it is used not only in popular culture, but also in the social sciences as they have crossed into genre studies, is ultimately unhelpful when it comes to maintaining an orthodox position of infallibility, historicity, and inerrancy.
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