User:Til Eulenspiegel/Religious narratives as sacred canon


 * ...it is certainly cultural bias to apply "mythology" to the Hindu Vedas, or to sacred texts of any living world religion with millions of adherents — because when all is said and done, "your religion's texts are mythology" is still a propaganda POV, and the oldest one in the book. -- Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 20:00, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

The purpose of this page will be gradually to collect various quotes for handy reference, that show that there is another side of the story, and that only half the story is being told, according to the editors who would use the contentious and historically polemic label "myth" (or mythical / mythology) to characterize the texts that are held as sacred by the major living world religions.

Of course, many of these reliable sources were unilaterally declared "unreliable" for any purpose, by these same editors (in violation of WP:RS), using their circular argument that only the sources they like are "reliable" (or even admissible for purposes of determining NPOV), because their sources said so.

They are of course, reliable proof that another, significant point-of-view indeed really does exist.

I. Development of muthos in Ancient Greek
The word myth comes from Greek muthos, roughly "word of mouth" - a word that has had a strange and contorted history in its own right. Richard G. Trench, Synonyms of the Old Testament is an interesting and detailed scholarly discussion of how it developed from its earliest appearances in Homer as a synonym for logos (word), through later authors like Plutarch and Herodotus, where it implied a tale not literally true, to Classical or New Testament Greek - at which stage of the language it clearly denoted a fable that is false.


 * "Thus Dionysius of Halicarnassus in de Thucydide (5) criticizes the forerunners of Thucydides for their naivety in accepting many incredible myths... The pejorative implications of the very word 'myth' made it necessary to tread with care. -- The Jewish Dialogue with Greece and Rome, Tessa Rajak, 2001, p. 247

II. New Testament usage
The original language of the New Testament is of course Greek, as far as we know. The Greek New Testament uses the word muthos in several places, which is often translated as "myth" in modern English translations. The first three are all from the NIV. (New International Version)


 * I Timothy 1:3-4 - "As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies.
 * I Timothy 4:7 - "Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives tales; rather, train yourself to be godly."
 * 2 Timothy 4:3-4 - "For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths."
 * 2 Peter 1:16 - "For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty." [English Standard Version]

III. In the Quran
The Quran, written in Arabic, has a very similar term, used several times in exactly the same sense, that connotes a fable devoid of all truth: Ustura, plural Asatir. (This ironically comes from the same Greek word that gave us "History" and "story", but that's neither here nor there).

Traditionally, it is possible to translate "Ustura" into English as "myth", and it is possible to translate "myth" into Arabic as "Ustura". However, this caused some serious problems when some modern scholars writing in English began to speak of "Quranic myths" and this was translated into Arabic. One Muslim scholar, Mohammed Arkoun, has perceived this problem, and proposed as a solution, to translate the recent scholarly "non-judgemental" usage of "myth" in English, into Arabic not as "Ustura", but as "Qasas", meaning simply "story".

Similarly, another Muslim scholar, Mawwil Izzi Dien, discusses N. Smart's assertion (1970) that "myth" can be used as a neutral, non-judgemental term to discuss Quran stories, and notes that this term nevertheless presents difficulty; he recommends identifying Smart's revisionist definition of "myth" with the Islamic term riwaya, (narration) -- to avoid any semblance of challenging the Quran's veracity. The Environmental Dimensions of Islam by Mawil Izzi Dien, Mūʼil Yūsuf ʻIzz al-Dīn Published by James Clarke & Co., 2000 ISBN 0718829603, 9780718829605 p. 16

IV. Further use of "myth-" as a non-neutral or polemical (attack) word beginning in the "Enlightenment".

 * Voltaire
 * Thomas Paine throughout his Age of Reason declared the Bible was "mythology" and regularly attacked Christianity using this very epithet. For example: "the Christian Mythologists, calling themselves the Christian Church, have erected their fable, which, for absurdity and extravagance, is not exceeded by anything that is to be found in the mythology of the ancients."
 * Hegel
 * Karl Marx
 * "Of course for Rudolf Bultmann, myth stands against the rational, existential push for being. In A Theology of the Old Testament, Bultmann links myth with gnosticism in a pejorative way... Of course, Bultmann's plan is to demythologize the New Testament: 'The question is simply whether the New Testament message consists exclusively of mythology...' -- Reading Communities Reading Scripture - Daniel Patte, 2002, p 50. [NOTE: Bultmann is one of the 'academics' responsible for redefining the modern 'academic' term "myth", yet he clearly uses it pejoratively!]
 * "Moses and the people become, therefore, a necessary fiction of the political myth of the first books of the Bible..." -- Marxist Criticism of the Bible, Roland Boer, 2003 [NOTE: Mr. Boer uses the terms "mythical" and "theological" as virtually interchangeable synonyms throughout - a stance on the extreme edge of the POV spectrum that, seemingly, a few editors would have wp officially endorse]
 * "Now I do not believe the story of the flood and of Noah's Ark, and I doubt that many of those reading this believe it either, at least not in a literal sense. It is clearly a part of biblical mythology and probably originated in an earlier culture and found its way into the mythos of the ancient Hebrews and thus into the Old Testament." (Ricker, Godless in America: Conversations with an Atheist‎, 2006, p. 56)

Sources for modern world-views: Judaism

 * "...In general, the observant Israelis who had some kind of a religious background do not have this problem at all. Their conscience is clean, because they have a strong conviction that their case is just. They have no doubts at all to whom the land of Israel belongs. They have read their Bible and considered it as history and not mythology. -- The Unavoidable Surgery (subject: political science) by Mati Alon, 2004, p. 152.
 * "Although the Bible takes for granted the contours of ancient cosmogony, it has demythologized its understanding of existence. The Hebrew Bible contains no theogony, no myth that traces the creation to a primordial battle between divine powers, no ritual that enabled men to repeat the mythological drama... Mythological allusions have been torn out of their ancient context of polytheism and nature religion and acquired a completely new meaning within the historical syntax of Israel's faith." -- Bernhard Anderson, cited in The Torah: A Modern Commentary, 2005, p. 44

Sources for modern world-views: Christianity

 * "In these four NT passages one encounters myth in its best-known definition. What is mythical is not true. What is true is not mythical. If one is told that the flood of Noah's day is a myth, or that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is a myth, the hearer will assume that what is meant is that these two events are really fictitious narratives, invented stories... The reason why the stories of Gen. 1-11 in particular are often labeled as myth is that they reflect a prescientific or nonscientific worldview... Myth is not only a figurative expression of truth, but a false expression of truth as well. In this definition, myth becomes, essentially, any story about God or gods or any kind of supernatural powers... The above definition of myth has at least three problems. First, it is so broad in its definition that it reduces any kind of theistic statement to a mythical statement. Second, it suggests that such stories about God(s) reflect a naive concept of truth which science has dismantled. Third, such a definition of myth does not grow out of a study of mythology but from the opposition of myth to science. Bultmann did not arrive at the above definition by probing the myths of oriental and classical literature. He has given us a rationalistic, philosophical definition of myth rather than a phenomenological one. Many scholars would be content to interpret the Creation story or the Fall as neither history nor myth. It is not history, according to them, in the sense that Gen. 1-2 or Gen. 3 describes past events that actually happened. But neither are they myths, at least in the historical-philosophical definition of myth. The truth is that scholars disagree about the definition of the word. One recent writer (G. B. Caird) has isolated nine definitions of myth and another [J. W. Rogerson] documents twelve aspects of myth. This proliferation of definitions of myth is the reason why one scholar would look at Gen. 1-11 and say it is free of myth, while another scholar would look at Gen 1-11 and pronounce it entirely mythical." -- The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1-17 (part of The New International Commentary on the Old Testament) by Victor P. Hamilton, 1990, p. 56-58.


 * "As Giovanni Miegge emphasizes, "the supposed neutrality of those who offer only a formal definition of myth itself conceals a presupposition, and... this involves bringing Christian faith down to a level of pagan forms of worship, treating one as commensurable with the other. This is exactly what the New Testament itself refuses to do." (''Gospel and Myth in the Thought of Rudolf Bultmann, p. 101)...

NOTE THE FOLLOWING FROM Carl F. H. Henry ARE NOT MY WORDS, THIS IS ALL A QUOTE FROM A SCHOLAR WHO IS PEER-REVIEWING SEVERAL OTHER SCHOLARS ON THIS THEOLOGICAL DISPUTE:


 * Many scholars deplore the ascription of mythical language to Scripture as entirely unjustifiable and arbitrary. G. Ernest Wright observes that "the absence of the modern scientific view of the universe scarcely makes the literature in itself mythology." (God Who Acts p. 128). Wright stresses that myth is characteristic of the polytheistic, and of nature-worship religions in which man, nature and the gods blend into a single continuum; it is not, he insists, aptly descriptive of biblical religion (p. 125)...
 * "Since pagan god-stories concern not history but nature", writes James I. Packer, "and since Scripture recounts nothing of Yahweh like the celestial goings-on of these god-stories, it seems clearer and sounder to follow Scripture's own usage and reject myth as a non-Biblical category."...
 * The classic treatment of the New Testament attitude is Gustav Stahlin's essay on muthos in Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Stahlin here emphasizes the evident New Testament disdain for myth. The Bible approves no role whatever for myth, whether as symbolic or parabolic or as direct impartation of religious truths.... "No matter how the term is understood, and no matter how it is extended", Stahlin writes, the concept of myth involves "an inherent antithesis to truth and reality which is quite intolerable on NT soil."...
 * Philip E. Hughes emphasizes the incompatibility of myth with the biblical emphasis on historical and rational revelation. The use of myth in the framework of untruth or unfactuality in contrast to the truths of the Christian revelation "is in complete harmony with the term which from the time of Pindar onwards always bears the sense of what is fictitious, as opposed to the term logos, which indicated what was true and historical.... The Christ of the Bible is The Logos, not a mythos."...
 * If the category of myth is a form of expression for events occurring outside the limits of human history, then to apply the term to the Word made flesh inverts not simply the traditional sense of the term, but all linguistic usage as well, and all customary linguistic associations and implications. The notion of myth is not native to the Bible, and those who seek to superimpose the concept upon revealed religion are motivated neither by biblical precedent nor by any indrect encouragement that Scripture supplies...
 * The term myth has therefore acquired a bewildering ambiguity of connotation with respect to religious thought. It has, in fact, become a "tramp" word of uncertain identity and even contradictory nuances...
 * When a scholar insists, as Bultmann does, on religious myth as a basic comprehensive category beyond cognitive knowledge and truth, and then deplores particular elements as prescientific and therefore fanciful and outmoded in contrast to modern knowledge, and moreover insists on the actual ontological reality of what transcends the experient although it is cognitively inaccessible, he obviously weights the discussion of religious myth with multiplied confusion. Bultmann is, in fact, triple-minded about myth... Bultmann thus violates his primary definition of myth...
 * Bernard Ramm has recently proposed an evangelical redefinition and relocation of the concept of myth. He... laments the fact that Strauss and Bultmann have given the concept of myth a bad name in the theological arena..." -- All excerpts from God Who Speaks and Shows: Preliminary Considerations by Carl F. H. Henry, 1999, Chapter 3.  [NOTE: Several other scholars who have deplored the confusion of "myth" with "scripture" are also peer-reviewed, and he discusses the entire issue at length from all angles, but it would take up too much space to quote the whole chapter.]


 * "Through these texts [Gen. 1-2] we see what is the immediate source of the sacredness of marriage, love and fruitfulness. It is not a mythological archetype, as the neighbouring pagan peoples imagined. It is the creative word of Yahweh which gives expression to his enduring will." -- P. Grelot, Le Couple humain dans l'Ecriture, 1964, as translated in Creation Theology, Jose Morales, 2001, p. 161


 * [After a lengthy discussion of the important differences between Genesis and "myths"] "...Since the Hebrew worldview in Genesis is a theological history and not mythology, the question of the relation between creation and history is thereby posed." -- Creation-Covenant Scheme and Justification by Faith: A Canonical Study of the God-Human Drama in the Pentatech and the letter to the Romans‎ p 47 by Mary Sylvia Chinyere Nwachukwu, 2002


 * "...We believe that God has acted in this world of space and time. The events that the Bible records are not myth or fantasy. They are in the fullest sense of the word, history." -- Bible Teacher's Commentary (for pastors), 2002, p. 221


 * "The Old Testament makes a radical break with this philosophy of the ancient world. One does not do justice to the Old Testament by saying that Israel borrowed myth, or used mythological language to describe its faith. To the Hebrew, an absolutely sovereign God brought them into existence as a nation. Their concept of time was not cyclical but eschatological; their ritual at the temple was not cosmic and magical but an enactment of their redemption; and their concept of space was not limited to the primeval world but was actualized in history. In a word, reality to Israel was within her concept of history... Therefore Genesis is not myth. The Hebrew faith was a radical departure from the characteristic mythical thought of the pagans... [etc.] -- The Bible Knowledge Commentary (Dallas Seminary, 2004 ed.) p. 18


 * "...The professor walked out into the class of about 500 and looked us over and smiled. He said this semester we are going to talk about the mythology of the Bible. Some of you have been taught to believe that thing. I am going to teach you it is not true.  You don't have to be bound by that weakness. He was very effective and asked if we had any questions about the mythology of the Bible. I did not know any better and I raised my hand and said I believe the Bible is true and it is not mythology. He just pointed at me and everyone started laughing and snickering... After class there were 50 kids around me who said they were Christians too." -- Revelation from Now to Forever (subject:Religion) by John Barnett, 2004, p. 173.


 * "While they do not teach science, the early chapters of Genesis are history and not myth. -- Genesis: Part 1: God and His Creation Genesis 1-11, Gayle Somers, Sarah Christmyer, 2004, p. 102


 * "It is not a myth or a fable. We should be so lucky. Those who teach that about any of the Holy Bible's historical accounts are putting themselves right in the path of God's fiercest judgment.  We know they are not myths because of the many references made to them by other Holy Bible writers, including the Lord Jesus himself..." -- Moral Laws of a Higher Order, Gilbert Bynoe, 2005, p. 262.


 * "...Our point is this - after almost two-thousand years of people trying to disprove the Bible, trying to prove its contents false, all they keep coming up with is more proof of its accuracy. The Bible is true.  It's not mythology and it's not made up. It's the inspired Word of God, and you can believe in it down to the most "insignificant" of details." -- Facts, Faith, and the FAQs (subject:Religion) by Ken Stocker, 2006, p. 212.


 * "MYTH. An unproven but popular belief; a contrived tale, fantasy or legend that does not adhere to historical or factual evidence. Jews rejected myth... The Bible contains only history, not myth, with the exception of moral stories clearly told as proverbs, fables (Jdg. 9:8-15, 2Kg 14:8-10), or parables." -- Dictionary and Concordance: Holman Christian Standard Bible 2006


 * "...The goal of your answer is not so much to prove that Scripture is not mythology as to get seekers to read it, especially the Gospels. They will then forget about its looking like mythology.  It doesn't." -- Why Good Arguments Often Fail: Making a More Persuasive Case for Christ‎ (subject:Religion) by James W. Sire, 2006, p. 62.


 * "The record in Genesis 3 is not a myth. If the fall of man didn't actually occur, then the Christian faith is built on fables, not fact, and Jesus Christ suffered needlessly on the cross." -- The Wiersbe Bible Commentary: Old Testament Dr. Warren W. Wiersbe, 2007, p. 26


 * "...Others have suggested that the Genesis narratives are "myths". But "myth" is a slippery term, witness the fact that scholars use at least nine different definitions of "myth" [Cite to Hamilton]. According to McCartney and Clayton, "the common meaning of the term myth in popular parlance is 'a fabulous and untrue story'." This denotation, they say, makes the term "myth" totally inadequate for Genesis, for "biblical history is not myth, but a true story, told with theological purpose and vantage-point. It may use the images and linguistic forms of its environment, but slipping in the term myth by redefinition really results in a reduction of the uniqueness of biblical history.   Moreover, the Genesis narratives demythologize pagan mythologies [Cite to Ross]. Surely the label of "myth" is inappropriate for narratives that demythologize pagan mythologies." -- Preaching Christ from Genesis, 2007, Sidney Greidanus, p. 23.


 * "It would be very difficult to classify the material in Genesis as myth. Israel had one God, not a multitude. The nation of Israel had a beginning, a history, and a future hope. They saw God, rather than gods or other supernatural creatures, as the primary actor in the world. Their worship was not cosmic, natural or superstitious, but a reenactment of their own rescue from Egypt and a celebration of God's factual intervention in history and their hope in his promises. If Genesis uses elements of mythological language, it is to display a deliberate contrast with pagan concepts and to show that the Lord God is sovereign over such ideas. For example, the ancients worshiped the sun as a god, but in Genesis the sun serves the Creator's wishes (1:14-18). The book of Genesis is a cemetery for lifeless myths and dead gods. Genesis is not myth.-- Commentary in newest edition of NLT Study Bible, Tyndale Bible Publishers (2008)



Sources for modern world-views: LDS word on the Book of Mormon:

 * "...These things in our minds are not mere articles of faith, they are not myths, they are not mere opinions or sentiments, but they are to us, to use the language of Brother Bywater, "absolute truths;" they have been revealed from the Almighty, and are his word to us and not the say-so of men." -- Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, p. 159, 1881.

Sources for modern world views: Hinduism

 * "...Sometimes the puranic stories are used to illustrate the point of the texts as in 6.43. But for Swami Bhaktivedanta this is not mythology at all but literal history." -- Modern Indian Interpreters of the Bhagavad Gita, p. 215 Robert Neil Minor, 1986.
 * "When taken as a systematic object of thinking, all elements in the Veda could be considered real in so far as they were elements of the Vedic system. Therefore, the Veda could no longer be considered a myth, a collection of myths, or a language-like object." -- The Birth of Meaning in Hindu Thought, David Zilberman, 1988, p.26
 * "Vijnanananda, a disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, said of Maharaj and his visions: ' The gods and goddesses are not myths, they are real. They are the many aspects of the One Godhead. I know this because Maharaj used to see and talk to them.'" -- The Eternal Companion, Ramakrishna Vedanta Centre, 1994
 * "...Thus, at least in principle, a historical mode of thought is also implied in this type of Puranic material. The ancient stories told are definitely perceived as referring to real historical events; thus I prefer to use "story" here and not "myth". To use "myth" prejudges the whole issue, quite apart from the fact that this would force us into a scholastic discussion of how to define "myth". -- Encyclopaedia of Hinduism, Nagendra Kr Singh, 1997, p. 1138
 * "A comparison of the Veda to Greek myths shows that the Veda is not a myth, although mythological elements are definitely present in its content..." -- Analogy in Indian and Western Philosophical Thought, David Zilberman, 2006, p. 17

More ambivalent scholarly or secular views over the past centuries

 * "...Even legend, however, is not mythology, and, despite recent attempts to revive a mythological interpretation of personages and incidents in the Old Testament..., there is very general agreement that the Old Testament religion is non-mythological. This absence of mythology is another marked feature of contrast with other religions. We may, if we please, speak of a tradition like that of Eden as "mythical", as others may discuss whether it contains symbol or allegory. But "myth" in this case must be distinguished from mythology proper, i.e., such weaving of stories about the gods in their relations to each other and to the world as are found in other religions, and generally have their origins in nature-phenomena (e.g., sun-myths, dawn-myths, myths of growth and reproduction, etc.) From this element, as most scholars recognise, the Old Testament seems remarkably free. See the remarks of Professor Robertson, Early History of Israel, pp 188-9, 299. Professor Robertson quotes from an interesting article by Mr. Andrew Lang in The New Review, Aug. 1889, and also quotes Stade, Geschichte, i., pp. 438-9. Gunkel may also be referred to, Genesis, pp. 113 ff. He thinks  traces of an original mythological basis are to be discovered, but contends for the absence of mythology in the proper religion of Israel." -- The Problem of the Old Testament Considered with Reference to Recent Criticism‎ by James Orr, 1906, p. 486


 * "Gen. i.-ii. 4. A Priestly Narrative about 550 BC. This chapter is not "a story" is the ordinary usage of that word, it is not "a myth", nor is it in the strict sense a poem." Ancient Hebrew Stories and Their Modern Interpretation, W. G. Jordan, 1922, p. 73.


 * "Its purpose is clearly to point to the creative power of Jahwe. Therefore to speak of mythological "elements' in the Old Testament is very confusing at best. There are no "mythological sections" that are "analyzable" as such. There is only a deliberate utilizing of a number of non-Jewish figures and images. All of this demonstrates the anti-mythological tenor of the Jahwe cult as well as the vital power of absorption in the Jahwist faith." -- Studies in Dogmatics: Sin, G. C. Berkouwer, 1971, p. 83.


 * "...The biblical narrative treats events of Israel's past as history, not mythology, for what happened to Abraham onward, and even prior to Abraham all the way back to creation, took place in a time-space continuum. Its world and people are the world and people we know today. Ancient mythology, while holding a great deal in common with the world of today, deals primarily with creatures and events of a different order. The nearest analogy in the biblical narrative is the Serpent in the Garden of Eden, though even there the LORD God is carefully described in non-mythological terms... " -- conservative religion scholar Carl Amerding, The Old Testament and Criticism, 1983, p. 11.


 * "...How to define "myth" is another matter altogether. While most, if not all biblical scholars would agree that the word myth may denote what produces myths, or may mean the understanding of the world that is contained in them, agreement would end as soon as these generalizations were made more specific. Some would argue that myths are produced by a pre-scientific outlook and that the world-view contained in myths must retreat as science advances. Others would regard myths as the product of a way of knowing different from science, expressing truths independently of the knowledge, or lack of it, of scientific causes." -- J.W. Rogerson, "Slippery Words:Myth" in Sacred Narrative: Readings in the Theory of Myth by Aland Dundes, 1984, p. 63


 * "In using the terms myth and mythical in relation to Genesis, we encounter greater misgivings. Not only do the terms have unsavory connotations in popular usage, but an impressive array of biblical scholars have argued that both myth and mythical modes of thought are absent from the Bible. Myths are what the Egyptians and Babylonians believed. 'The God of Israel has no mythology,' declared G. Ernest Wright. 'The religion of Israel suddenly appears in history, breaking radically from the mythopoeic approach to reality.' This position follows the earlier lead of Hermann Gunkel who had argued that myths are "stories about the gods", and since a myth requires at least two gods to make a story, the Old Testament contains no myths, though some mythical materials are alluded to... Obviously if one restricts the term myth to polytheistic materials, biblical materials are not only not mythical but anti-mythical..." -- The Meaning of Creation by Conrad Hyers, 1984, p. 99. [NOTE: This author does go on to argue that in his view, this idea of myth "may be" too restrictive to be useful for his purposes; but at least he acknowledges that other significant schools of thought actually do exist -- like any serious scholar would.]


 * "Perhaps the most important thing that can be said about the creation days - which are not the same as sun days - is that there is nothing particularly mythological about them. The world that comes into appearance and comes to appear progressively distinct is a world which is plainly perceptible to all humans as humans, believers and non-believers alike. The creation account addresses the world as we know it, as humans have always known it and will continue to know it... Yet just as the creation account is not a mythological cosmogony, so it is not a scientific explanation. Rather, it addresses my pre-understanding (Vorverstehen) of the theatre of existence prior to any explanation, mythical or scientific." -- "The Phenomenology of Symbol: Genesis I and II" by Frank Flinn, in Phenomenology in Practice and Theory: Essays for Herbert Spiegelberg, William S. Hamrick, 1985  p. 235


 * "...There certainly are [surviving traces of mythology] for those who regard all language about an act of God... as mythological. But this is not mythology in the traditional sense, not the kind of mythology that has become antiquated with the decay of the mythical world view." -- R. Bultmann, 'New Testament and Mythology', p. 43, as cited in Liberating Exegesis: The Challenge of Liberation Theology to Biblical Studies‎ by Christopher Rowland, Mark Corner, 1989, p. 83.


 * "...The Bible Is Not Mythological but Uses Mythological Ideas. Biblical thought should not be called "mythopoeic," neither should any of the resultant biblical narratives be termed "myth". The OT uses ancient Near Eastern mythological ideas figuratively and symbolically without any commitment to the underlying theology of the mythological world from which they have been borrowed. Biblical narratives, such as those of the Creation (Gen. 1:1-2:3), Paradise (2:4-25), Fall (3:1-24), and Flood (6:5-9:17), may appear to be of the same type as Ancient Near Eastern myths, but are different due to the impact of the transforming forces of Yahwistic faith." -- International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, article entry "MYTH", 1994 edition.


 * "...There has been in recent times a broadening of the understanding of myth; the scope of the adjective "mythical" now knows no limits (besides, there is often no clear distinction between "mythical" and "mythological".) Further, the alternative which would describe reality either as myth or history is questionable..." [lengthy discussion follows of history of the term and its various newer, nebulous meanings]... "It follows that the patriarchal stories have no relation to myth in the proper sense of the word. There can be only points of contact where folk stories are designated as "myths" or where an older form lies behind the myth." -- Genesis 12-36, Claus Westermann, 1995, p. 54.


 * "Genesis' story is not a myth, for it does not in fact tell us anything about what things were like when there were no things. Its tohu webohu is not an antecedent nothingness-actuality like the Great Slime dismembered by the Babylonian Marduk, nor yet an eternal egg or womb or pure potentiality of primal matter..." -- Systematic Theology, Robert Jenson, 1997, p. 11
 * "The story told in the third chapter of Genesis is not a myth; it does not describe what always and never happens. It describes the historical first happening of what thereafter always happens; moreover, had it not happened with the first humans it could not have happened at all, since then the first humans would have been omitted from an "encompassing deed of the human race".  -- ibid, p. 150


 * "Consider next the Bible's account of the Flood in Genesis 7:17-24. Sound interpretation shows that the text is describing real events and a real person, Noah. It is not myth. But the text describes things as they would appear to a human observer like Noah. Everything within range of human observation was covered with water, and all the animals within human range died." -- Three Views on Creation and Evolution (1999), various authors, p. 92.


 * "Thus we read in the Biblical story that God locks the boat after Noah and his company are safely aboard, which contrasts with the Babylonian version in which Utnapishtim locks the door himself. Or again, and the end of the Flood, we read that "God smelled the sweet savor," a clear echo of the Babylonian scene in which "the gods crowded like flies around the sacrificer." Neither scene in the one version can be said to be "more elevated" in conception than its counterpart in the other version. Yet both versions are internally consistent with their respective theological approach. The Biblical scenes are not mythological, they are only extremely personal or anthropomorphized." - Essential Papers on Israel and the Ancient Near East‎ (2000) by Frederick E. Greenspahn p 374


 * "Myth, Mythology. In popular usage the term myth connotes something untrue, unimaginable, or unbelievable; or, in older parlance, "a purely fictitious narrative usually involving supernatural persons or events" (OED). (Deferring to this usage and to the Christian religion, standard Western encyclopedias of mythology omit from their discussion any reference to the narratives of the Bible.) However, in the realm of biblical studies and theology, just as in contemporary anthropology, philosophy, and literature, the term myth is often used in a less pejorative fashion to describe an important if provisional way of perceiving and expressing truth. There is, however, no agreed-on definition, whether in terms of its form (that is, its relationship to fairy-tales, legends, tales, epics etc.), or in terms of its content and function.
 * "Hermann Gunkel defined myth as a story involving at least two gods and on this basis denied that the OT contains true myths but at most, "faded out" myths or "mythic torsos"... -- Handbook of Biblical Criticism, Richard N. Soulen, 2001, p. 115.


 * "Genesis 2 is not a myth about how things always are, but a story about something that happened." -- Old Testament Theology: Israel's Gospel, John Goldingay, 2003, p. 119.


 * "Similarly, in the Hebrew Bible Genesis 1-11 is presented as 'history', not 'myth' or 'fiction'." -- Richard E Averbeck, "Sumer, The Bible and Comparative Method" in Mesopotamia and the Bible: Comparative Evaluations, 2003, p. 109.


 * "The Bible itself is perfectly aware of its opposition to all mythological religions. It brands them as idolatrous, and I think that the revelation of scapegoat delusion in mythology is an essential part of the fight against idolatry. Here we could go, for instance, to the story of Cain and Abel, and compare it to the myth of Romulus and Remus. In the story of Cain and Abel, the murder of one brother by the other is presented as a crime that is also the founding of a community. But in the Roman story this foundation cannot be viewed as a crime. It is a legitimate action by Romulus. The point of view of the Bible about such events differs enormously from that of myth." -- Oedipus Unbound: Selected Writings on Rivalry and Desire, by René Girard, Mark R. Anspach, 2004 ISBN 0804747806, 9780804747806 p. 112


 * [The following commentary and analysis in this book on the social effect of the Bible is also exceedingly interesting, and may be summed up with this concluding statement:] "Not only is the Bible not myth; it is the source of whatever "demythologization" has occurred in the world and will occur in the future. (ibid, p. 112)


 * "The creation story is not a myth but neither is it a modern scientific textbook... The Genesis creation story may be a parable, written for the understanding of the ancients. But in no way is it a myth." -- The Patterns of New Ideas: 300 Ideas for Products, Inventions and Improvements, Mark Meek, 2004, p. 186-187 (Category:Science)


 * "...the great flood, in a sense, has washed over all of us. If you have any doubts, don't forget that the story's meaning is still being fought over today. Evangelical Christian explorers are still trying to prove that a universal flood took place, hundreds of years after supposedly enlightened theologians dismissed the flood as myth." Can God Intervene? How Religion Explains Natural Disasters, Gary Stern, 2007, p. 29.


 * "...what does this mean for Jews and Christians who read the book of Genesis literally or for Muslims who only know how to read the Quran as the Angel Gabriel's dictation to the prophet Mohammed? There are no easy answers. In the west, at least, tradition-minded Christians and Jews have had to defend their beliefs from academic deconstruction for more than a century. By the early twentieth century, secular scholars of religion were dismissing the flood story as an unusually hearty myth, propped up by stubborn religious traditions...
 * Each religious tradition has dealt in its own way with academic and scientific arguments that question the flood story. Many traditions have loosened their interpretations of the story, and of other narratives from Genesis, to conclude that the flood is somewhere between pure myth and representative of a single or even several actual events. Others maintain that the story in Genesis (or in the Quran) is God's revealed truth and took place as described, even if we cannot explain how or where Noah and the animals did their duty. Still others hold to a middle ground, seeking to find truth even if the details of the flood story cannot be defended." -- ibid, pp. 35-36.  [Stern then directly quotes a 2001 commentary released by the Conservative movement of Judaism stating that Genesis and Gilgamesh are likely to be derived from a common tradition.]


 * "...The great diversity of the scholarly works on myth shows that, although being one of the most studied subjects in the history of the social sciences and the humanities, it has not yet been entirely understood. At the crux of this confusion is the simple and straightforward question of whether or not the storyline content of myth has any basis in historical events and processes. A disdainful view of myth is easily demonstrated by a simple citation analysis of the editorial use of the term 'myth'... in the generally well-respected journals Nature and Science during the ten-year publication period of 1996 through 2005... The few times that 'myth' is used are virtually always in a pejorative sense, such as "time to bury misleading myth"..." -- Myth and Geology, 2007, p. 10, session held at the 32nd International Geological Congress in Florence, Italy, in August 2004.

Some views from "sociolinguists"

 * "...In view of such heavy negative connotations attached to the word, one may well question the wisdom of trying to rehabilitate "myth" as a positive term to describe one of the very common and important activities in biblical tradition. Nonetheless, that is exactly the goal of this book." -- Slaying the Dragon: Mythmaking in the Biblical Tradition, Bernard Frank Batto, 1992 p. 6


 * "...Rudolf Bultmann, maintained that the Bible must be demythologized for its personal existential meaning; he believed that myths were devoid of serious content for modern persons. 'In some contexts myth is a pejorative term; connoting at least ignorance, if not outright deception." -- God Beyond Gender: Feminist Christian God-language''‎ - Page 59 by Gail Ramshaw - 1995


 * "The works of Robinson and Boman also have been recently criticised by S.E. Porter ("Two Myths: Corporate Personality and Language/Mentality Detrminism", SJT 43 [1990]:287-307, 290 n.3) who calls their ideas "myth": "I use myth in the pejorative sense, as a set of beliefs once believed to be true, but maintained for ulterior motives"" -- Terry Wilder, Pseudonymity, the New Testament and Deception, 2004 p. 72.


 * "Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends‎" - title of a sociolinguistics book by David Wilton, Ivan Brunetti; Subject: Language Arts & Disciplines - 2004

As yet unsorted past discussions

 * You don't have far to go to find a plethora of views showing how duplicitous a term it is. Try here for starters, you get a whole buch all on one page: http://www.answers.com/topic/myth Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 19:52, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Now, as to finding "a single reference that claims people think Noah's Ark is not a myth" I doubt it would take long to find one. Here, let me try right now: inputting ["not mythology" noah genesis] into google. Hmm, 3rd result down looks promising, www.holytrinityparish.net/Links/Reclaiming%20GenesisIII.doc. Let's see... Very first sentence: "Reclaiming Genesis, Part III: In our 1st article we established that Genesis presents a historical narrative about real people, not mythology or fables."

A slightly different search turned this up: The Christian author of this book firmly believes the Great Flood is "not a myth" and also that "it happened", because it is referred to as historical by Jesus Matt 24:37-39, and also in 1 Peter 3:20. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 20:30, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

And this one argues that Genesis is not even a "myth", by using your favoured definition, "for it does not tell us anything about what things were like when there were no things". Same passage is peer-reviewed here. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 20:35, 13 December 2008 (UTC)


 * "Long before Newton, in the Book of Genesis, we have a description of light being broken into its spectrum of color, by tiny droplets in the atmosphere - a rainbow. The story, though often told to children, is not a mythical tale. The great flood catastrophe really did happen. The evidences it has left in the Earth are still there to verify the fact. Noah had been in the Ark for 370 days..." - Beginnings: The Sacred Design (2000) by Bonnie Gaunt, p. 84


 * "Who Mythed the Boat?" Most evangelical Christians have been shocked by the recent announcement made by one of our large church denominations about revising all of their Sunday School lessons. The aim, according to their proponents, is to make the Bible more acceptable to modern scientific minds. With this lofty purpose in view, they will now teach their pupils that the story of creation recorded in Genesis is a myth. The story of Noah's Ark is said to be a fairy tale. They tell us that David did not really kill Goliath, and further state that the glorious account of the Virgin Birth is nothing more than a myth. It really looks as if these people may have "mythed the boat". It would be difficult to convince Noah of any myth about it. He not only spent one hundred and twenty years constructing it, but he was the captain who navigated it along a shoreless sea for a long period of time. The people who mythed the boat in Noah's day, mythed everything..." - Sword Scrapbook (1980) by Viola Walden, p. 215

And here's another very good reliable source discussing Noah's Ark, the Bible in relation to the terms "history" and "myth": Please note that the author, Northrop Frye here uses the commonly understood definition of the contrast between "history" and "myth" that is a clearly subjective one, and makes several other pertinent comments about this same topic we are discussing. And on the next page he states that whenever "scholars" describe elements of Genesis, or the rest of the Bible, as "myths", they are really proposing that they be removed from the canon as unhistorical elements. He's right, they are proposing this, but it's not wikipedia's place to subtly push this idea, and certainly not to recommend or suggest what parts of the Bible ought to be decanonized as unhistorical. Let the churches determine what their own canons are to include, not wikipedia. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 18:41, 23 December 2008 (UTC) Discussing the Ark story and whether or not it is a "myth", he clearly acknowledges: "The ordinary notion of myth and history is that history is what really happened; myth is what probably didn't happen, at least not in that form". He clearly writes: "scholars still speak hesitantly of 'mythical elements' in Genesis or the Gospels, as though they were elements that could be, or should be, removed".

Here is one scholarly / academic book's relevant take on this very controversy: Reading the Old Testament By Lawrence Boadt, please look up p. 130 "Is Genesis 1-11 Myth or History?" on Google-books. (No, I am not quote-mining, I have read the entire chapter thankyou!) To sum up, he contrasts both views, that it is myth, or history, assuming that the two are mutually exclusive. He notes the same parallels, noted for centuries, between Genesis and pagan myths. However, after looking at various levels of what "myth" implies, he states that "we must be careful" about calling the Bible a myth, because, as he explains, at the highest level of the term, a "myth" is something used to explain a polytheistic view and push polytheism, while Genesis does the opposite. Therefore, he concludes, "The Israelites demythologized the myths" by presenting them in monotheistic terms. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 13:53, 9 January 2009 (UTC)