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Calling a story a "myth" is too often taken to mean it is a lie: I don't use it that way. Mircea Eliade argued that a mythos is a story that, true or not, functions to form and shape society and social behavior.
Out of all the stories that could be told from any epoch, some are chosen for inclusion in a culture's memory. And---yes---edited too, whether for "clarity" oractual clarity. Myths encode, and it is in this sense that the Bible is filled with myths, inevitably and necessarily.
Whether this or that event "actually happened" or occurred precisely as described in the Bible is, and has to be, unimportant. We are not living in the event or interacting in real time with the forces and persons involved. Until someone builds a time machine--perhaps even then!--our relationship with ourselves as a species is, inescapably, a relationship with stories.
Perhaps paradoxically, the Bible stories (historically true or wholly fictional) are nonetheless powerful because they are realistic. The liberated Jews, wandering and kvetching in the Wilderness, are recognizable. David's mindless and eventually homicidal selfishness (re: Bathsheba, for instance). You are the man! says the prophet, and dang it, aren't we all?
So yes, Jesus was a human being who could've been found living and working in what was then the present and is now the past. He was born and died, and in between inhaled, exhaled, ingested, excreted, sat down, stood up, slept, sneezed, snored, stubbed his toe and spoke in ways both transcendent and mundane.
Had he incarnated in a preliterate society, we might only have stories that, for mnemonic purposes, were rendered more obviously mythological. As it is, we've got written-down stories about Jesus: four (canonical) accounts of his life. Still, all four cover mostly the same ground. Which is to say, rather than adding granular, historical details, the Gospels give us variations of the same subset. Variations, that is, on the Mythos Jesus had already become by the time of writing.
Historians and scientists properly seek and present granular details about material reality. And there is nothing wrong (in my book) with investigating the scientific or historical accuracy of any story, including those in the Bible, but the power and, indeed, the soteriological truth of the mythos does not depend upon whether, say, Jesus was really born on December 25 or sometime in late October, in 4 BCE or 1 AD or (confusingly) 0. What matters is that, for Christians, Jesus was Christos. The "gotcha!" moments of atheistic analysis are thus, ultimately, irrelevant. The premise of The DaVinci Code (an irritatingly amateurish book and absurd movie, BTW) was that there was proof Jesus had blood relatives and thus biological descendants.
And...so what? As I recall, there was some notion that the biological descendant(s) of Jesus were spiritually special. However, the Gospel accounts of Jesus' own biology are written in a way that specifically deemphasizes the importance of "blood," or genetic relatedness. Jesus' connection to the House of David came through Joseph, not Mary. In other words, through the father who, in spite of all the natural and social forces urging rejection, adopted Jesus and reared him as his own.
It is with this in mind that I quoted somebody (I'm thinking Yad Vashem?) to the effect that if the Bible were being written today, the story of the October, 1943 rescue of the Danish Jews would be included in it. The event actually happened...and it also deserves to become a foundational myth. The Danes of 1943 were ordinary, flawed human beings, fallen creatures in a fallen world. More interestingly, they were ethnically virtually identical to the Germans, with whom they shared a border that moved, both politically and genetically, back and forth over centuries. In other words, the Danes were just what Hitler considered them to be: his brother-and-sister Aryans, future members of the pure, racial utopia he was laboring to bring to birth.
How important is it that in the historical moment most defined by would-be racists, the greatest collective moral failure and the greatest collective moral victory were achieved by persons of identical "race"? Mythologically speaking, it's crucial.
Since I've been known to announce (if not actually brag) that my relatives participated in the miracle of October, 1943, let me just say that the direct offspring of those relatives (my cousins) have always been inclined to downplay it, rolling their eyes and complaining of the individual failures and moments of cowardice that they know too much about. A prophet has no honor in his own country: It is hard to mythologize yourself. Or maybe it's dangerous to do so?
The attempt to Build Your Own Mythos doesn't necessarily fail. Hitler tried and he succeeded insofar as he is, indeed, a mythologized figure, one that personifies destructive evil rather than creative good. At least, pro tem. In the long run, doesn't it depend on who writes the next Gospel? There are those now actively working to shape our cultural future who might count him as he did himself; as the redeemer. Let's hope they don't win.
I wonder, can one anticipate a mythological moment? Or predict the story that will, or at least could, be told? I've got a story in mind, but that can wait for my next post.
Discussion (137)
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Fascinating post, GD. I'm afraid I don't understand these sentences. Am I missing something? And did he consider himself the redeemer, or did his disciples call him that? And what will be won? (I must be really thick this morning...)
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During WWII in Europe German occupation meant puppet governments in every nation they occupied with the exception of Poland. Ukraine, the Baltic States, and parts of Russia were an active battleground.
There was some heroic resistance to the occupiers and there was some collaboration with the occupiers. One should praise the courage of those who resisted. One should remember to temper their criticism of those who resented German occupation but did not act. The SS and Gestapo were ruthless, and court was conducted in a basement. Executions were carried out in basements, forests, and concentration camps.
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But it's important that this event "actually happened" isn't it? The meaning would be very different if the Danes never actually saved any Jews, but people just told stories that they did. Then the myth would be just an illusion, because while there actually was the great collective moral failure, there never was actually a great collective moral victory.
And does the importance that it actually happened somehow diminish with time? If the story is told two centuries from now, will it then no longer matter if it actually happened?
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And not every country had the cultural "equipment," so to speak, to resist in unison. France had its own deep-seated anti-Semitism. IMHO, the people of Holland, having been occupied by (then rescued from) Germany twice in the lifetimes of many of its inhabitants, did not have a national identity that included successful resistance to aggression. That is not to say that individual Dutch did not resist---they did, and splendidly. What Denmark had---and this was either providential or accidental, take your pick---was a national identity, more or less consciously constructed in the 19th c. under the guidance of theologian H.S.F. Gruntvig; one that provided and inculcated a theological grounding for the early emancipation and full citizenship of Denmark's Jews. Thus, when the test came, the Danes as a group had been practicing what turned out to be a morally crucial cultural habit. The rescuer did not need to be counter-cultural in order to recognize and resist Germany's vicious anti-semitism. The individual rescuer had the implicit moral support of his entire country. That makes a big difference when someone is deciding whether or not to risk his or her life to defend the target of a more powerful entity's aggression.
That there were as many rescues of Jews as there were in all Nazi-occupied countries argues strongly that European culture as a whole retained elements that stiffened moral spines even if strong anti-Semitism still existed, along with ordinary human selfishness and human cowardice. One of these elements was clearly, often explicitly, the presence and tradition (as well as the practice) of Christianity.
That Naziism was not Christian and was in fact anti-Christian meant that Christianity (if not necessarily Christian institutions) remained a source of legitimate moral identity even if the national identity failed. WWJD? (The same, by the way, was true for the role of Christianity in anti-slavery and anti-Jim Crow campaigns.)
In Gaza, by contrast, there has been no recorded instance of any Gazan civilian rescuing even an infant Israeli hostage.
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It's an interesting question, isn't it?
We are too inclined to imagine that other peoples' mythologies "didn't actually happen." That is, that they were completely made up and bear no relation to events that a time-traveling historian could document by actually being there.
One of the events that will, according to science, actually happen is the rupture of the Cascadia Subduction Zone. It will result in a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami and wreak destruction of Biblical proportions.
One of the early clues to the danger was provided by the oral tradition of Indians who lived in the Pacific Northwest for centuries before Europeans arrived. Having survived the last Big One in 1700 (January 23rd, to be precise, at 9 pm) the human experience of that disaster were inevitably understood and described through the lens of their culture, but the meaning was understood: Don't count on your environment to be peaceful. Pay attention. Be prepared.
It was, in other words, mythologized. That doesn't mean it didn't happen. And yes, it matters that it did happen---it matters a whole lot, as it turns out.
Europeans and, later, Americans, incapable of translating the Indians stories not just into English but into reality, built cities, but perhaps more importantly, constructed a culture and cultural identity that assumes the ground won't shake and the sea won't rise and swallow the land and all its helpless inhabitants.
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