Myths and Doctrine
30 June 2008 - 28 סיון 5768 by Huw
I was in Toronto this weekend past, and so I didn’t get a chance to write my weekly meditation on the lectionary texts. But I happened to notice that today was the Feast of St. Peter & St. Paul (transferred in the Anglican tradition). And so, with supper tonight, I dug around in the texts and found the following:
For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.
I don’t want to delve into which is which, or which idea may be “true” and which one “false”. But I think it interesting that the Greek words for “myth” and “doctrine” both refer to oral teachings:
mythos is “a speech, word, saying, a narrative, story.” didaskalias is a “teaching, instruction”.
But we are to like one and reject the other. We are warned about people who reverse those.
I find it interesting to note that, for some, it is stories of God, at all, that are “just myths”. For others conservative theology is based on “myths” which are taken as literal truths. For still a different groups of people, it is those who accept fabulous tales or miracles and the like that are following myths. For St Paul it’s possible that the words of St Luke’s Gospel, combining stories of Jesus with ancient, Pagan stories, were mythological.
Again, I don’t need to get into which is which: but it’s clearly a case of cultural identification. When the one side of an argument says the other is following myths - we need to know where the author gets his definitions. In the case of this writing in 2 Timothy, we instead read in our own understanding - and we do so at great peril.
I think there is a third way here - the idea of “true myth”. George Washington became a mythical figure with apocryphal stories attributed to him, but he nonetheless existed and did the “big picture” stuff for which he is revered. Same with Jesus - he existed and did his messianic work. The gospel narratives recreate his work by putting it in a narrative framework based on remembered folk tales. True myth.
I rather like that approach, Fr G. It’s one that seems to speak to a lot of people and provide a lot of possibilities for contact between the modern world and the Gospel.
To say just about the same thing Fr. Greg is saying, but with a different cast to it . . . In the late 19th century and early 20th century, peaking in the 1950’s, there were many arguments about the veracity of the Odyssey, the authorship of Shakespeare, etc. All of them were based on an inappropriately skeptical attitude towards history, and, quite frankly, the desire to gain notoriety by debunking yet another held belief.
Fortunately, as archeology matured (and historical textual studies), increasing evidence as to the veracity of Ulysses and the authorship of Shakespeare came forward. This is not to say that everything in the Odyssey can be shown to be “true”, since Ulysses is recording oral tradition. And, it is doubtlessly true that the various conversations recorded were “tightened up” and maybe even gaps “filled in.” And there is certainly a large amount of pure legend in the work. Nevertheless, the Odyssey is “true myth”, recording the main events and motivations of a fraticidal war of long ago.
Of interest to me is that recently some astronomers with a literary bent even calculated a probable date for the killing of the suitors by Odysseus based on star charts and an eclipse recorded from the oral tradition by Ulysses. And the date even tallies with the general date of the war!
You can see the obvious parallels to Scripture and recorded oral tradition–although I would generally make some additional claims for Scripture.
Indeed, Fr E. I can see the parallels, and, to be honest, I’d much rather live in a world where at least some of the Odyssey is true!
But I would wonder, therefore, about the works influenced by the Odyssey: Virgil comes to mind. If we didn’t have extant texts of the Odyssey, we’d still have Virgil. Would we make the same assumptions of truth regarding the Aeneid? Mayhaps there are extant texts that record the predecessors to the Odyssey? Or not? Does that prove or disprove? What about the mythological roots (in Babylon, Egypt, Greece) to the Gospel or other scripture stories?
I’m with you both on “True Myth”. I believe in it 100%
And I don’t think we can easily sort the True stuff out from the Made Up stuff - and I think both can be equally inspiring (and inspired).
But I was trying to point out that, our modern English aside, (where “myth” means “lie”) I don’t see the sharp dichotomy in the Biblical Text. The dichotomy is there in *our* minds, but the meanings of the Biblical words are much more shades of grey than the Black and White of English.