The Truth of Myth - New Evangelizers

You will often hear that the Creation stories in the Bible are “myths.”

For some people, this is very challenging to hear. To the modern ear “myth” means “a story that is not true.” You can see this play out in popular shows like Mythbusters, where things that are false are labeled “Myths.” In fact, in a recent edition of the Catholic Study Bible it says: “‘Myth’ is an unsuitable term, for it has several different meanings and connotes untruth in popular English.”

However, I would like to take this time to reclaim the larger understanding of the word “myth.” On this view, the Christian should not feel threatened when hearing of myths in the Bible.

Instead, a myth is a story that conveys deep truths, but it is not necessarily written to convey facts. CS Lewis explains it thus: “In the enjoyment of a great myth we come nearest to experience as a concrete what can otherwise be understood only as an abstraction.” In other words, myths are stories that attempt to convey a deep, sometimes mysterious truth in the concrete method of story.

When I teach this concept of myth to my students, I begin by talking about the “Hero Myth.” The famous author Joseph Campbell wrote The Hero with A Thousand Faces in which he looked at the “Hero Myth” as it exists in all cultures over time. He found that there were common threads that held them together and that these concepts are true about the world.

In class, I have my students begin to list heroes that they know. We get an eclectic list sometimes that often includes:

Superman, Spider-Man, Batman, Iron Man, Daredevil, Harry Potter, Frodo Baggins, Luke Skywalker, Katniss Everdeen, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and so forth.

After they finish their list I ask them what they all have in common. Often my students cannot find a single common thread at first. But then I ask them: “How many of them are orphans?”

It then dawns on them that all of the people on the above list have lost one or more parents. When I ask them why, they struggle to find an answer. I suggest to them: “Don’t we know that it is true that a hero overcomes great obstacles? If your life is easy in every way, then you cannot be a hero. And what is the easiest way for a child to understand someone overcoming great obstacles than for them to deal with the loss of a parent?”

I then point out how they all have mentors who teach them how to be a hero: Jonathan Kent, Uncle Ben, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Dumbledore, Splinter, and so on. But I also point out that they all lose their mentors along the way. That is because heroes have to learn how to be heroic, but then they have to stand on their own. A hero must be the one to fight his or her own battles and not have someone fight them.

And with the above list, I ask them how many makes acts of self sacrifice. And most of them have clear example where they are willing to give up their lives for others.

This is a very oversimplified version of Campbell’s point, but you can see that a hero is someone who overcomes great obstacles, who learns to fight their own battles, and is willing to put others before themselves.

This is not a fable or a just-so story. This is a myth, which means that it is true.

The description of a hero above is a true description of a hero in the real world. When we saw the firefighters running up the steps of the Twin Towers on 9/11, we recognized them as heroes. This is not simply a matter of sentiment or opinion. We know that this is true heroism because he have encountered in our hero myths. Harry Potter, Frodo Baggins, and Luke Skywalker may not be historical people, but their stories open us to the truth about the world.

True myths touch on the deepest truths human life and the human heart.

When people say that the Creation story is a “myth,” I always take that to mean that it is true in the most profound sense.

When we do a formal analysis of the passage, you can see this mythological style very clearly. Because of this style, we can see that the authors of the text are trying to convey some profound truths about human nature, particularly about the relationship between man and woman. When looking at the situation in which Adam finds himself, we can see something rather odd. In the other story of creation found in chapter 1, everything God makes is declared good. In a similar way, Eden is a perfect paradise. But for the first time in chapter 2, God declares something to be “not good:” The loneliness of Adam is not merely a subjective feeling on his part. This indicates that God understands the incompleteness of the human person in Adam. He is “not good” in the sense that humanity is not complete. But the coming completion will require one who is equal to him in value.

This is not to say that the stories in Genesis aren’t rooted in factual events. But the style of writing shows us that the author is conveying a Divinely inspired version of the story that gives light to the deepest truths of life.

There is a reason why we often talk about “ancient” myths. This is because these stories endure throughout the ages.

And they endure because of the profound truths that we can only find in myth.

Copyright 2024, WL Grayson

W.L. Grayson

I am a devoutly Catholic theology teacher who loves a popular culture that often, quite frankly, hates me. I grew up absorbing every movie, TV show, comic book, science fiction novel, etc. I could find. As of today I’ve watched over 2100 movies and tv shows. They take up a huge part of my life. I don’t know that this is a good thing, but it has given me a common vocabulary to draw from in order to illustrate whatever theological point I make in class. I’ve used American Pie the song to explain the Book of Revelation (I’ll post on this some time later) and American Pie the movie to help explain Eucharist (don’t ask). The point is that the popular culture is popular for a reason. It is woven into the fabric of our lives and imaginations, for good or ill. In this blog I will attempt to bring together the things of heaven with the things of earth. Of course this goal may be too lofty for someone like me.