My point has been missed. Much of mythology is about heroes and their struggles, ancient conflicts or other troubles, and that mythology probably is based on historical events. Troy, for example.
That would seem to be what @Puck_Mendelssohn thought it meant. A true myth is a myth that really happened. Whatâs the problem?
That is not what he means. It is more subtle. This might be helpful: CS Lewis: Till We Have Faces.
Then why did you respond with an article in which thatâs exactly what is said?
This is becoming dangerously close to the Courtierâs Reply. In answer to one claim you post an article that one supposedly has to read to understand the point. Then you say thatâs not the point, and one has to read another article. Infinite regress?
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To be clear: I wasnât focusing on the expression âtrue mythâ at all, but upon Kevinâs description of what he thought it meant:
I am not familiar with Lewis on âtrue mythsâ; I never have been very fond of apologetic argument, when evidence is the only thing that will do, and I find that the Christian faith, rather like ID Creationism, tends to be filled with people who suppose that some amount of argument will fill the gap when evidence is wanted.
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I am trying to understand your point, but the Genesis story is so fanciful that I donât think that most people at the time gave it much credence as being true. There are creation myths in all ancient cultures, I doubt if people believed that the earth was supported by turtles all the way down.
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Evidence please.
The life and teachings of Jesus are endorsed by the Gospels, just like the life and teachings of MLK are endorsed by video and eye witnesses.
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There is a rich and multi-sourced folkloric tradition which eventually was reduced to writing. The tales contain internal details that are unflattering and that clearly would not have been preserved had they not been true. The tellers are credible, and their stories, though amazing and counterintuitive, have all the earmarks of truth-telling about them.
The part I never can get my head around is HOW a man could be 'sixty-three axe handles high." Bunyanâs blood pressure must have been incredible, which makes his writing Pilgrimâs Progress even harder to understand.
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I believe you have misquoted the scripture. Isnât it 63 axe handles and a plug of Star tobacco exactly?
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Thatâs generally thought to be an interpolation. One early manuscript contains a marginal gloss referencing âjust a pinch between the cheek and gum,â and then the later manuscripts all have this reference to the Star Tobacco of Bethlehem, North Carolina. Funny thing is, in the original French the prophecy did not have him being born to a virgin, but to a young woman. It was the translation into a sort of French/English pidgin spoken in the logging regions where that particular confusion occurred.
Youâre talking about the Iliad, right?
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Stack them on their sides. Duh.
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Well, yeah. I donât think anybody denies that Aeneas was real, do they? Who founded Britain, if not the Trojans spoken of in Geoffrey of Monmouthâs work? Aeneas was the sixty-three axe-handles guy, right?
I didnât miss your point. But it actually strengthens my point in the possibility of history in myth.
Is anyone denying the possibility of history in myth? I donât think anyone is. But having a mere philosophical possibility is very different from having substantial and convincing reasons to believe.
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There is enough evidence to satisfy the honest open enquirer, and little enough to give the skeptic cover, which is exactly what God intended. For details, I point you to Habermas, Wright and Craig.
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Nothing I like better than being accused of dishonesty.
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âI verily believe that the great good which has been effected in the world by Christianity has been largely counteracted by the pestilent doctrine on which all the Churches have insisted, that honest disbelief in their more or less astonishing creeds is a moral offence, indeed a sin of the deepest dye, deserving and involving the same future retribution as murder and robbery. If we could only see, in one view, the torrents of hypocrisy and cruelty, the lies, the slaughter, the violations of every obligation of humanity, which have flowed from this source along the course of the history of Christian nations, our worst imaginations of Hell would pale beside the vision.â
-T.H. Huxley
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John ~ the other possibility is you are an honest person who is closed to new inquiry because you think you know the truth.
Not as bad, but still pretty insulting. Do you realize when youâre being insulting?
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