From: pharvey@mipos3.intel.com (Paul Harvey)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Nature of Myth was (Re: The Adam and Eve Thing)
Date: 28 Sep 92 19:22:34 GMT
	<27SEP199219202330@romeo.caltech.edu>
Organization: noitazinagrO

In article <27SEP199219202330@romeo.caltech.edu> 
waynebro@romeo.caltech.edu (Broughton, Wayne Jeremy) writes:
>Based on the above, I note that you seem to be saying that virtually 
>any statements can be considered myth if one can find metaphorical 
>meaning in them.

Yes. Beauty and art are in the eye of the beholder.

>Sorry, when I said "factual" I did not mean "true";  I meant "susceptible
>to true/false analysis, not only metaphorical".

Hmm, ah, susceptible to true/false analysis? OK, I'll buy that. But, the
opposite of factual is fictional, right?

>I suppose I was abusing
>my mother tongue, or perhaps you only saw the literal meaning of my
>words!!  :-)   Please rest assured I do not consider the Eden story to
>have actually taken place in the literal sense.

Ok, gotcha. So at one extreme we have myth which is pretty much a grab bag
of whatever you want it to be, truth, falsehood, metaphor and a whole buncha
other words with transcendent implications. At the other extreme we have
strict literal words which are either factual or fictional. But, there is
some inbetween ground, a meta-literal reading of the words may yield factual
or fictional concepts. This IS getting complicated, isn't it?

>Again, I only meant that I thought the words were intended (by the author)
>to be interpreted primarily as actual historical events (though I cannot
>prove this), and NOT that I believed them to be true.  I don't!!

Why do you think that the words of Genesis were intended by the author to be
interpreted primarily as actual historical events? Example: When I read that
Eve was created FROM Adam, I see that as a mythical construct.

>>The choice is yours. I say it is myth but I have no proof, other than the

>What do you mean here?  Certainly the story is myth (by your def'n) if 
>you can find metaphorical significance to it.  If you mean that the intended
>interpretation of it was the mythical one, this is the point I disagreed with
>above.

Right, it is myth by my definition. But, as for the intention of the authors,
hmm. If they intended a factual, historical account of the ancient Hebrews,
it appears to me that they failed much more than they succeeded. That is,
they let their imaginations run away with themselves. And this free running
of the imagination is the source of myth. Why do you think that the
authors did not intend to write a myth? Note that a myth is often based on
actual historical account and often contains historical fact, but myth
writers are never constrained by having to stick to the facts or make clear
when they are only speculating.

>>fact that most of it can be proved to be false by reductionists. It seems

>I don't think this supports the idea that the story was intended to
>be read as myth since it is not clear that its author considered the
>literal reading of the story to be untrue.

But, in Genesis, it says that Eve was created FROM Adam. How can that be
literal? I guess the way I look at it is that if the authors were trying to
write a factual, historically accurate account, they failed. But if they
were trying to write myth, then they did quite well, certainly one of the
top ten myths.

>OK.  In summary, I view the discussion that you and Ken were having
>and that prompted my posting as being largely semantics.

Makes sense to me.

>The phrase
>"myth is false" is meaningless from your point of view since the 
>metaphorical meaning of myth transcends falsity, but if referring to
>a _particular_ myth (not myth in general), it can also be understood
>to say "the myth that has metaphorical meaning also has a literal 
>meaning that is a false assertion".

OK, myth is a meta thing, that meaning it is layered on top of other things.
So myth really contains a little of everything, fact, fiction, history,
poetry, and of course always metaphor. So, to say that a literal reading
of myth often results in false assertions would make sense to me. A literal
reading of poetry won't get you to far either. As a matter of fact, I hate to
be always introducing my own personnal dogmas here, but I would think that
a literal interpretation of life would be a classic example of dogmaticism.
Not even lawyers hold to a literal reading of law, think of that. Sure, some
cases are open and shut, but most must be judged on an individual basis,
meaning the evidence must be weighed.

>I think (perhaps presumptuously)
>that the latter is what Ken was trying to express.  He was asking for
>a substitute to the word "false" but I think what was needed was a
>clarification of the word "myth".

OK, I'll buy that. I thought Ken's last post was poetic though. :::B^}

>Thanks for listening!

Hey, thanks for pitching in.
Xref: sparky talk.religion.misc:17607 alt.atheism:18340