Now, I'd wager, for most -- if I asked, "What is myth?" -- your response would follow closely with the modern sense of "fake stories about fake beings composed by primitive societies to explain natural phenomena (like lightning, or earthquakes, or why turtles have shells, etc.)."
The problem with our modern definition, however, is that it doesn't actually have a whole lot to do with the original meaning of the word.
In his classic work, Poetics (written around the middle-to-late 4th century, B.C.), Aristotle uses the term mythos (from which we get our term "myth"), in his discussion of tragedy, to refer to "plot."
That might not seem very consequential, but, for Aristotle, the plot was the beating heart of a good tragedy, more so than its characters, style, or even its theme or moral. The plot was the vehicle that drew you in to the world of the tragedy and allowed you to experience the action and crises as if they were your own.
See, for Aristotle, tragic plays were not merely an expression of culture or high society (the way we tend to think about art or the theater, today). Rather, good tragedies, like the kind written by Sophocles, for example, were crucial in that they cleansed society of the pernicious emotions of pity and fear.
Insofar as we might feel pity for Oedipus, as he unknowingly stumbles into the grotesque situation of having killed his father and married his mother, or fear, as he gradually works his way toward the truth, we are then freed from feeling those emotions for ourselves.
Given that self-pity and fear are thoroughly destructive of the cooperative living necessary within any stable society, going to the theater to see one of these tragedies was not simply entertainment but an exercise in strengthening the community.
However, not just any tragedy, with any plot, will do.
For the plot -- the myth of the play -- to function as it ought, there had to be a degree of realism, a sense that, given the appropriate circumstances, the action of the play could have actually happened as depicted.
We've all seen movies where the characters say or do things that leave you thinking, "what??"
They do something that seems so contrary to what any normal, rational person would do, or they say something - with a straight face - that seems so cartoonish or ridiculous, that it jolts you out of the experience of the movie and leaves you feeling bored or frustrated.
(Side note -- The best of them, in the ironic sense of that phrase, used to end up being ridiculed at the hands of the folks over at Mystery Science Theater 3000 -- man, I miss that show!)
For a plot to be good, on the other hand, to be one that draws us in and maybe even effects some change in us, it must be decidedly human.
Good plots present us with situations and experiences that speak to the deeper realities of who we are as people, of the emotions we feel, the causes with which we align, the broad narrative of what it means to be human in our particular context.
Even fantasy films abide by, what we might call, this rule of good story-telling.
What is Avatar if not a reworking of the basic themes of Pocahontas - the inner tension we all feel between our greed and our compassion or empathy for others? (Not sure you feel that tension? Let someone ask to borrow your car for a few days and tell me what you feel.)
Or, consider that the whole Zombie genre began as someone's musings on the consumer culture of the modern, industrialized world. Don't we all mindlessly and insatiably consume things in the same way that zombies supposedly consume people? Don't we all tend to react to those who have somehow avoided our materialistic plague with the same irrational anger and desire to destroy?
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What made the ancient myths so powerful was not that people were somehow dumber or more naïve back then (consider that the Greek philospher, Democritus, proposed the existence of the atom almost 2000 years before we had the technology to observe one). Rather, what made them powerful was that they identified and articulated some fundamental aspect of human experience.
For example, why does Kronos swallow up all of his children (except for Zeus, in whose place he mistakenly swallows a boulder in swaddling clothes)? Why does Ra - in Egyptian mythology - curse his consort, Nut, so that she cannot have a child on any day of the year? Why does Apsu - in Sumerian mythology - decide to destroy all his children for making too much noise?
Because in Patriarchal societies, where your well-being is tied to the land you own, at some point every man must go from being the head of the household to simply an old man we allow to live here.
All men lived within the tension that their children were simultaneously their legacy (what they would leave behind of themselves, the continuation of their name) and their undoing (the ones who would ultimately replace them and seize their authority for themselves).
Is it any wonder, then, that their myths overflow with this tension?
And, really, can't we still relate to this? Doesn't anyone in any position of authority still feel this tension? Think about the leaders within movements and organizations who were ultimately replaced by their prodigies.
Et tu, Brute?
Et tu, Brute?
Has there ever been a generation that was not simultaneously criticized by the ones that preceded it and critical of the ones that followed?
When we relegate these old myths to the realm of the primitive, to the silly things our ancestors told themselves to explain the weather, we rob ourselves of the ability to consider our place within the continual struggle between one generation and the next, and to think about our own feelings and actions that maybe even perpetuate that struggle.
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The interesting thing is that the Bible doesn't ignore these myths, it simply re-purposes and reorients them around YHWH.
For example, in the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation myth, the first two beings to exist - before anything else is created - are the primordial water gods. Apsu represents the fresh water and Tiamat represents the salt water. They give birth to the gods who then go on to create all other things.
In Egyptian mythology, the first being to exist is the great expanse of water called Nu. He brings into existence Ra, who initially hovers, like a golden egg, over the water god, and then speaks all things into existence.
Now, consider the opening verses of Genesis:
It was in the beginning that God created the heavens and the earth,
And the earth was formless and void,
And the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters,
And God said, "Let there be light"
The similarities are pretty obvious, but what is truly striking are the differences. Notice how clear it is, for instance, that God is the initiator and he is not derived from any other source. In the Babylonian and Egyptian myths, it is the waters that begin this process, they birth the other gods who then go on to form the rest of creation. In Genesis, these waters lack any of the personal dignity or creative force we see in the other narratives. They do not act. They have no names. They are simply tohu v'bohu, "without form and empty."
And those aren't the only parallels..
In the Enuma, after Apsu and Tiamat create a new generation of gods, those younger gods fly around and make a lot of racket. The noise gets so bad, that Apsu decides he's had enough and is actually going to kill his children in order to get a little peace and quiet (I mean, seriously, if you have small children, can't you relate to this feeling just a little?).
One of those gods, Ea, the sky god, learns of Apsu's intention and hatches a plan, which he then successfully executes (mind the pun), to kill Apsu instead. Out of Apsu's body, Ea creates a domain for himself and the other gods (what we might call heaven).
Tiamat, the other water god, learns of this and decides to carry out her husband Apsu's initial plan as vengeance, at which point Ea gives birth to another sky god, stronger than himself, Marduk, whose greatest weapon is the flood-storm. Marduk proves his power by speaking and making a constellation disappear and then speaking and making it reappear, and then goes off and defeats Tiamat. Out of her body, Marduk creates the earth, and on that earth he creates a great shining city, in honor of his conquest and supremacy, where the gods rule and are served by the humans that Marduk also created from the blood of one of Tiamat's consorts. That city is named, Babylon.
Now, remember that line from the opening verses of Genesis:
"And the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters" -- as in, where the sky would be?
If you are someone living in ancient Mesopotamia, with the Enuma as your cultural background, and you hear those lines, your expectations are pretty clear: there is about to be a fight.
And that's what makes what follows so shocking.
The creation of the heavens and the earth are not the product of patricide and bloodshed (the Enuma describes Marduk splitting Tiamat like a shellfish in order to create the sky and the land!), but of the peaceful and orderly intention of a God whose creation can all be described as "good".
Nor are there a host of intermediary gods between the Creator and his creation. The Bible, for example, calls the sun simply "the greater light," conspicuously avoiding the hebrew word for sun (shemesh) lest it be confused for the Babylonian sun god (shamash).
Notice also, the placement of violence: In the Enuma the gods themselves are violent, territorial, and usurping (thus giving tacit justification for men to act the same way). On the other hand, in Genesis, violence only comes as a result of the fall and is therefore rooted in our brokenness and not the divine nature (thus offering a critique against men acting this way).
However, these parallels really come home when we consider what the Bible has to say about Babylon.
Just before the narrative of Genesis really picks up with the story of Abram (later, Abraham), we have a very short and intriguing vignette, as it were, about a misguided construction project.
Remember what the Enuma taught about Babylon -- it was the creation of the supreme god, Marduk, in honor of his conquest and supremacy. It was the first and greatest city on earth, meant to be ruled by the gods and inhabited by the humans created to serve them.
Genesis, on the other hand, tells us that a large group of men gathered together in a single place named Babel - which sounds an awful lot like Babylon (wink, wink) - where they (not the gods) built a very large tower, not out of pride but out of fear, lest others attack and scatter them.
And, if we weren't quite picking up on all the hints here...
The bible immediately shifts to the story of Abram, who lives in Ur, which just happens to be one of the crowning cities of the empire of Babylon, AND it just so happens that Abram's first recorded act of faith is to leave.
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The argument that some have attached to the parallels between Genesis and the mythic literature of people from around the same time that discredits the Genesis account as simply borrowed from its larger cultural environment is, as we have seen, demonstrably false. The Bible does not unquestioningly borrow but knowingly references and critiques.
However, fear of that confusion should not push us to the opposite position, that Genesis is completely distinct and has nothing to do with that literature, either.
For one, the arguments and shifts in Genesis are made largely by means of conspicuous absences rather than formulated, positive arguments.
The fact that Genesis does not give a name for the primordial waters or the sun or the moon only stands out as significant if we know that other contemporary literature does.
The fact that men built the tower of Babel seems like a rather obvious detail to us, until we realize that other contemporary literature claimed Babylon to be the handiwork of the gods.
The fact that Abram was called to leave Babylon only seems curious, until we realize that other literature argued the greatest existence for man was found in Babylon.
However, the thing that seems most significant to me is that the Enuma and the Bible basically agree on one key point: Human society has most commonly expressed itself throughout all of history as violent and imperialistic.
The reason that's important is that it is as true today as it was nearly thirty-five hundred years ago, and, where the Bible and the Enuma diverge on the causes of that violence and the appropriate response to it, we have the amazing opportunity to examine our own thoughts and instincts (as well as those of the culture in which we live) and ask: am I thinking about this in a way that reflects the Bible? Or, would my thoughts be more at home in the worldview of the Enuma?
When we look at things like the slave trade or Manifest Destiny or even something like drone strikes and the Iraq War...
...when wildly popular country singers write wildly popular songs identifying putting "a boot up their ass" as the "American way"...
...would these expressions of both our American heritage and our contemporary culture be more at home in the Bible, or in the Enuma?
Now, I'm not saying everyone must answer those questions the same way, but aren't they worth asking?
Wow! Great STUFF
ReplyDeleteThanks, Marc! Really appreciate you stopping by!
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