Is a myth nonfiction?
Submitted by Heather on July 08 1999 at 17:28:02
In reply to Do you think Lucifer can tell me? Submitted by Triple Q on July 07 1999 at 23:59:52
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That's a serious question; I'm not sure that Zeus & Ganymede or Adam & Eve can be placed strictly in the fiction or nonfiction category. On the one hand, the tales are fictional (sorry, fundamentalists); on the other hand, they're invented as a way to express real beliefs about God or the gods that couldn't be expressed in any other way. Similarly, is King Arthur fiction or nonfiction? He was a real person, who was vitally important in history. If we look at the late medieval tales about him, we can say without hesitation that ninety-nine percent of what was written about him was fictional. But what about the early medieval tales? We don't know, because we just don't have enough information about the Dark Ages to be able to judge which parts of the tales were fiction and which were based on real life. Similarly, I think it's very difficult to separate fact from fiction in the case of Moses. We don't have any written records about Moses aside from the Bible; all that we can depend on is (as you say) archaeological evidence, and that has yielded very mixed results. What we can say, as in the case of the mythology, is that the story of Moses tells us quite clearly how the Jews conceived God. And what is clear if we compare that picture to the picture of God in the later Old Testament, in the New Testament, and in the Jewish writings of the New Testament era, is that the Jewish concept of God changed a great deal. To cite one example, the God of the later Old Testament and the New Testament doesn't seem to be so concerned with finding real estate for the Jews; he's concerned with the whole of mankind. I think that's the important part to concentrate on the Bible because, whether or not Moses went up onto the mountain, it does reveal quite clearly the communication that was taking place between the Jews and God, and the way in which the communication improved over the years. Or, if one wants to take a secular approach, one could say that the Jews invented a more humane God as time went on. But I don't think the other possibility is out of the question. Heather |