Religion and myth. Where is the line?

[Fox]

What makes a religion a mythological one (Norse,Greek, etc.) or a bona fide one (Christianity, Islam)? Is it in the perception or is there something more? Will people say 2000 years from now say that the main religions of today were myths?

 

[Ghoti]

What makes a religion a mythology for example Norse and Egyptian mythology which was a people’s religion and what makes Christianity or Islam an bona fide religion and not myth? Is it in perceptions or is there something more? Thanks for the insight.

Generally speaking, other than the fact that there are none of the original adherents of Norse or Egyptian (or Greek or Aztec) gods, I don’t know. The only worshippers of the pantheons you mention are modern revivers of those gods through Neo-Paganism, Wicca, Asatru, etc.

So, for example, for the proto-Babylonian deities Esh-ki-bib-el and En-ki-den-ki-du, their worship **was[/a] a religion, it is now mythology. YHWH’s worship was and is (and ever shall be) religion.

From the standpoint of religious studies, all religion is composed of myths and mythology (in which case the word “myth” and its derivatives do not have the connotation of falseness that they have for the layman). Thus Christian myths as well as Babylonian myths.

From the standpoint of Catholicism, the faith of YHWH is religion because it is the Truth, all else is myth (negativity attached).

Thus, to the average layman, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Shinto etc are religions; Esh-ki-bib-el-ism is mythology.

To a theologian/mythologist, all are mythology.

To a Christian, Christianity is religion, Esh-ki-bib-el-ism is mythology, and the standing of the others as religion or myth depends on the poster and the forum. **

 

[crowonsnow]

I had this conversation with my 10 year old nephew a month ago. He was taught in his religious instruction that myths weren’t true, that people really didn’t believe them. So I asked him why, if these people knew these gods weren’t real, why they went to the trouble to build these huge temples to these gods and goddesses to honor them and seek their protection.

I’ve heard it said that when you practice a myth it becomes a religion. There really is no difference between the two, however. An old religion is still a religion, even if we call it a myth.

 

[fellicia]

I have allways thought of a myth as based on faith…just like religion which is also expressed above.

Thinking about it now it is the religions and faiths that are not currently believed in by a group of people that I would call a myth.

And those that are beleived in and followed now I would call religion.

Myths unlike religion do not need to include some form of deity, therefore I would conclude that a myth is anything that may have been believed in the past but now a days is generally not thought to be true.

 

[survive]

There is no line. They are overlapping groups. Some myths are religions and some religions are myths. A nonreligious myth is a mere legend, like Paul Bunyan. A nonmythic religion can be either a true or mostly true one, or one with no concrete histories in it. Whether a religion is true has nothing to do with how many people believe it.

 

[Bubba_Switzler]

Myth is derived from Greek meaning “story”. It is simply a form and usage of story. It is only lately that it has come to mean a false story.

There is a passage in Exodus, I can’t remember where, in which God explains that he is directing history for the purpose of teaching lessons. In other words, God creates true myths to educate us. Tolkein converted CS Lewis on this very point.

 

[utunumsint]

What makes a religion a mythological one (Norse,Greek, etc.) or a bona fide one (Christianity, Islam)? Is it in the perception or is there something more? Will people say 2000 years from now say that the main religions of today were myths?

A religion may contain myths, but are not exclusevly made up of myths. For example, the Bible contains myths (for example, the Genesis story). It also contains history. There is poetry, legends, theological expositions, and many more genres (e.g. proverbs, prophecy, etc…). Sometimes the boundary between history and myth gets blurred. In this case it can be controversial and difficult to know which one is which. Some myths contain historical truths. Some historical narratives contain mythological elements. The ancients did not regulate or restrict themselves in the way the wrote things.

Christianity, as a religion, bases itself on the historicity of the events described in the Gospels. Therefore from that perspective, Christianity is definitely not a myth.

But a myth is generally a fictional story that has a purpose to illustrate some truth about human nature, life in general, creation, experience, etc…

God bless,
Ut

 

[Starwynd]

Actually at one myths were the major religions of their day and people believed in them as vehemently as Christians and other religious people believe in theirs today. What makes a religion a mainstream religion is belief in numbers, and the majority of a population. Nothing more. A religious cult is mostly a small amount of people. However, religious cults can be far more harmful to people than a major religion.

However, before a religion becomes mainstream, it always starts out as a cult because it starts out with a small amount of people. Christianity was once thought of as a cult when it first started.

 

[utunumsint]

Actually at one myths were the major religions of their day and people believed in them as vehemently as Christians and other religious people believe in theirs today. What makes a religion a mainstream religion is belief in numbers, and the majority of a population. Nothing more. A religious cult is mostly a small amount of people. However, religious cults can be far more harmful to people than a major religion.

However, before a religion becomes mainstream, it always starts out as a cult because it starts out with a small amount of people. Christianity was once thought of as a cult when it first started.

The claims made by the early adherents of the Christian religion were that Christ rose from the dead, and that this was a historical reality. It does not fit in the genere of mythology. The Greek and Roman pagan stories about the gods, and those of the Egyptians clearly fall into this category, as some of the Ancient writers admite themselves.

God bless,
Ut

 

[Starwynd]

Actually, many people do not consider it historical reality, especially mainstream historians. Many even doubt the existence of Christ at all because eyewitness testimony is unreliable at best.

And mythology *was *historical reality to the ancient people.

For example. Some temples had huge fossil bones with which they’d claim was a piece of one of their heroes such as Bellerophon. At least, according a history channel special I once saw. Unfortunately I cannot remember the name of that particular special at the moment. But the fossil bones were thought as real and that their heroes were real and their myth was true.

 

[davidv]

Actually, many people do not consider it historical reality, especially mainstream historians.

And they would be wrong.

Many even doubt the existence of Christ at all because eyewitness testimony is unreliable at best.

And there is no evidence that will convince them otherwise.

And mythology *was *historical reality to the ancient people.

How do you know?

It was mythology because it was a story portraying some truth. Whether it was historical truth or not, would have been known at the time.

 

[utunumsint]

Actually, many people do not consider it historical reality, especially mainstream historians. Many even doubt the existence of Christ at all because eyewitness testimony is unreliable at best.

Can you provide me a list of such historians? Even the Jesus seminars take the existence of Christ for granted. There is just too much evidence for it.

However, if your primary source of information on these historians is the history channel, then I can see why you might have that opinion.

And mythology *was *historical reality to the ancient people.

Maybe to the iliterate, and the uneducated. But for those with education and literacy, there wasn’t much confusion. For example, the Aeneid written by Virgil was never considered a work of history. And yet it became like a pagan Bible for the Roman ancient world. One of the chief religious authorities at the time of Augustine, named Varo, all but admitted that the Gods were mere fables.

For example. Some temples had huge fossil bones with which they’d claim was a piece of one of their heroes such as Bellerophon. At least, according a history channel special I once saw. Unfortunately I cannot remember the name of that particular special at the moment. But the fossil bones were thought as real and that their heroes were real and their myth was true.

As with the Bible, so with Pagan myths. There is some intermingling of history with mythology. For example, the remains of Thebes, Troy, Agamemnon’s tomb, the oracle at Delphi, have all been identified by archaeology. But does that mean we must believe everything that Homer wrote about in the Iliad? Of course not. But we can assume that there was some historical basis for it, even though it was written 700 years after the fact.

God bless,
Ut

 

[Benedict_Broere]

I think the comparison is somewhat unclear.
Take for instance fiction versus true, or fantasy versus fact, or poetry versus reality, etcetera.
With that you arrive at the whole business of establishing reliable knowledge, the kind of knowledge you would trust your life to when visiting for instance a hospital, the kind of knowledge we call science.
But myth and religion transcend science, they try to answer the deeper questions, the existential questions, the questions on what reality actually is, and why.
And these days science is providing us with loads of data that make it very reasonable to see this world in a religious perspective, at least to think this universe is something much more than just pointless matter moving about.
But still, we don’t have an absolute view on everything, a Gods-eye-point-of-view. So we can’t be sure about this religious extra to this evolving matter.
Though the whole and very rich tradition of myth and religion and philosophy presents us lots of thoughts to consider what this ‘extra’ might be.
And it very well might be that there’s reality in it after all.

 

[survive]

Actually at one myths were the major religions of their day and people believed in them as vehemently as Christians and other religious people believe in theirs today. What makes a religion a mainstream religion is belief in numbers, and the majority of a population. Nothing more. A religious cult is mostly a small amount of people. However, religious cults can be far more harmful to people than a major religion.

However, before a religion becomes mainstream, it always starts out as a cult because it starts out with a small amount of people. Christianity was once thought of as a cult when it first started.

This argument is made up of word confusion.
“Myth”, as we’ve been discussing, has more than one meaning. “Cult” has at least five meanings, only two of which are pejorative in any sense.
A myth can be any story, any sacred story, whether true or not, any false story on any subject, or any symbolic story, true or not, containing deeper truth or not, religious in nature or not. Before using the word “myth” it is considered courteous to define it so as to avoid confusion with the various meanings of the word.
The same is true of “cult”. It can mean any system or practice of devotion to a person, deity, idea etc., any fandom, obscure fandom, obsessive fandom, a subset of devotional activity within a broader religion, a group that branches off a larger religion with a markedly different theology (pejorative meaning #1, similar to “heresy”), or a group that systematically recruits, changes and exploits its members through deception and hypnotic techniques (pejorative meaning #2, also called “controlling groups”, “high-demand groups”, and “destructive cults”). Again, it is decent to define the term before using it in argument. For example, if I were to say that there is a cult of Creedence Clearwater Revival, this would be true, but there would be nothing wrong with it. If I then said that a cult called Heaven’s Gate committed mass suicide because their cultish environment made it extremely hard to resist group pressure, this would also be true, and nightmarish. Then, though, if I said there is no difference between listening to CCR and committing suicide, that would be absurd. It’s just a trick of wordplay.

 

[Benedict_Broere]

I don’t know if this is allowed, but in addition to what I stated above, I would recommend the following, and this also because religion these days, modern science-oriented religion, just can’t any more be connected with ‘myth’ and its connotations of ‘fiction’, ‘poetry’, etcetera.
meta-library.net/cqinterv/jh-frame.html
meaningoflife.tv/video.php?speaker=haught&topic=complete
counterbalance.net/cosmcrea/spitzer-frame.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Story
counterbalance.org/
nl.youtube.com/watch?v=j_immL2m1tg&feature=PlayList&p=E79EF34C93B892C2&index=0&playnext=1

 

[Blade_and_Blood]

What makes a religion a mythological one (Norse,Greek, etc.) or a bona fide one (Christianity, Islam)? Is it in the perception or is there something more? Will people say 2000 years from now say that the main religions of today were myths?

A myth is basically a religion that no one believes anymore.

Mankind’s desire to worship the Unknown is eternal, but concepts and institutions can go out of date, depending on the extremes of the people who run them. I honestly believe churches of this day and age will fail in time. Not now… not in my time, but someday in the distant future. Something’s gotta give.

Ironically Yours, Blade and Blood

 

[redhen]

I honestly believe churches of this day and age will fail in time. Not now… not in my time, but someday in the distant future. Something’s gotta give.

Hmm, depends on how old you are and where you live.

dailycamera.com/news/2007/dec/13/empty-churches-full-mosques-in-europe/

I think there is a consensus that in 40 years time, the European churches will all be either museums or Mosques.

Britain is considered perhaps the most secular country in Europe. Only 6.3 percent of the population attends church twice or more a month, according to Christian Research, a publishing group in London. And it’s expected to fall to 2 percent by 2040.

 

[KingAlfred]

“What makes a religion a mythological one (Norse,Greek, etc.) or a bona fide one (Christianity, Islam)?”

Public opinion.

 

[utunumsint]

“What makes a religion a mythological one (Norse,Greek, etc.) or a bona fide one (Christianity, Islam)?”

Public opinion.

Norse and Greek mythology have very little basis in historical fact. As I’ve pointed out in previous points, there is some basis, but very little.

However, there are other dead religions that had historical basis. For example, Zoroastrianism. We know a great deal about him and his historical background. His theology was very mythical, however, and based on direct gnosis, not historical truth.

You can probably say that many early religions from paganism were based on tribal stories to explain nature and the structure of society. Everything in the ancient world was seen in a spiritual sense. For example, the Romans had gods for every consceivable action, and object you can imagine. There were gods for various social occasions. The emperor himself was seen as a god (or at least his spiritual side was seen as godlike, not his physical).

Judaism, on the other hand, tracks the historical progression of the people of God, who trace their ancestry back to Abraham. There are mythical elements in parts of the narrative, but most of what is written can be traced back to real historical sources using archaeology and corroborating historical records from other cultures and religious groups of the day.

There is still much debate on whether Abraham lived, but most scholars believe that his story has a basis in historical fact. The same goes for Moses. Kind David and most of the kings of Judah and Israel are amply attested to in other writings. Herodotus provides us with a Greek perspective on many of the events listed in the book of Kings and Chronicles, including several battles, and the rise and fall of the Babylonians, Cyrus, etc…

This is defnitely not myth. Even secular historians would never call the history of Israel myth. You can dispute the religious experiences described in the Bible, but you can’t call these experiences mythology.

The same thing goes for Christianity. The earliest writings we have are from Paul from around 49 AD. There are a plethora of other early Christian sources in the Bible and outside of the Bible. You also have mention of Christianity in Pliny, Josephus, and Tacitus, to name a few. All of these attest to the historicity of Christ and his followers.

Even if Christianity were to dissappear tomorrow, no one would call Christianity a myth.

God bless,
Ut

 

[Blade_and_Blood]

Hmm, depends on how old you are and where you live.

dailycamera.com/news/2007/dec/13/empty-churches-full-mosques-in-europe/

I think there is a consensus that in 40 years time, the European churches will all be either museums or Mosques.

I’m seventeen. And considering your sources, I want to move to Europe now.