Think about it: the ancient Greeks literally believed in their gods and the stories surrounding them. It was religion for them.
It was quite a bit more complicated than this. Some of the Greeks believed some of the stories about some of the Gods.
This trend proceeded as time went on. No one was supposed to believe the Metamorphoses as literally true. That’s what got Ovid banished!
The difference between myth and religion is not merely subjective, not merely the result of people no longer believing that something is true. That this is true can be seen by operation of a simple comparison: few people believe that the solar system is geocentric, but geocentricism is not a myth. Why? Because it was held to be literally true, not merely expressive of a truth.
A myth, on the other hand, is something that was never true, but expresses a truth. The origins of sociology are replete with myths regarding Nordic superiority. The myths were never true, but they expressed the fond beliefs of the people who espoused them, and reflected the fact that for a time, it seemed that to some North Europeans they had established some kind of dominance over most everyone else.
Between these two classes of story, Adam and Eve fall into the first. The story is unquestionably old, and none can say who exactly put it in its present form. Legend says it was written by Moses, but who told it to him? That we do not know. But the antiquity of an observation does not make it false. Everyone who knew Caesar is dead. Most people who knew Ceasar Chavez will soon be dead. This does not make the fact of either leader less true, just harder to verify.
As far as Christianity goes, it seems that believers have a difficult time deciding exactly what’s literal and what’s symbolic and – most importantly – the criteria for distinguishing them.
If you are a Catholic, then there is no difficulty. The Bible can be taken as literally true, unless itself states otherwise, like in the parables of Christ.
If you’re willing to grant that the Garden of Eden story is symbolic, then where (and how?) do you draw the line between the symbolic and the literal?
This is the kind of fuzzy thinking that, sadly, plagues modern men and women. Y = mx plus b is symbolic. Does that make it any less literal given the right variables? Of course not.
The story of Adam and Eve is suggestive, even, one might say, evocative, if he were not averse to risking a pun. Why must it therefore be objectively false?
Take another, more pertinent example. If a person claims to be an atheist, and therefore is symbolic of the tiresome tendency of modern people to reject miracles solely because they lie outside of their rather circumscribed experiences, does that automatically make the claim false? Must I insist that the person, being symbolic, is a myth, a mere figment, even though he stands in front of me gesticulating wildly, insisting on his materiality? Must I sneer and say “As to your existence, I am an atheist, because you are symbol?”
Boy if I had a penny for every time my threads go off topic and dont answer the questions I was originally curious about.
Funny, given your profession.
