The materials given here are based on Leonard & McClure with additional notes added by Bill Stifler, 2005, 2016.
The Meaning of "Myth"
Students struggle, at first, with the meaning of the word "myth." They hear it used in everyday situations to refer to things that are believed to be true but are actually false. Unfortunately, this view of myth usually leads to an ethnocentric view toward other people's myths and a privileging of students' own myths, resulting in a failure to see the true value of myth as well as its relevance and power in culture. Joseph Campbell referred to myth as metaphor, and this idea will underlie our approach to myth.
Myths are ancient narratives [involving the relation of humans and gods] that attempt to answer the enduring and fundamental human questions:
- How did the universe and the world come to be?
- How did we come to be here?
- Who are we?
- What are our proper, necessary, or inescapable roles as we relate to one another and to the world at large?
- What should our values be?
- How should we behave?
- How should we not behave?
- What are the consequences of behaving and not behaving in such ways?
Based on this definition of myth, the stories of Beowulf, Arthur, Jesus, Abraham, Samson, Adam and Eve, and other stories we may be familiar with are all myth, and, as such, will be treated equally in class. That does not mean that there might be members of the class who view these myths in special ways within their own religious, philosophical, or idealogical belief systems. What it does mean is that we will give all myths an equal and fair hearing. And by doing so, we might actually develop a deeper and more meaningful understanding of those myths that might hold special relevance for ourselves.
The Meaning of "Mythology"
The term "mythology" can be used to refer to a body of myths, as in, Classical mythology, Norse mythology, or Aztec mythology; however, Leonard and McClure use the term "primarily to refer to the 'scholarly study of myths'" (Leonard and McClure 6)
Early Attitudes toward Myth in Greek Culture
The word "myth" comes from the Greek word mythos, which had as its basic meaning "word or story." The Greeks also used the word logos to mean "word or story." It is not unusual for languages to have two words with similar meaning. For instance, in English, we use talk and speak interchangeably although usually speak refers to more formal situations and talk to more casual ones. The chart below illustrates the ways in which the Greek words mythos and logos changed over time.
| Mythos | Logos | |
|---|---|---|
| Early Greek | "divinely inspired, poetic utterances" -- Hesiod | "crafty 'legalese'" "everyday . . . discourse" -- Hesiod |
| Pre-Socratic | "gullibility of the common folk . . . for believing" -- Heraclitus | "a means of arguing" "which could be true or false" -- pre-Socratic philosophers |
| Plato | falsehood, fiction, irrational -- Plato | Absolute or axiomatic truth, ordering principles -- Plato |
Although Plato saw myths as fanciful and false, "cheap imitations of reality," Plato also created his own "logical" myths (using the word mythos to refer to them), which he saw as true (Leonard and McClure 3-4). This attitude that "my stories are true, but yours are false" continues to appear today. Often, this attitude is rooted in an ethnocentric sense that our own stories are somehow better than the stories of others.
Euhemeros of Messene: Euhemeros argued that the original writers of the myths had been primitives with little understanding who took historical figures and romanticized and embellished their tales with supernatural happenings and "imaginative explanations" (Leonard and McClure 4-5). There have been many approaches to myth, which are rooted in this idea of misunderstood history, science, or languages. All such approaches are referred to as euhemerist after Euhemeros. Euhemerism was a popular explanation for the similarities in myth until the 20th century, when scholars began to realize that there was more at work than ignorance or superstition in the followers of myth.
The Good Old Days
In Hesiod's Five Ages of Man he expresses a "nostalgia for a 'golden' past" coupled with "criticism of the present age" (Leonard and McClure 5). Hesiod associated each of these periods with a precious metal. The Age of Gold saw humans and Gods in harmony, and humans living forever. During the Age of Silver, there was conflict between humans and the gods, but people still lived extraordinarily long lives. During the Age of Bronze, humans were warlike, the gods more distant. The Age of Heroes is the only age not associated with a precious metal. During this Bronze-like age, heroes rose up. This is the period of Jason and the Argonauts, the Iliad, Odyssey, and the Aeneid. The last stage in Hesiod's view was the Age of Iron, the time in which he lived, where people opposed the gods and fought with each other constantly. Tied to these five ages of humanity was a desire to return to the golden age.
The book of Daniel records an image similar to Hesiod's ages of humanity in Nebuchadnezzar's dream, which Daniel interprets as succeeding empires beginning with Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon (the head of gold) and continuing through time with kingdoms of lesser value (KJV, Daniel 2).
This sense that the world is getting worse coupled with a desire to return to a better time continues to influence myth and culture.