The materials given here are based on Leonard & McClure with additional notes added by Bill Stifler, 2005, 2016.

Apostolic Period

The Apostolic period refers to the early days of the growth of Christianity as Paul and the other apostles began spreading Christianity beyond Israel. Under Roman rule, the Jewish religion was recognized as a legal religion, giving Jews the freedom to worship as they pleased without interference from the government. When Christianity began, it was viewed by the Roman government as part of Judaism. Eventually, as Christianity moved away from the Jewish distinctives regarding diet and circumcision, it was viewed as a separate religion and no longer under the protection given the Jews. In addition, by 70 A.D., the Jews lost their protection in response to political tensions between Rome and the Jews, which resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem. Because it became difficult for Christians to worship openly, Christianity went underground, losing contact with other believers across the Roman empire. As a result, Christianity began to diversify its beliefs. A variety of religious writings were circulated among Christians. Some of these would later be compiled to create the New Testament.

Much of early Christian doctrine is based on the writings of Paul, but in the Gospel of John, John equates the mythos of creation with the logos of reasoned truth, in effect relegating the term mythos to make-believe and elevating logos to transcendental truth (Leonard and McClure 6-7).

In the beginning was the Word (logos) and the Word (logos) was with God and the Word (logos) was God. The same was in the beginning with God. . . . And the Word (logos) was made flesh, and dwelt among us. (KJV, John 1.1-2.,14)

For John, Logos represents both Plato's idea of absolute truth and Hesiod's use of mythos as "divinely inspired." The Logos is the Word of God and is incarnated (made flesh) in Christ. From this point on, Christianity would view its own stories (logos) as absolutely true while everyone else's stories (mythos) were falsehoods and fantastic works of imagination.

The Age of Faith

The terms Middle Ages, Medieval Period (the word medieval comes from the Latin words for Middle Ages), or Dark Ages are all perjoratives, indicating that this period of time was either of little consequence except for falling between more important periods, or a period of war, disease, or little or no learning. However, this characterization of the period is inaccurate. A better term for this time period is The Age of Faith, which is the term used by Will Durant for his Story of Civilization series. The Age of Faith in Western culture was dominated by two great monotheistic faiths, the Christian church, primarily the Roman Catholic church, and Islam.

During the Apostolic Period, Christianity was seen as part of Judaism, which had legal status in the Roman empire. But as Christianity diverged from its Jewish roots, it was seen as distinct from Judaism, and therefore, not protected. Judaism itself also lost favor with the empire, and by 70 A.D., Jerusalem had been destroyed, and the Jewish nation seized to exist, its people scattered throughout the Roman empire.

Prior to this period, Christianity had gone underground, and with limited contact between followers of Christ, Christian belief diversified. That changed when Constantine, a Roman general, took over the empire around 325 A.D., claiming victory in the name of Christ, and declaring Christianity as the state religion. With its new protected status, Christianity began the effort, through a series of councils, to codify beliefs and respond to challenges, such as the criticism by the Jews that Christianity was polytheistic, worshipping three gods. These councils established orthodox Christian belief, the canon of accepted scriptures, and orders of Christian conduct. During this time, many of these leaders, who had been educated in Greek and Roman culture, reviewed the various works of ancient Greek and Roman writers, approving those, like Plato, whose ideas were compatible with Christian teaching, and censoring those whose ideas were incompatible, such as the works of Aristotle, who taught that reality lay in the physical realm, and Hesiod, who wrote about the Greek gods. In time, the church developed two centers, each tied to the governmental authority, Rome, capital of the Western Roman empire, and Constantinople (modern day Istanbul), capital of the Eastern Roman empire. Eastern Christianity was more open and accepting of the varied Greek writers, so works "tossed" from Rome sometimes found refuge in Constantinople. (The Roman branch of Christianity became the Roman Catholic church. The Eastern branch the Eastern Orthodox church, which would include the Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox churches).

Many of the early church fathers had been trained deeply in Graeco-Roman culture. Aware that there were similarities between Christianity and the older Greek and Roman myths, they developed the "Thesis of Demonic Imitation." Several church fathers argued that demons had inspired the Greek and Roman poets to write the Graeco-Roman myths to "make the story of Christ appear to be a fable" (Leonard and McClure 7). Plato's denigration of myth as "cheap imitations of reality" coupled with Christianity's relegation of Greek myth to "outright falsehoods designed to damn souls to Hell" led to a loss of interest in the classical Greek/Roman myths (Leonard and McClure 4, 7) and active banning and destruction of many works by the Roman church. The concept of demons tricking people into false beliefs can be seen in contemporary Christianity among those who argue that the various dinosaur fossils found around the world were actually planted by demons to confuse and distract Christians from true belief.

During the Age of Faith, the primary means to truth was through revelation handed down through the authoritative hierarchy of the church, which was modeled after the hierarchical pattern of Roman government. Reason and logic were important, but were subjugated to revelation as was common sense. Experience, however, was seen as the devil's realm. The devil used the physical world to tempt and confuse people. True reality was the heavenly realm, perceived by faith through the teachings of the church. This can be seen, for instance, in the art of the time, where paintings of the saints pictured them with halos, symbolizing their spiritual reality. Gothic cathedrals were built to celebrate the light of the Word and the awesomeness and power of God as the structures were filled with glass letting in light and directing people's eyes upward in contemplation of the immensity of the Almighty.

The Renaissance

The Crusades during the Age of Faith set the stage for the Renaissance. During the Age of Faith, efforts were made to reclaim Israel from Islamic rule and return it to its rightful owners, Christians (notice, there was no intent at that time that Israel should be given to Jewish people). While the Crusades failed in their endeavors, one result was that marauding Crusaders brought various Greek and Roman works--works that had been tossed as, in some sense, heretical--back to Europe. As these works were read and disseminated, the ideas within them led to the Renaissance.

The Renaissance marked a reawakening to Greek and Roman culture and a rediscovery of the ('tossed') classic myth literature of the past. The Renaissance also turned from Plato's ideal abstract world to Aristotle's physical world, leading to a rediscovery of natural life, regenerating art and literature. The Renaissance celebrated the physical world. Art moved away from stylistic representations of the saints (painted with a halo to identify their true nature) to a focus on accurate representation of the physical world. Renaissance painters focused on the physical Christ, painting his passion, the agony of his crucifixion, and his incarnation, the Word made flesh. Da Vinci procured dead bodies, making detailed anatomical sketches in order to more realistically paint the human figure. Shakespeare wrote about the physicality of life. His works are filled with references to sexual behavior, scatology, and other bodily processes. There was also a questioning of revelation and the authority of the church in favor of experience and reason. Galileo, looking through a telescope, saw a moon seemingly pockmarked, not a "perfect" form. Jupiter had moons orbiting it, which contradicted the teachings of the church that the earth, as the home of God's special creation, humanity, was the center of the universe. Columbus gambled that he could sail West to go East (although not the first to argue for a spherical earth). Martin Luther, unable to quell his proclivity for "sin" argued, based on his own experiences and his personal study of the Bible, that "the just shall live by faith."

As Luther and others questioned the Roman authority in the religious realm, the individual nations of Europe began to pull away from the Holy Roman empire, leading to a new emphasis on nation-states. While efforts would continue to build empires, Europe increasingly became a world of separate nations.

In the Renaissance, authority and revelation became suspect or, at the very least, less important, and people began increasingly to rely on experience and reason. In many respects, the modern world is a ripple flowing out from the Renaissance.

The Enlightenment

The Enlightenment saw reason and logic as both the most important path to truth and as an innate human quality. Experience was still important but now, experience must be subjected to a rigorous methodology insuring an objective interpretation rather than an emotional or subjective one. This new methodology, which became known as the scientific method, was the foundation for modern science because it allowed researchers to systematically repeat and verify the discoveries of others. The Enlightenment was a period that emphasized

• Reason/Rationality
• Common sense (self-evident truths)
• Order and Symmetry

Because of this emphasis on reason and rationality, the Enlightenment scholars rejected myth and revelation as mere superstition. While the Enlightenment scholars recognized common sense, their meaning was different from how people use the phrase today as levelheadedness or good judgement. The Enlightenment scholars believed that all humans had an innate knowledge about certain things (common to all, and a sense of certain specific truths), which they called "self-evident truths." Finally, looking back at classical culture, they celebrated order and symmetry, the logical order of the universe and human life coupled with the idea of a balance of opposites and correspondence of parts. Art, therefore, needed to be orderly and balanced, less about emotion and more about clear thinking. Much of the architecture of the period was modeled after the order and symmetry of classical Greek and Roman architecture with its use of columns, arches, domes, and vaults created from marble, granite, and cement for practical durability and strength. This style can still be seen in the architecture of government buildings in Washington, D.C.

While the formation of the United States was certainly influenced by Christianity, the dominant influence was Enlightenment thinking. The Declaration of Independence begins as a logical argument outlining the reasons for separation from England and refers to self-evident truths. The U.S. Constitution divides and balances the powers of government between three branches--Executive, Legislative, and Judicial--in order to limit the powers of government. Benjamin Franklin's wide interests and accomplishments are emblematic of Enlightenment thinking. From a religious perspective, most of the Founding Fathers were deists, believing, like Isaac Newton, that God had created the universe as a self-sustaining unit, a complex clock-like mechanism, which, once wound, would continue to operate independently of God and without his interference or involvement. Jefferson even wrote a version of the New Testament that removed all reference to the miraculous.

The Development of a Rational Faith

Christianity was also affected. The papal authority had warned Martin Luther that his emphasis on the authority of scripture alone (sola scriptura) would result in a splintering of Christian doctrine, which, in fact, happened. The emphasis on reason and rationality led to efforts within Christianity to establish a Protestant orthodoxy. One of the most successful was created by John Calvin. His logical rationale for Christian belief is often summarized under the acronym TULIP.

John Calvin's Rational Christianity

T	Total Depravity	Calvin argued that all humans were totally depraved, incapable of any good, incapable of any means to salvation. This could only be possible if all humans were descendants from Adam and had inherited a sinful nature from Adam in consequence of his fall from grace. This, of course, required that the Genesis creation account be taken literally and historically. The idea was expressed in the Puritan primer of the alphabet as "A - In Adam's fall, we sinned All."
U	Unconditional Election	Incapable of salvation themselves, the only means to salvation for fallen humans was for God to select people for salvation based purely on his own will and not due to any human merit.
L	Limited Atonement	Since salvation is only available to those whom God chooses to save, Christ's death on the cross is only efficacious for those few whom God has chosen.
I	Irresistible Grace	Since humans are saved through no effort of their own but as a consequence of God's call and his atoning work on the cross, those selected cannot resist the call to salvation.
P	Perseverance of the Saints	Since the work of salvation is God's and God's alone and not through any human effort or agency, continuing in the grace of salvation is also an act of grace bestowed on humans and not a consequence of any human action. In other words, once God saves a person, there is nothing that the person can do that would cause him or her to lose his or her salvation since there was nothing the person could do to gain salvation in the first place. All of the work was God's work.

Each point in Calvin's argument is built on the structure of the preceeding points to create a fully rational faith. Eliminate one of his points, and the rest fall apart. The foundation of his system of theology was that all humans were sinners through Adam. This emphasis on a rational faith led to the insistence on a literal and historical interpretation of the Bible rather than a more metaphorical interpretation.

The Search for the Ur-Language

The story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 told of God scattering the original humans and, in the process, giving them new and unique languages. However, Enlightenment scholars reasoned that the original language of Adam, the original or ur-language, must have continued. With the rise of the nation-state and the fall of empire, the new European nations sought to identify themselves as the true inheritors of Eden by identifying their own language and culture as the original Edenic language and culture (Leonard and McClure 7).

The Beginnings of Human History - Giovanni Battista Vico

Vico sought to create an "ideal eternal history," a logical system that would unite the various myths of Egypt, Greece, and Rome with iconographic symbols (like those found on coats of arms) and the origins of words to create an evolutionary development of history in line with his beliefs about Christianity and a biblical version of history (Leonard and McClure 8). In his book The New Science, Vico argued that "languages and cultures experience recursive evolutionary [or changing] cycles" (Leonard and McClure 8). Vico outlined three stages of human history that repeat in an endless cycle:

• Focus on Gods - The action of gods explain the world; Their exploits are presented through a poetic imagination expressed in raw passion. Then comes a shift from gods to powerful leaders.
• Focus on Heroes - Heroes inspire virtue and the development of social order as people begin to congregate around heroes creating both cities (civilization) and a hierarchy of leadership around the hero. The heroic period is followed by a more democratic culture.
• History focused on Humans - Democracy is rooted in rationality, but it gradually descends into bureaucracy and finally barbarism. This is followed by a new creative period that returns to a focus on the gods.

("Giambattista Vico," par. 2)

Proto-Indo-European - Sir William Jones

Linguistic scholar Sir William Jones noticed similarities between European languages, Arabic, and Sanskrit (India), suggesting all have a common source language. "Following Jones's suggestion, linguists methodically demonstrated that nearly all the languages of India, Southwest Asia, and Europe derive from a single ancestor language" (Leonard and McClure 8-9). While modern scholars continue to look for the roots common to many modern languages, this theory is no longer tied to a belief in the Biblical version of history. These scholars have created tables of presumed roots that are common to these various languages, and this extracted language base (not an actual language) is called Proto-Indo-European (Proto for first; Indo for the Indus River valley; European for the spread of the language into what is now modern Europe.

The Romantic Period

The Romantic Period receives its name from a French word, which referred to the popular works of chivalry (In modern French, the word "roman" translates to English as "novel," the "new" (novus) literature that had arisen that focused on ordinary people rather than the rich and powerful. Since these stories focused on love and adventure, the idea of romantic love, or eros, which involved the coarse physical lusts, became associated with the concept of romance. During the Romantic Period, romantic love is elevated to a powerful emotional force that is transcendant, elevating human experience. The period was characterized by a rejection of science and materialism coupled with a focus on the concrete and sensual. Rejecting rationality, which was now characterized as cold and unfeeling, the Romantic Period celebrated an emotional response, where truth was perceived through emotions that transcended everyday life. It is during the Romantic Period that the negative image of the scientist as out of touch with everyday life arose. Where the Enlightenment had elevated logic and reason as the highest path to truth, the Romantic period elevated emotion as the path to truth. The focus of the Romantic Period was on

• Common man, common life - Art and literature now took as their subject matter the everyday person rather than leaders and the cultural elite.

• Imagination as a force for good - Creativity and the imagination became celebrated rather than seen as evidence of mental health problems (Enlightenment) or demonic influence (Age of Faith).

• Mystery & Mysticism - The mysterious transcends reason and rationality but can be apprehended through intuition often via a mystical experience. Mysticism is an experience that transcends the natural, rational world and can be achieved through prayer, meditation, fasting, hypnosis, an ecstatic experience, hallucinogenic drugs, and so on. This suprarational apprehension of truth (achieved not by reason but by somehow going beyond the limits of the natural world and directly, intuitively perceiving the transcendent realm) was reflected in religion through revivalism, Pentecostalism, and an emphasis on a "salvation experience"; through the development of the Transcendental movement, and through things like Mesmerism/hypnosis and interest in hallucinogenic drugs.

• God & Nature - To get close to God, get close to nature. The result was the growth of communes similar to what Hawthorne describes in The Blithesdale Romance, the camping movement including the Chautauqua camps, Thoreau's meditations at Walden Pond, and the development of suburbs (The Industrial Revolution moved people from farms to the city. The suburb was a movement back to nature without the "hassle" of farm work).

• Art lies in the emotions of artist and patron - Art was no longer focused on purity of form or elements of balance (Enlightenment), a focus on everyday physical reality (Renaissance), or the hidden, revelatory world of God's spirit (Age of Faith). Art was about passions, whether of the artist or the viewer. Walt Whitman celebrates his "mighty Yawp." Impressionism dominates art.

Johann Gottfried Herder - Volk Theory

Herder's Volk theory

• According to Herder, there was "an original divinely sanctioned unity of humanity," which he based on the story of the Tower of Babel.
• As a consequence, there was a human devolution into "various locally, geographically, culturally, and linguistically, separated Volk" (folk).
• Herder believed there was an "organic relationship between Volk and landscape," which helped define their culture and language.
• Consequently, these folk had a "close connection to the soil [which] produced simple, honest Volk."

(Leonard and McClure 7-10)

J.R.R. Tolkien's hobbits are a perfect example of Herder's Volk. The One Ring takes longer to damage and pervert the hobbits because of their essential "simple, honest" natures. The hobbits are short (close to the ground), walk barefoot with hairy feet (like tiny root tendrils) and live in hobbit holes extending into the hillsides of the Shire. Tolkien, who was familiar with Herder's ideas, claimed that he based the hobbits on the simple folk of the shire where he grew up. The influence of Volk theory can be seen today in our modern celebration of rural culture and our comments on "common sense."

Impact of Herder's Volk theory

• The growth of "national romanticisms of the 19th century"
• The development of the racist ideologies of 20th century fascism
• The growth of a "romantic folklore movement," which sought to preserve the culture and language of various folk cultures. (In Ireland, this led to a renewed interest in Celtic myth and efforts to preserve the Celtic language and music)
• The desire for a return to simplicity and rural purity

(Leonard and McClure 7-10)

Herder's Volk theory would shape much of the thinking of 19th century approaches to myth.