Mythology in Bblical Texts

necessary starting point is establishing a working definition of "myth." B.S. Childs explains that one must "consciously [limit] the discussion to the definition of myth as has been used in the history of modern Biblical scholarship. Within this field there have been developed two main approaches to the understanding of myth which differ in decisive points from each other" (13).

Accordingly, Childs identifies these two approaches as those delineated by Hartlich and Sachs (Childs 14), and Gunkel (Childs 15).

The broad approach, aptly defined by Hartlich and Sachs, is a historic-philosophical position which asserts the following:

The mythical movement treats principally on the same level all statements concerning miraculous and supernatural occurrences, especially of a direct miraculous intervention or appearance of the deity as well as any other supernatural being. It designates them uniformly as "mythical" in so far as the statements concerning such events arise from a pre-scientific and uncritical, naive stage of consciousness, regardless of whether they appear in the Bible or other religious documents (14).

Childs proposes, however, that such an approach brings with it the potential to force false and unsuitable categories upon the subject being examined. Further, he notes that the definition provided by Hartlich and Sachs does not approach the subject of myth as a totality, but rather as having been

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ological event of the end-time (Endzeit), which in Eliade's view is a return to the primeval (8-9): "It is important to note also that salvation history unfolds in the time of men rather than in the time of the gods. This fundamental difference must make us more careful in using the term myth to characterize theological interpretations like those of salvation history" (Ricoeur, 280). Rogerson contends further that "the concept of myth as applied to the Old Testament has often been worked out in the context of disciplines other than theology, [but] in the future, one ought to recognize that there is myth in the Old Testament, [and] to recognise this in such a way that alien interpretations are not imported into the Old Testament" (188). Rogerson would opt for a combined literary-functional definition in which myths would be "stories or literature which expressed the faith and world view of a people . . . [with] much to say about origins, and they would express a people's intuition of transcendent reality" (188). A brief examination of myth in the Psalms is relevant here. Smick observes a number of linguistic and cultural continuities between the Bible and Ugaritic. These continuities "make it reasonable to assume the g
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Approximate Word count = 2253
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)