Myth as Evidence

Periodically a blog or article will appear concerning the bible’s efficacy in providing evidence for one point or another. 

As with most anthologies, the bible is a book of layers. Layers which we can peel apart and process separately. For example many verses in the bible, like Leviticus 20:9, Exodus 22:19, Exodus 21:20-21, 1 Timothy 6:1-2, and Luke 12:47-48 to name but a few, are positively immoral. Conversely, there are number of verses which we can still consider good and just moral precepts.

My point? The idea that we cherry-pick parts of the bible we are going to follow and ignore the less-savory bits is a perfect example that our sense of morality can exist separate of any mythological text. To take the idea a step further, it’s easy to identify with Joseph Campbell’s point that “the image of the cosmos must change with the development of the mind and knowledge; otherwise, the mythic statement is lost, and man becomes dissociated from the very basis of his own religious experience.” In other words, recognizing a religious text as mythological in principle doesn’t negate its usefulness.

In the play Hamlet, Shakespeare invokes the now famous question of whether “to be, or not to be.” The play itself devotes considerable energy to seeking the better option of the two. In the end the reader is confronted by the existence of a third option, as Hamlet himself divulges later in the play: to “let be.” It’s possible that the search between whether to be or not to be (or to believe or not to believe) is only a distraction from the real answer, which may ultimately be neither.

This is an important distinction, because we can still use the bible for reference, as people do with many mythical morality tales, without insisting on a literal interpretation. Anyone who has read the bible knows that along with the resourceful there is an equal or greater amount of the ridiculous. But as long we take the greater social and historical implications of it into consideration, then we still have it available as a tool.  

To be or not to be are absolutes. But to let be – to strive to understand what is rather than fixate what should be – is to construct a different worldview. One of the most important parts of being alive and part of the 21^st century is that we can take steps to advance that worldview. Make it modern. We can understand the place that the bible, a record of early attempts at science and philosophy, has in today’s world.

My favorite passage in the bible is from Philippians; “finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”