karlmarx

They certainly wouldn't have believed that the Odyssey was literally true. The story of the Odyssey itself evolved from an oral tradition, where poets were free to embellish it as they saw fit, allowing the most effective versions to survive. There's no way that could have been interpreted as literal history (except in broad terms, e.g. that there was a Trojan war).

I do think the greeks thought their myths to be "true" in the same sense that the Odyssey contains truths. People knew that Ares existed because war existed, and that Aphrodite existed because lust did. Story tellers told myths that rang true - the myths that made the most sense were retold because they made sense, not because they were literal history. You won't find arguments between Greek theologians as to which myths were genuine history and which ones were spurious: myth doesn't work that way. Greek myths were not about literal history, they were truths that helped "make sense" of the world, and people were free to pick and choose from them. This is why Greek mythology is so rich.

makerowner

Sorry, I don't want to read a whole book on the subject just to see if you've got a point or not. Can you explain some of the evidence for this in say, a couple paragraphs?

makerowner

I'm not assuming anything. I pointed out that Herodotus' writings show superstition towards the gods; are you disputing that? I offered a couple explanations, one of which was that he believed they were real.

makerowner

I think it's likely that various Biblical stories evolved from oral traditions as well, eg. Abraham and Isaac both doing the wife/sister thing is well explained by that. But at some point the Biblical stories were canonized and rivals were no longer considered acceptable. In Greece, that only happened with a couple legends, mostly about the Trojan war, but in Israel, it happened with a lot of them. My point is basically that just because a story evolved from an oral tradition doesn't mean people didn't believe it was true. Just think of all the urban legends that are around these days, after decades of science education, investigatory journalism, etc. which were obviously not around in Ancient Greece. If people are so credulous today, why would they have been any less so in those days?
And no one addressed my example. Why would the Spartans put so much energy into returning Orestes' skeleton to Sparta if they didn't believe his story was real? Or that the oracle's command to return the skeleton was important?

Toto

I have previously used the argument that Matthew and Luke's treatment of Mark is evidence that they thought Mark was fiction. Nice to see SM coming around.

At one point I tracked down a copy of Vines' The Problem of Markan Genre: The Gospel of Mark and the Jewish Novel (or via: amazon.co.uk), but I discovered that Vines is an evangelical scholar who makes certain assumptions about historicity, and his book does nothing to solve the question of whether Mark (whatever its genre) has anything to add to the problem of historicity.

There is a review of Vines here:

djrafikie

A bunch of primative people with limited scientific understanding tried, just as we all do, to make sense of their world. The bible is part of that process, and it was certainly taken completely literally. The reason people find that hard to accept is because deep down they are pretty much sane (well, we live in hope) and are much more knowledgeable than the people who wrote it. We have moved on, its a shame the acceptance of this lags behind the acquisition of the facts.

badger3k

I agree that our Post-Enlightenment, Scientific way of looking at the literature is a hinderance to our understanding of what the authors might have intended. We might expect to see a straightforward listing, as a textbook, while their culture preferred more poetic imagery. People have been using metaphors and imagery far longer than they have been using literal, factual writing (for the most part). History, in the ancient sense, was a mix of actual history and myth. Even today, as was mentioned, mythological themes play a great part in our language and literature, even if it is not as great as it was back then - we've changed the way we look at things. We may not be able to tell if the authors intended their writing to be literal or figurative. All I can guess is to compare different writings to see if we can get a sense of how they meant something. Did the ancient Vikings believe that the world was formed from a giant, or that people came from a cow licking said giant, thawing them out? What do we use as our baseline? Do we consider it literal until evidence against this arises, or the opposite?

I do recall reading that (some?) medieval theologians wrote against a literal interpretation of many passages, and this idea of taking the bible literally is a recent invention of the fundamentalists. I haven't been able to discover the facts for myself, so this is just hearsay for now.

karlmarx

I don't disagree with this. What I do disagree with is that they would have thought it "literally" true, in the modern sense that you and I understand what "literally true" means, .i.e. verifiable in detail, at least in principle, via a methodology derived from the scientific method. This is because this methodology dates to the modern era.

The Odyssey is, in a sense, a true representation of what it means to be human. I think this is the sense that Greeks believed their myths to be true. The Odyssey is not literally true in that it is not an accurate depiction of historical events. If listeners knew poets could embellish a story, clearly the focus was on the themes of the story, not in the details.

Symbols are very powerful motivators. They can bring out national pride, and unite people for a common cause. They can also be used as a pretext for more mundane motives. To a large extent, for the purposes of the conflict, it's immaterial what they thought of the story - all that mattered to them was they right what they considered an affront to their city. This is why I don't think this has a bearing on whether the Spartans believed in a literal interpretation of their myths.

Buck Laser

Most of the bible is NOT history. In my life as a Xn, I've never been pressed by anyone I held in real respect to accept the bible as coming straight from God's hand. It's full of verifiable chronological mistakes, just as any other historical account is: but the works of the prophets and the psalmists clearly do NOT deal with literal truth--nor do the apocalyptic books of the OT and the NT.

The seams in the bible are pretty clear to any biblical scholar who's paid serious attention to textual criticism. This goes for both testaments. We do not have a single book of the bible written in the original hand. Even the letters of Paul have many textual variations from one version to another. And books attributed by tradition to Paul, like Hebrews, simply do not accord with his vocabulary or theology.

As a whole, I take the bible to be the word of God--but not the literally dictated, Elizabethan English version some enthusiasts insist on. Fact is, some of their rigidity just destroys the beauty of the Bible. You may call it allegory all you wish, but the Song of Solomon is best read as great erotic poetry.

makerowner

OK, I should probably clarify what I said. I obviously don't think that Psalms for example was written as history. What I should have said is that I see no reason for the ostensibly historical narratives of the Bible to be interpreted as allegorical.
And I agree with you about the Song of Songs; it's my second favourite book of the OT, after Ecclesiastes.