spin

I'd think, reading Mark, that the writer of the gospel probably believed what he was writing. If the material is fictional, then it must have been developed before it got into the Marcan writer's hands.


spin

gstafleu

[QUOTE=spin;4877119]Actually, the word is not all that ancient, the German word for "beech" is "Buche" while "book" is "Buch." The latter is derived from the German word for "letter," which is "Buchstabe." Literally this means "beech-stick" as the letters of the early printing presses were not poured in lead but rather carved from (beech)wood. So maybe we should be asking if we should write our books with trees instead .

But this little nit apart, what I was trying to do with my little historical intro is sketch a trajectory where the concept of the stories we now call "myths" was not always what it is now, i.e. "unreal" stories.

As you pointed out, Joseph Campbell's favorite definition of "mythology" was "Other people's religion" (and concomitantly, religion is "misunderstood mythology"). In popular culture "myth" of course means something akin to "fantasy," while in mythology (in de sense of: the study of myth) it means culture defining stories. The purposes of myth in the latter case is explaining the world and teaching you how to live with it, which narrows down to explaining society and teaching how to live with it, which finally narrows down to explaining yourself and how to live with yourself. I would avoid the word "religion" in this context, for various reasons (which I think center around Campbell's definition).

Excellent question, any answers that occur to you? Let me give it a shot. One way of defining myth may follow from what I said above: it has to do explaining and teaching about the world in general, and/or society and/or the individual. No doubt that is too wide, but it is a start. BTW, we should probably exclude modern texts from this, at least to begin with. Why? Because a medical textbook would now be myth. But this textbook uses a method of studying the cosmos that was not available until, say, 1500 (the scientific method), and I think that this will just cause confusion. One could of course describe modern science as a form of mythopoesis, I just don't think that this is very useful.

So let us just try to separate myth from "fantasy" in general, which we can leave as an atomic concept for now. An interesting question is: before Enlightenment, what examples of stories do we have that we would call fantasy, i.e. not an attempt at history like Tacitus and not Myth like Homer? In the classical world The Golden Ass comes to mind, any others that are clear? (And maybe TGA is myth as well?).

There is another way of approaching this question, and that is what Campbell does. In his view there is an underlying commonality to all myth, and this commonality can be used to distinguish myth from the rest.

You have picked examples that, because of their supernatural content, are these days clearly considered as "impossible to be real." But do meritorious lives etc. really differ fundamentally? The dying god for example explains the cycle of nature in general and agriculture in particular, how it came into being, and how we can keep it going. The latter is done via rituals, like I described in my Food Plants thread. Meritorious lives and good deeds explain and show how one should live. Sure it is more down to earth than your list but, besides the supernatural, is there really a fundamental difference? The Chinese have a legend (or is it a myth) about an emperor Shen Nung who invented agriculture. The emperor is probably not historical, but how different is he from a dying god who "invents" the agricultural cycle--apart from the supernatural aspect?

So I would suggest that Legend is right: legends are more "real" than outright myths, they lack supernatural elements. But otherwise they function the same.

I take your point, something can be mythical and historical at the same time. As for the MJ/HJ debate, it might be better if it were renamed HJ/non-HJ. But having done that, I still think we would be where we are now. In addition, how often does myth have a mythically significant historical part? As I said, the more central to a culture a person becomes, the more axes are grinding away at agendas and the more myth gets attached, to the point where the poor guy who is supposed to be underneath it all becomes invisible.

Can't it? Let me make a methodological point. Isn't introducing a historical core, where there is no evidence for it, introducing an necessary item, thus running foul of Occam's razor? I would think that in such a case, while we cannot rule out a historical core, the pure-myth hypothesis (or purely non-historical, if you want) has an advantage.

1 and 2 differ in (a) the reason for "inventing" the story, and (possibly) (b) how aware the inventors were of their inventing. Still, in both cases inventing was going on. In case 3 inventing was not going on, just mistaking, so there is a commonality between 1 and 2 when compared to 3.

Gerard Stafleu

Gamera

The idea that Hamlet would sit around and make up a soliloquy about suicide is just as unrealistic. However it is a narrative convention you are familiar with, so you hardly notice how unnatural it is.

Narratives are narratives, whether plays or "histories", not video cameras (and even video cameras wouldn't record history, but only a perspective of history within the chosen frame)

Gamera

I have no problem with that. I think historiography is replete with historical characters around whom legends assemble.

spin

This smilie doesn't seem useful here.

As I have pointed out elsewhere there are extra meanings of the word, meanings that help confuse the use of the word.

OK.

(You'll note that I attempted to give pointers to the issue later in my post.)

Strangely enough I think your dismissing of this material is too quick. And we have seen the seeds of the need for explaining the world in much of the less well prepared christian who comes here to "answer" the problems we analyse. This is why I think your view of inventing with regard to myth might not be useful in trying to understand myth (which I'll call "myth1", as against the more sloppy "myth2", if necessary).

Hesiod is more myth than Homer.

Lucian of Samosata supplies a lot of fantasy in works such as his "True Story", or "Icaromenippus", though it's fantasy with an interestingly philosophical edge, and lots of irony thrown in for free.

Or we could consider the Satyricon. Or then again what about Seneca's "Pumpkinification" (rather than deification of Claudius)?

If I'm not mistaken, Campbell, who I haven't read too much of derives his ideas from the school that included SH Hooke (a tradition which would probably reach back to Fraser and the Golden Bough). It is the ritualistic implications of the myth which sets it apart from other literary cultural artefacts.

The only reason why one would say that is through retrojection of modern understanding of the world. It's of no use to us here.

Note the "should" be, not is. Myth is about what is.

I disagree via the should be/is dichotomy.

No, Doherty et al. are -- as I understand it -- not dealing with non-historicity, but with the mythical nature of the material. It's more specific than simply non-historicity. It just means that those people who cannot see that the MJ/HJ debate is not the full range of positions (or not a dichotomy) have missed the boat.

I don't think this reflects the issues. Myths are aimed at explanation of the world.

No, it would be going beyond our information.

Going beyond the evidence goes into theory.

It's simpler and more useful to deal with history as what can be shown about the past, which apparently makes the "historical" of "historical Jesus" inappropriate. If you want to go beyond that into excluding the material from historical possibility you need to exclude it based on evidence.

It is possible that a myth is invented, but I understand invention in the literary field as a conscious act of creating that which one knows isn't real. That's not appropriate when dealing with myth. One of the key ideas of myth is that the culture which possesses it believes it. The notion of a myth being a knowing fabrication means the notion of a cynical start to, and employment of, the myth. We often see believing people willing to believe new ideas in order to maintain their world views and that willingness has nothing to do with cynicism. We don't know anything about the states of mind of those who were responsible for ancient myth. Paul was content to see his new knowledge about Jesus as a vision. I find him believable in this respect. In such a case "invention" doesn't seem appropriate.


spin

Antipope Innocent II

Er, that all sounds very learned and impressive, despite the fact it's complete crap. The Old English form of the word is "boc" and it is attested quite a few centuries before printing presses were even thought of.

"Book" is a cognate of "beech", but it has nothing to do with printing presses.

gstafleu

You know what? It looks as if you're right. I was just repeating what I heard, long ago, from my (German, I think) teacher. One should know better, shouldn't one? Here is what the OED has to say about it, which I should of course have looked up in the first place:
Gerard Stafleu

gstafleu

Nevertheless, all examples you mentioned can (coincidentally) be thus retrojected. I'm not sure if this is totally irrelevant to the times before science. These retrojectable items were even then much less likely to be witnessed "in the flesh," while the non-retrojectable ones represent occurrences with which people might be familiar from everyday life. Hence the non-retrojectable ones might even then have been more credible.

When myth tells us about the structure of the universe, it is about what is. When it is about how we should behave, it is about "should." Take for example the following Shinto thought from the thirteenth Century; "The kami [spirits, deities] is pleased by virtue and sincerity. To do good is to be pure, to commit evil is to be impure." This contains both elements: a statement about what is (kami pleased by virtue), and one about we therefore should behave (do good, not evil). (As written, the moral imperative is here stated as a factual situation--I'm sure we can recognize it for what it is in spite of that (my attempt to avoid a needless diversion.))

I was not using "invent" in that sense. In what sense was I using it then? I think in the sense that the information was not gathered in a fashion which we would these days see as according with the principles of the scientific method. These days most people will intuitively recognize that kind of "invent" as distinct from attempts, like e.g. Ceasar in De Bello Gallico, to describe what we would these days call "reality." Is it useful at this point to launch into a philosophical debate about what reality is and how we know it?

In part you say something similar with your category 3: Errors. Errors with respect to what? When we say Tacitus was in error regarding X, what do we mean? Presumably that his report of X does not correspond with what we have found out via the scientific method. We do thus make links between modern methods and ancient times. So I don't think my sense of "invent," as a conscious act or not, is useless.

So let's get back to the question "What is myth?" And let's tie the scientific method into it: Myth tries to explain the universe and teach us how to live with it. However, in order to be called myth, the explanation should not use the scientific method. (For conciseness I'm leaving out mention of the narrowing-down versions of myth pertaining to the culture and the individual, consider them included in "the universe", though.)

This of course brings us to a point that was probably inevitable to begin with: what sets the scientific method apart from previous attempts at explaining the universe. Should we debate that?

Gerard Stafleu

joedad

I guess you could look at the character of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, realize that it is fiction, and then still look for the real Macbeth in history, which many have done. But Shakespeare’s Macbeth still remains fictional. I mean, after all, isn’t the question of what or how much William Shakespeare really believed about the character unimportant in determining historicity? Isn’t that true about any work?

We know that Mark’s Jesus is fictional. We know this because of the impossible feats the character performed. Are we committing an anachronism by saying that Mark’s Jesus is obviously fictional because of the things he supposedly did? Well, we’re simply stating that superheroes are not real whenever they occur and in whatever culture. That’s all we mean by fictional here.

If the author of GMark was using fragmentary information, much like Shakespeare used fragmentary information to create his literary Macbeth, until we find evidence of an historical personage behind the Jesus character we have to conclude that there is none, that the inspiration for the story was more mundane than for Shakespeare’s Macbeth, that a singular Jesus character is an invention either Mark or pre Mark.

I also think it’s extremely important to see the Jesus story from a purely literary standpoint, and compare it to other stories with mythical heroes. I can see a Roy Hobbs becoming historicized for example, but which one, the one who strikes out at the end, or the one who wins the game with a superhuman hit?

The fact is that Malamud was writing about the times, not about Roy Hobbs. Roy Hobbs is a fictional invention from the 1950s, and again from the 1980s. Change enough facts in the story, team names, etc. to make it appear historical, and we have another Jesus story.