I’ve seen definitions used that say mythology is fiction, fables, lore, allegory, etc., but the fact we use the coinage, “mythology” tends to make it somewhat different than ordinary fiction and fables. Otherwise, why not call the stories of Venus and Zeus fiction?
The Christian unwritten definition, but defined by their usage of the word is that mythology is any religion other than their own. That’s rather a jaded application of the word, portraying bias, hindering any true study or research, voiding their search for truth.
That said the Bible is, for the most part, mythology, (i.e. fairy tales, fiction, allegories, parables, folk lore) Parables are fiction stories with hidden meanings, just like Aesop’s Fables. Allegories too, are fiction stories with deeper meanings.
One of my favorite quotes concerning mythology and Christianity is from the statesman and lawyer, Clarence Darrow:
I do not believe in God because
I do not believe in Mother Goose.
Jesus himself, while speaking to His followers and disciples, says explicitly that He told them parables, because they would not understand the truth. In other words he told them fiction stories, that masked a hidden meaning. Even more damning is that the disciples and followers didn’t even understand the parables.
Matthew 13:34. All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spake he not unto them:
From the mouth of the Christian God, He says he would not speak except through parables, (Fables with a hidden moral to the story). I could end this chapter here and now, for my point is proven by the words of Jesus Himself!
Matthew 13:36. Then Jesus sent the multitude away, and went into the house: and his disciples came unto him, saying, Declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field.
Mark 4:10. And when he was alone, they that were about him with the twelve asked of him the parable.
Mark 4:13. And he said unto them, Know ye not this parable? and how then will ye know all parables?
John 10:6. This parable spake Jesus unto them: but they understood not what things they were which he spake unto them.
Luke 19:11. And as they heard these things, he added and spake a parable, because he was nigh to Jerusalem, and because they thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear.
These verses prove that Jesus’ followers and disciples didn’t even understand the fables! (parables)
Reading the last verse again: “because they thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear.” This is proof these disciples understood very little of Jesus’ teachings! The verse reminds me of today’s Christian Foghorns, that keep saying Jesus is coming!, apocalypse now! the end is near!
So we have Jesus himself telling fiction stories, that veiled hidden meanings, with his disciples that understood not what he was saying. Remember these people that understood not, i.e. disciples, were the first generation of Christians after the death of Jesus. They were the first to go out into the world, and even they did not understand what Jesus said.
Those that picked up the mantle from these first generation disciples and followers, are today’s preachers and televangelists. How much less do they understand? Their learning comes from the disciples and authors of the New Testament books. Today’s Christian foghorns depend on their learning from the same people that didn’t understand what Jesus was preaching.
Luke 6:39. And he spake a parable unto them, Can the blind lead the blind? shall they not both fall into the ditch?
This verse from Luke is a parable that certainly describes the Foghorns of the Christian church.
The latest version of Christian Foghorns is that of Creationists, who venture to declare that the word of God is the history of Creation! They have been forced to admit the existence of dinosaurs roaming on the earth.
So with their magic wand of Biblical corruption, they simply declare that mankind walked hand and hand with the dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden. This is mythology created by Christian charlatans. There are some archeological finds that hint that ‘some’ dinosaurs ‘might’ have coexisted with man in time eons ago. But Creationist Mythologists also say this all started in the year 4004 BC.
The story of Adam and Eve, a true myth, preserved in the Old Testament, is reduced by Christian Foghorns to an episode of the Flintstones, Adam and Eve Flintstone and their pet dinosaur, Dino.
Photo by L Nevit Dilmen CC-BY-SA-3.0
Christians are pushing their illiterate theory that every word in the Bible is factual and literal, (except when they want to add their own lies to the stories). Every detail in the Bible, every word has to be factual and historical since God spake it from His mouth to Moses.
They conveniently overlook the historical account that the Torah of Moses was lost and the Old Testament we have now is credited to Ezra and Baruch, who didn’t appear on the scene until King Cyrus of Persia sent the Hebrews back to Palestine to build a temple to Marduk.
We are to believe, as fact, that Eve was seduced by a talking snake. The snake tempted Eve into eating the forbidden apple (or persimmon, or whatever the fruit was). This eating of the fruit, and the seduction by the serpent was reason for God to condemn mankind, even regret he ever created them. Mankind is guilty for all time because Eve bedded down with the snake and probably produced Cain.
A rabbi I studied under, and being raised Christian, laughs at Christian Theogony as being the ultimate show of illiteracy, foolishness, and idiocy.
He said that the Genesis account, being an allegory, is merely a Cliff notes version of a much larger story.
According to Rabbi Gilnair, the Midrash states that most of the Old Testament stories are allegories, not to be taken as actual events, that the stories were made up to mask the hidden meanings.
He also said that Jesus taught at the Midrashic level, and so did the Essenes. Many of the passages in the New Testament can find their source in the Midrash and writings of the Essenes. Jesus’ use of parables was a popular method of study and teaching in the Midrash.
Are we to really believe that Balaam had a talking ass?, a Bible episode of ‘Mr. Ed, the talking horse’?
Of course not. It is probable that the story of Balaam has historical event or setting, but the story was fiction, a fable, an allegory, to teach a deeper truth.
In Genesis 3 it says (paraphrased), “in that day I created THEM, I created THEM BOTH, and called THEIR name Adam.” Adam was created as a hermaphrodite, (androgynous, a shemale) — Bet your Christian preacher skips over that verse and story! But every word of God must be taken literally and as FACT according to the Christian Foghorns.
Or is this Adam the Shemale, the same mythos of Janus, inserted into the Bible?
Are we to believe that there is only One God, when two more Gods were looking for Moses to kill him, because he didn’t offer the foreskins of his sons to the gods? The names of those Gods are found from the words of St. Peter.
If Peter knew the names of those Gods, who told him? Certainly not the Bible of his day, for the Old Testament never tells their names. So obviously the Bible is NOT the only word of God!, much as Christian Foghorns would like you to believe.
Rabbi Gilnair taught that even the Names of the Characters in the Old Testament are not proper names, but are names made up to match the story, or the name is the hidden meaning itself.
The myth of Abraham is a good example. When the story needed a new turn the name of Abram was changed to Abraham. Sarah was NOT the name of his sister and wife, but the function, the role, the position of the lady herself. Sarah means princess, and Sarah was of a royal line and a princess. Abram is NOT a Hebrew name or word. It is not a Canaanite word, or Sumerian, Mesopotamian, Babylonian! It is a contraction of words from an Indian dialect possibly a form of Sanskrit. Abram means ‘against the Brahmans. Ur (or Kir) of the Chaldees was originally in Northern India. After a flood buried their city at the bottom of a lake, the Chaldees then moved to Mesopotamia, carrying with them the name of their city, and using it again. Thus there are TWO Urs of the Chaldees. The first Ur was discovered when the lakebed dried up a few years ago.
This practice of using the same city names continues to the present era, i.e. Bethlehem, Pennsylvania: Babylon, New York: Athens, Texas! 6,000 years from now are the archeologists going to be digging up East Texas to find the history of the ancient Greeks?
The story of Abram was the story of fleeing India, masked in an entirely different story… an allegory.. a Mythos.. a fairy tale.
Abram’s father’s name was given as Terah, which is also not a name but the name for Earth, dirt, land. (as in Terra Forma). If his father had been given a semitic, Sumerian or Hebrew name it would have been something like Eretz or Adamah. Now isn’t that interesting? Adama was the name for Adam in the Sumerian Creation mythology!
It’s all an allegory! All the stories… all the names.
The Old Testament says that King David was the only begotten Son of God. The New Testament says that King Jesus was the only begotten Son of God. Which myth are we to believe?
When the Bible comes up with a believable story the Christian Foghorns skip past those verses as fast as they can.
Part of the story of Ruth, is an example. Ruth went under Boaz’s skirts (sheets, robe) while he was asleep to prove her intention of becoming his wife and proving she was worthy. Oh oh YEA! How does one say Blow Job in Biblical terms. She was performing oral sex on Boaz while he was sleeping, and I’ll bet he awoke with a smile on his face.
Much of this is proving that Christian Foghorns have never understood the fairy tales, the myths, the moral to the story… and as such they teach in ignorance from their own illiteracy.
Most of the Foghorns preach that Onanism (masturbation) is a sin because of the story of Onan. How little do the Christian Foghorns understand? God killed Onan for using the Rhythm method, as promoted by the Catholic Church, as a contraceptive method.
Now this woman was his sister in law, and she was so damn ugly, he did not want any offspring by her, or she was so good looking and good at sex, he wanted more than one roll in the hay with her. Masturbation never entered the story! The forced marriage to his sister-in-law was a tribal custom, not any law of God, so why the Divine Murder? Marrying his sister-in-law would have made him a bigamist too. Perhaps he didn’t want to face the possibility of more child support checks or two alimonies in the future? Onan’s father also bedded down his sister-in-law and had twins by her. She sold her talents as a prostitute. Maybe the entrance to her womb was so huge, Onan fell out, not pulled out? Her name was Tamar, the name of a goddess. Tamar in other mythologies was an eternal virgin who rode through the air on a serpent saddled and bridled with gold, a sky goddess.
Perhaps there is a lot more in the allegory than the story will ever tell. The Old Testament, many times uses these words and myths to point to a truth, without revealing it in the story.
Whatever, there is more to the hidden message of the story, for the story itself makes no sense and is thusly categorized as nonsense.
Yes the Bible is rife with fairy tales and mythologies! Many of these Bible myths are parallel myths with other cultures and religions, Egyptian, Hindu, Buddhism, Sumerian, Norse, and even Mayan. The story of the curse on the Serpent as Satan parallels a Mayan myth of a character creating strange creatures and banned to the underworld.
Yes the Bible is full of myths. Accept them. Enjoy them. If you’re brave enough to learn Hebrew, study Torah, Talmud, Midrash, and Zohar, you may begin to understand the WHY these myths and stories are there.
The myths, stories, fables, allegories, parables, etc. were evidently placed there for a person to learn the depths of knowledge behind the stories… not the foolish stories themselves. There are a few Christian mystics of history that have done this, but very few.
These myths are the Cliff notes of historical events, not necessarily the history itself. There must be a reason that not one trace of the first temple or of Solomon has been discovered in Eretz Israel, nor of King David, or King Saul.
Somewhere there must be a hidden meaning to an allegory that either explains why or leads to the truth, facts or history.
How much have you been OVER paying your Christian Foghorn (pastor, preacher, televangelist) to not understand the parables, fairy-tales, and myths in the Bible? And they continue to spout their illiteracy and ignorance to the children and masses.
That rabbi I spoke of earlier, says, if we believe that God is God and he is the Almighty, then He will do as he damn well wants to. What man thinks or Foghorns think means nothing to Him. He created in his time, his method, and his choices, and these tasks can’t be delegated to a handful of errant verses or explained therein.
Any person with God-given common sense that wants to believe in an Almighty God of Biblical fame, should be shouting to the heavens,
Thank God these are
fables, myths and fairy tales!
(This article is a © copyrighted chapter from a book below)
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