Mythopoeic Speculation In The Bible

Some people seem to want to discredit Christianity by comparing certain themes in the Gospels to mythological themes found elsewhere. Most of this is complete bunk. For instance, a lot of people try to argue that the story of Jesus grew out of Mithraism. They do this by pointing out similarities between the practices and imagery of the Mithra cult to early Christianity. They then point out that worship of Mithra pre-dates Christianity by hundreds of years.

But the truth is that the Mithra cult of the Roman soldiers which bares some resemblance to Christianity is only nominally related to the worship of the Persian God Mithra that predates Christianity. In point of fact, Roman Mithraism is a late mystery cult that re-invented the Persian God using new forms of worship and new belief systems. In point of fact, all of the archeological evidence that supports a connection between Christian beliefs and Mithral beliefs post-dates Jesus by at least 60 years. The vast majority of scholars reject the idea that Christianity somehow grew out of or copied Mithraism. The inverse is more likely. In fact, there probably was some intellectual and cultic cross-pollination between the two groups, but it took place after the writing of most of the Christian Canon, certainly after the gospels.

One has to have a thorough and subtle grasp of religious history to know all of this. So it is easy to mislead  the general public. The connections can be made for one, and one sees what one is told to see.

There are, however, some mythological elements in the Bible. The Bible borrows from Sumerian, Babylonian and Canaanite myths. The Bible is not simply history, but the meaning of history. Thus historical events are reflected upon, and looked at from various angles and through various lenses. So the crossing of the Reed Sea is spoken of using terms from Canaanite myths about a battle between El and these evil sea or river gods. In the Near East, as all of my readers should know by now, water represents chaos. So the battle between El and the sea and river gods is a battle between the forces of creation and the forces of chaos. It is not surprising, then, that this language was used to describe the crossing of the Reed Sea. The event is painted now in cosmic terms, and terms of creation. The Exodus is really a continuation of God's original act of creation.

Myth is a language, a way in which we can talk about not just what happens to us, but what it was like for us to have it happen to us. It is a way of getting inside one's first person perspective. It is a way of talk about the very meaning of one's own life within the context of a historical situation. The fact is that the story of Jesus dying and being resurrected has some connection, I believe, to Canaanite myths about a god entering the realm of death and returning, and through this act being able to save creation. But this doesn't bother me. It is no proof that the Gospels are 'merely myth'. Rather, it shows that the disciples needed some language with which to talk about what happened to them. Jesus was an event in their lives, and event that pointed beyond itself and to the eternal. To speak about this event, one needed a language with which to talk about it. One can see the very fact that they had access to this language as itself providential. Perhaps Christ could not even come, until a fully developed symbolic system developed that made it possible to properly reflect upon and communicate their religious experience. Tomorrow, I will talk about an example of this kind of 'language development', using the example of the Suffering Servant.