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Bible Dictionaries
Myth
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or MYTH.—Neither the word μῦθος nor the conception of a myth occurs in any of the Gospels. Outside of the Gospels the word appears in the NT several times (in plur. μῦθοι.) in the Pastoral Epistles (1 Timothy 1:4; 1 Timothy 4:7, 2 Timothy 4:4, Titus 1:14), and once in 2 Pet. (2 Peter 1:16). In all these cases a myth is a story unworthy of credence, a foolish tale without sufficient foundation in fact or significance in principle to make it worth while to give heed to it. This is not, however, the ordinary meaning of the word in the Classic period or in modern usage. A myth in the Classic writers is either (1) akin to parable or legend; i.e. a story constructed with a specific design or conveying a moral or philosophical truth—aesop’s Fables; Plato’s Phaedo, 61 B, Prot. 320 C, 324 D; or (2) a story in which, through a process of growth, has come to be embodied a truth of nature or of conscience. Of this class of myths, illustrations are such as those in Plato, Legg. 636 D, Rep. 330 D [Note: Deuteronomist.] (cf. Grote, Hist. Gr. i. 480). Modern historical terminology would make myth a story whose basis is past verifying. An account is said to be mythical when external evidences for its being a true narration of facts are not forthcoming, and when its internal characteristics render it incredible.
In the Platonic sense of the word no myths can be said to exist in the Gospels unless, contrary to all usage, the parables of Jesus be called myths (against this cf. Trench, Parables). In the modern sense it has been alleged that the Gospels are a tissue of mythological material (Strauss, Leben Jesu). This was the mythical theory of Gospel history, which for a time disputed the ground with the Tübingen hypothesis of ‘tendency’ literature, on the one side, and the earlier traditional view that the Gospels should be taken as precise and accurate history, on the other.
With the rise of the critical method all these theories have been compelled to yield the field to the view that the Gospels are the sources of history rather than history strictly so called; and that they are to be used as sources precisely upon the same principles as all other first-hand documentary testimony. But this view does not exclude the possibility of some mythical elements in these sources. The question, then, is whether there actually exist mythical accounts in the Gospels, and, if so, whence and how they came there. Whereas, therefore, the mythical theory propounded by Strauss has been entirely set aside, a new one has arisen to take its place.
The grounds on which the Straussian theory had been set aside were that the age of Jesus was not a mythopœic age in the sense assumed by its pro-pounder. No matter what the truth may be about a mythology in the OT, where a prehistoric period certainly comes into view, the age of Jesus falls within a clearly lighted historic period, and the conditions for mythological growth of the nature assumed do not exist.
Accordingly the new mythical theory does not posit that these Gospel myths are the creation of the period and country in which Jesus lived. It rather undertakes to affiliate the narratives with the mythology of the environing heathen world. They are not creations of, but importations into, the Christian tradition. The age of Jesus was not a myth-making age, but a large stock of myths was already in existence among the peoples to whom the gospel came. These myths were diffused in the atmosphere, and could not but be absorbed into the very texture of the history. The search for the origin of Gospel myths is therefore not to be made in the Gospel story itself, but in the field of Comparative Religion.
The special passages of the Gospel history where, according to the new mythical theory, these myths were drawn in and found ready lodgment, are the account of the birth of Jesus, the accounts of His miracles, and the accounts of His death and resurrection. The accounts of the birth (Matthew 1:18-25, Luke 1:34 f.) are to be regarded not as parts of the original story of Jesus, but as 2nd cent, additions to it. They owe their origin to Gentile-Christian imagination. Like all true myths, they embody an idea, that of the Divine sonship of the founder of a great religion. The conception and phrase of Divine sonship are not foreign to the more direct Hebrew and Jewish antecedents of the gospel (Psalms 2:6 ff., Enoch 45–51, 2 Esdras 13). Yet it is among the heathen that the idea was more commonly ascribed to great personages, especially rulers and sages. In Egypt, even to the latest days, the Pharaohs were regarded as incarnations of the deity (Wiedemann, Egyp. [Note: Egyptian.] Rel. p. 92 ff.). Alexander the Great deemed it wise, upon conquering Egypt, to permit himself to be called the son of the god Ammon-Ra. In Babylon, from the time of Sargon I. onwards, the kings were considered emanations of the godhead (Radau, Early Hist. of Babylon, p. 308 ff.). These incarnations are, moreover, often associated with a virgin birth. Pythagoras and Plato were both regarded as born of virgin mothers and the god Apollo (Olympiodorus, Vit. Plat. p. 1). The mother of Alexander the Great was believed to have been visited by Zeus in the form of a serpent before king Philip had consummated his marriage with her. In the narratives of the birth of Buddha (which are of pre-Christian origin) there are some marked similarities to the Gospel accounts of the birth of Jesus.
The myths alleged to have grown about the career of Jesus as a wonder-worker are prefaced by parallel accounts of a temptation and a conquest of the power of evil. The prince Siddhartha was tempted by the spirit of evil, who urged him to abandon his foolish and futile purpose of living a simple and abstemious life, and to return to the comfort, glory, and power of the royal palace; but he resisted. The prophet Zarathustra had been urged by the evil spirit Ahriman to ‘renounce the good law of the worshippers of Mazda,’ and thereby to win dominion over the nations of the earth. But he had declined to do so. All the subsequent miracles recorded of Jesus are said to be abundantly paralleled in the legendary lore of the Orientals. The miraculous element did, in fact, persist through the Patristic age and down into the mediaeval period.
The last portion of the Gospel story is said to be specially overlaid with myths of this genus. All that is apparently distinctive and remarkable here is represented as the reflexion and counterpart of the myths current among pagans. The idea of the death of Christ as the propitiation for sin is paralleled by the numerous instances of vicarious human sacrifices. The burial and resurrection are the Christian equivalents of the Egyptian myth of Osiris, who was slain by his brother Set, ‘the demon of the withering heat of summer,’ and who lives again in the person of his son Horus. Likewise the fabled death, resurrection, and translation into heaven of Adonis, the rape of Persephone, and her rescue upon the compromise that she thereafter spend part of the year with her mother upon earth and part in Hades, are expressions of the same thought.
These cases are associated with mystic rites. In fact, it seems to be a peculiarity of mysteries that death and restoration to life again should be symbolically represented in them. In their best form these rites occur in the Dionyso-Orphic festivals. Here the death of the god was enacted in the sacrifice of a bull, whose flesh was then torn and devoured by the worshippers without being drained of its blood. Thus, it was supposed, the immortal life of the god passed into and conferred immortality upon the worshippers (Clem. Alex. [Note: Alexandrian.] Protrept. i. 12, 17; Frazer, Golden Bough2 [Note: designates the particular edition of the work referred] , ii. 165).
If the death of Jesus is pictured as a voluntary descent into the realm of shades that He might there conquer death, the same thought is seen to run through the Babylonian myth of Ishtar (Schrader, Höllenfahrt d. Istar), the Mandaean myth of Hibil Ziwa (Brandt, Mandäische Religion, p. 213 ff.), and the myths of Orpheus and Herakles, both of whom accomplished descents into Hades, and, according to the Greek classical mythology, achieved conquests there.
The Gospel account of the ascension is paralleled first of all in the OT by the ascensions of Enoch and Elijah, then in the Graeco-Roman legendary lore by the ascensions of Romulus and Herakles. Legends of ascensions were, in fact, common even in the later periods. Some of the Roman emperors were said to have been raised at their death into equality with the gods (Rhode, Psyche, p. 663). The case of Peregrinus Proteus, recited by Lucian, is quite noteworthy. Peregrinus took Herakles as his ensample. As Herakles had made his exit from the world by consigning himself to a funeral pyre, so Peregrinus built a pyre and cast himself into it; but at the moment of his doing so a trustworthy old man reports that he saw an eagle issuing from the flames and flying up into the heavens. Further, the same old man testifies that he beheld Peregrinns clothed in a white garment, and with a garland of victory on his head. Apollonius of Tyana is also reported to have disappeared quite mysteriously, either in the temple of Athene at Lindus or in that of Dictynna at Crete. Philostratus, his biographer, appeals to the fact that nowhere on earth could a grave of him be found, in proof of his ascension and deification.
To the question how these myths filtered into the Gospel story there is no clear answer given. It is simply assumed that they were in the air, and that a new religion must somehow adopt them, and embellish the life and personality of its founder with them. This is a serious difficulty with the new mythical theory. For it is precisely the manner of their infiltration into the Christian tradition that is the crucial point in it. The existence of the myths themselves among the pagans has always been known, and is no new discovery. It is not by simply re-telling these stories that the theory can gain support to itself, but by substantiating the claim that they actually passed from the world of heathen thought into the Christian tradition. This difficulty is enhanced and made practically insuperable when it is further borne in mind that the Hebrew antecedents of the Gospel had resolutely and effectively resisted the incorporation of such myths for a thousand years. Moreover, there is no room in the time interval between the life of Jesus and the writing down of the Gospel accounts of Him for such a process as is assumed, unless we except the birth-narratives of St. Matthew and St. Luke upon purely textual grounds. Criticism has been busy with the origin of the Gospel story as found in the extant narratives, and the more light it throws on the subject the more clearly it appears that the main data come from eye- and ear-witnesses. The old Strauss theory, assuming that the myths were constructed by the disciples of Jesus under the power of an excited and vivid imagination, was at this point stronger than the new one.
Furthermore, when these parallels are closely scrutinized, the first aspect of plausibility given to the mythical theory by them vanishes. The parallels are in most cases far-fetched. In some instances the resemblances are striking indeed. But a relation of derivation of one from the other or from a common source seems to be out of the question. In other instances where a genetic connexion might be possibly established, the parallelisms are forced.
In the case of the birth-narratives (Matthew 1:18-25, Luke 1:34 f.), the question is one of evidence. The effort to reduce these to mythology is based upon the a priori conception that they are mythical. If it could he proved, apart from the theory itself, upon purely critical grounds, that these accounts are of later origin, a basis for the theory might be found; but, as a matter of fact, the assumption that they are mythical furnishes the strongest consideration for their critical rejection—a process which can scarcely be called scientific.
Literature.—D. F. Strauss, Das Leben Jesu, 1835–1836 (4th ed. 1840), also Das Leben Jesu, f. d. deutsche Volk bearbeitet, 1864 (4th ed. 1877); Gfrörer, Die Heilige Sage, 1838; Ullmann, Historisch oder Mythisch? 1838 (2nd ed. 1864); Schenkel, Charakterbild Jesu4 [Note: designates the particular edition of the work referred] , 1873; Luthardt, Die modernen Darstellungen des Lebens Jesu2 [Note: designates the particular edition of the work referred] , 1865 (for products of the Strauss controversy, see, further, Grimm, Glaubwürdigkeit d. Evang. Gesch. 1845, pp. 128–131); Pfleiderer, Early Christian Conception of Christ, 1905; J. May, Miracles and Myths of NT, 1901; Kalthoff, Entsteh. Christenthums, 1904. For the influence of the Babylonian Marduk myth and other myths on Jewish thought, and indirectly on the Gospel history, cf. Gunkel, Schöpfung u. Chaos, also Bousset, Antichrist, and A. Jeremias, Babylonisches im NT. For incarnation parallels, R. Seydel, Das Evang. in sein. Verhältnissen z. d. Buddha-Sage u. Buddha-Lehre, Leipzig, 1882, Die Buddha-Legende u. d. Leben Jesu, 1884; Verus, Vergleichendc Uebersicht d. vier Evang. in unverkürztem Wortlaut, Leipzig, 1897.
A. C. Zenos.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Myth'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/m/myth.html. 1906-1918.
