Christian mythology
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Christian mythology is a body of stories that explains or symbolizes Christian beliefs. A Christian myth is a religious story that Christians consider to have deep explanatory or symbolic significance. Christian mythology can also be taken to refer to the entire mythos surrounding the Christian religious system, including the various narratives of both the Old and New Testaments.
Christian mythology includes the core beliefs of Christianity, the body of legendary stories that have accumulated around New Testament figures and elaborates upon the lives of the Saints, to emphasize, explain, or embody Christian beliefs. The legendary details of the career of Pontius Pilate are prime examples of Christian mythology. Many of the common themes in hagiographies are among the conventions of Christian mythography. In the culture of the ancient Semitic and Mediterranean worlds in the context of which early Christianity and its literature arose—even up to the European Middle Ages when further traditions and legends were developed—there often did not exist the separation which exists for many societies in the modern period between fact and myth or between objective truth and speculation or elaboration. Even in the modern period, Christians of many traditions (like those in many other religions) may also hold that the dividing line between "truth" and what is labeled "myth" is less than clear, when it comes to traditional beliefs and understanding.
These stories include many that do not come from canonical Christian texts and still do illustrate Christian themes. Other stories that are intended to foster Christian values, or address specifically Christian spiritual traditions, may be included in Christian mythology. These stories are considered by some Christian journalists, theologians, and academics (see citations below) to constitute a body of Christian mythology. Stories which were once taken as true but are no longer accepted by most Christians are most easily identified as Christian mythology, such as the tale of Saint George or Saint Valentine.
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[edit] Theological and academic studies
In theological and academic studies, describing a story as myth sometimes, but not necessarily, implies falsehood. A true story can also be symbolic and explanatory. However, in common usage a myth is a story that is not true. Therefore to describe Bible stories and deeply held beliefs as 'myth' is frequently taken as an attack on those sources and on the beliefs which are based on them.
Many Christian scholars have adopted the terminology, and employ it without the connotation of disbelief (although almost always to distinguish their treatment of a story as a source of Christian belief, in contrast to literal history). In such a case the term myth may be applied to many Christian stories, including Biblical narrative. For most people the categorisation of a story they believe to be true as myth is taken as attack on that story, and frequently as an attack on Christianity.
However those Christians who do not accept the Bible as a literal history will accept those parts which they do not consider literal as myth.
[edit] Selection of stories
A selection of such stories with mythic content might include:
- Stories from the apocryphal books.
- Traditional stories such as that of Abgarus of Edessa.
- Stories about the Holy Grail.
- Improbable aspects of the traditional stories, including virgin birth, necromancy, and water walking.
- Elaborations or amendments to Biblical tales, such as the tales of Salomé, the Three Wise Men, or St. Dismas.
- Names and biographical details supplied for unnamed Biblical characters: see List of names for the Biblical nameless
- Literary treatments of traditional Biblical lore, such as Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained by John Milton
- Literary treatments of themes from Christian theology or eschatology such as the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
- Tales of saints (hagiographies) whose historicity is doubtful, like Saint Christopher or St. Catherine of Alexandria
- Miraculous stories of saints such as are found in Jacobus de Voragine's Golden Legend.
- The legends of King Arthur and other tales of medieval chivalry, especially the Quest for the Holy Grail.
- Legendary history of the Christian churches, such as the tales from the Crusades or the paladins of Charlemagne in medieval romance.
- Stories about angels, guardian angels, devils, and tales of making pacts with the Devil (see e.g. Faust).
[edit] Narrative fictions
Narrative fictions with Christian content may fall within the category of Christian mythology. A case in point is the historical and canonized Brendan of Clonfort, a 6th century Irish churchman and founder of abbeys. Round his authentic figure was woven a tissue that belongs more to legend than mythology, the Navigatio or "Journey of Brendan". In this narrative Brendan and his shipmates encounter sea monsters, a paradisal island and a floating ice island inhabited by a holy hermit: literal-minded devotés still seek to identify "Brendan's islands" in actual geography.
Many fictions written to personalize Christian themes are better regarded as allegory. Examples of these might include:
Some Christians discover Christian themes in The Lord of the Rings and other works by J.R.R. Tolkien. Though the author adamantly denied that his story was to be taken as an allegory, he admitted to influence from his own experience, which included devout Catholicism. "The Chronicles of Narnia" by C.S. Lewis are also often incorrectly called allegories, but a true allegory has everything in it representing something else, and that is clearly not true of the Chronicles. (Lewis did write an allegory, Pilgrim's Regress.)
- See also: Christian fiction
[edit] Christian Mythology in secular Christmas-themed popular music, television, and cinema
The concept of Santa Claus is often seen as a surogate God/Jesus figure who has supernatural powers and uses them to magnanimously deliver gifts to children around the world. This idea is a conception of Saint Nicholas but was given an amplified mythological identity in the Clement Moore poem Twas The Night Before Christmas.
In the 1950's, several Christmas cartoons emerged that deliberately adopt elements of Christian stories to convey the "true meaning of Christmas."
An early film, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (TV special) based on the Gene Autry Song Rudolph the red nosed Reindeer involved a rejected and mocked reindeer that ends up leading the other reindeer through the help of a misfit elf and misfit toys.
Similarly, Frosty the Snowman embodies Christian overtones as is the story of a "jolly happy soul" who to some "Is a fairytale they say" but comes to earth for a time and reassures his childlike followers that he will "be back again some day." The television special developed from this song invents the concept of Frosty being made from "Christmas snow" which entails that he can never completely melt away and thus has an eternal essence.
Following these early television Christmas specials, there have been countless other Christmas TV specials and movies produced for the "holiday season" that are not explicitly Christian but seek to describe "true spirit of Christimas" values such as "togetherness," "being with family," charitable acts, and belief that even bad people or situations can be redeemed. Many sundry examples of Christmas films exist, but some notably "Christian Mythological" ones are as follows: such as Home Alone, How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (film), A Charlie Brown Christmas, and various adaptations of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.
These conceptions of the "true meaning of Christmas" are also sung about in Christmas albums that may have nothing to do with Christianity.
[edit] Legacy
From the time of St. Augustine in the fifth century to the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, biblical stories provided the framework of European mythology. Other myths found in different parts of Europe were Christianized and incorporated into this framework. Stories such as that of Beowulf and Icelandic, Norse, and Germanic sagas were reinterpreted and given Christian meanings. The legend of King Arthur and the quest for the Holy Grail is a striking example (Treharne 1971). The thrust of incorporation took on one of two directions. When Christianity was on the advance, pagan myths were Christianized; when it was in retreat, Bible stories were mythologized, sometimes into foreign myths.
Since the end of the eighteenth century, biblical stories no longer provide the sole basis for mythology of Western society. Owing to the scepticism of the Enlightenment, nineteenth-century freethinking, and twentieth century modernism, most Westerners no longer find Christianity to be their basic imaginative and mythological framework by which they understand their place in the world. The book Virtual Faith: The Irreverent Spiritual Quest of Generation X by Tom Beaudoin explores the premise that Christian mythology is present in the mythologies of pop-culture, such as Madonna's Like a Prayer or Soundgarden's Black Hole Sun.
Certain subgroups within modern society still retain a strong element of Christian mythology in their understanding of life. It is also true that Christian values often inform law and other official elements within different Western societies, but the idea of a Christendom that permates all aspects of life is no longer applicable.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Louis A. Markos in Myth Matters, from Christianity Today magazine. Quote: "just as Christ came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it, so he came not to put an end to myth but to take all that is most essential in the myth up into himself and make it real."
- Mark Filiatreau in A Master of Imaginative Fiction, from BreakPoint Online. Quote: "Classics of Christian Myth -- MacDonald’s key mythic works include five full-length books, which we’ll introduce here."
- Abstract of the Collected Works of C. G. Jung, from The CG Jung page. Quote: "The astrological characteristics of the fish are seen to contain the essential components of the Christian myth."
- James W. Marchand in Christian Parallels to Norse Myth, from the Center for Advanced Study, University of Illinois. Quote: "This reluctance to weigh fairly the possibility of the influence of Christian myth on Norse myth has had a number of unfortunate consequences. The most unfortunate is the resolute refusal on the part of most students of Norse myth to look at medieval Christian myth."de:Christliche Mythologie
es:Leyendas del cristianismo fr:Mythologie biblique it:Mitologia cristiana pt:Mitologia cristã fi:Kristillinen mytologia sv:Kristen mytologi
