Enns on the Question of Myth
I like the way Peter Enns articulates the problem of myth and biblical studies, especially given our discussions on the term.
The Following is from Page 40 of Inspiration and Incarnation:
Christians recoil from any suggestion that Genesis is in any way embedded in the mythologies of the ancient world. On one level this is understandable. After all, if the Bible and the gospel are true, and if that truth is bound up with historical events, you can’t have the beginning of the Bible get it so wrong. It is important to understand, however, that not all historians of the ancient Near East use the word myth simply as shorthand for untrue, made-up, [or] storybook. It may include these ideas for some, but many who use the term are trying to get at something deeper. A more generous way of defining myth is that it is an ancient, premodern, prescientific way of addressing questions of ultimate origins and meaning in the form of stories: Who are we? Where do we come from?
I think that is a definition we can all agree upon, no?
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Comments
Hooray for two people that agree!
Anyone else? I am looking at the people who had concerns last go around.
“Prescientific” requires some elucidation. Does he mean “prior to the Newtonian/Cartesian mechanicalistic view of the universe.” If so, this point is trivially true. For that matter, the rest of the definition is trivially true (i.e. a simple truism). No rational person would deny that all ancient myths are ancient, that all answers concerning origins are ways of addressing questions of origins, that all myths are in the forms of stories, etc. Such things are almost tautologous. What Enns is essentially saying, although not so blatantly, is comparable to saying that all reds are colors.
So as long as Enns’ definition is to be taken as a list of necessary but not sufficient conditions for myths in the Bible, I would agree with it. But if he later adds to these conditions “not a metanarritive” or “not objectively true,” then we have moved to something more interesting and non-tautologous.
What Enns is essentially saying, although not so blatantly, is comparable to saying that all reds are colors.
What his point is, and given some of your comments on the other thread, is that most people don’t get what myth is, what it does, and how it functioned. As with most good biblical scholars, he is using in two simultaneous ways. Firstly, he is using it as a term that contains the mindset that actually describes the thinking that the people he is talking about actually used. Secondarily, he is using it as a term that carries their completely foriegn worldview into ours for comparison and analysis. The use of the word myth here touches two contemporary uses. One of these is a popular notion of the pejorative term that uses myth as anything that says it is true, but is not. Here there is only noise in pronunciation which is similar. The other is a descriptor term which is very similar to the premodern notion of myth, but describes the same things in modern and postmodern contexts.
A myth in the ancient and second modern context is part of a metanarrative that people constructed and held to be objectively true for the people using them. (without being a privileged observer, which is reserved for God herself, I cannot state if they are actually objectively true or not)
Given the rampant misunderstandings surrounding this issue and the bizarre over-attachment to historical “truth,” what Enns is saying here is very enlightening and insightful because a whole lot of evangelicals simply don’t get it. They don’t get that Gen 1-12 can be true and historically false. This is because they get screwed up on what truth the text is referring to. They are so culturally conditioned to think that only historical narratives are true, right, correct, and acceptable. This is patently false. the ancients here are not worried about “objective history.” Instead, they are looking for thematic explanations. Narrative truth is something completely different than historical truth. Additionally, every single historical narrative is biased. There is no objectivity to be found. It is a modernist pipedream. Even video tape shows a limited and selected perspective.
Honzo,
Accoriding to your explanation, if what Enns is saying is that all myths are historically false (yet somehow true), then I must humbly and respectfully disagree that Genesis 1-11 is not myth. (You say Genesis 1-12 in your post, but I do not think that you want to say that Abraham too must be relegated to a mythical feature as well. So I took you to mean Genesis 1-11.)
Myths can be historically false and also true. I might have worded it too strongly before.
Travis, were the universe, world, and mankind created 4-10 thousand years ago? Did men used to live until they were almost a thousand years old? Is most of archeology a lie? Most of science a lie? If you answered no, no, no, and no, then you need to reevaluate the strict historicity of Genesis 1-11. If you answered yes, yes, and yes - then there be dragons.
It doesn’t seem as though you really understand what Enns is talking about, nor are you trying to understand what he is talking about. I don’t see a careful consideration of his viewpoint, which is the hallmark of scholarship.
If I sound harsh its because I see year after year anti-intellectual approaches to the Bible. We will spend countless pages defend our constructed theologies from the painfully obvious and it is driving people away from God.
I agree.