The Meaning of "Mythology" in Relation To the Old Testament

Abstract

This paper is intended to contribute towards the clarification of a term which is to-day enjoying frequent use in reference to Bible, religion and theology. The continuing need for such clarification may be indicated by the following two points: 1. We are becoming increasingly aware that the study of the facts or phenomena cannot be separated from the terminology which we apply to them. When we work with detail on a small scale this problem of terms is less serious and the danger of error more remote. But when we attempt to relate facts and their significance over a wider area we may by inappropriate use of terms lay our study open to misconstruction, and much more serious, lead ourselves into actual errors of interpretation. We may take as an example the difficulties into which we may have been led by terms like monolatry and Monotheism, and still more by animism or polydaemonism-each of which has no doubt been used with good intention to express something in some of our texts, but which has carried other connotations going beyond the Old Testament texts and has thus become a mould forcibly applied to a reluctant material. 2. The recent discussion of has been to a great extent dominated by New Testament studies and general philosophy and theology. It seems to me however that the basic problem of faith and mythology is one hammered out in the Old Testament, and that discussions which evade this fact miss a great deal of the point. This has not been unrecognised, e.g. by ALAN RICHARDSON in his paper Gnosis and Revelation in the Bible and in Contemporary Thought (Scottish Journal of Theology, vol. 9, no. 1, 1956). It is very largely ignored however by the essays translated from German in the volume Kerygma and Myth, by HENDERSON in his Myth in the New Testament, and by MACQUARRIE in his An Existentialist Theology-three