Poetry and Myth
There is a natural relationship between poetic and mythic language:
from Gilgamesh, Homer, and Hesiod through Shakespeare, Milton, and
Tolkien. We should expect, therefore, to find the Canaanite mythology
reflected in various levels in the Psalms. This challenges the modern
interpreter: most people simply don't know those ancient myths, so
the Psalms fail to have their full intended effect.
But those myths could not have dominated the fertile crescent for
millenia without having their own expressive power: their stories and
messages inevitably affected the people of Yahveh. This is not only
obvious on any understanding of anthropology, archaeology, or history;
it is also (despite common
faux-pietistic speculation1)
the plain declaration of the Old Testament accounts.
One of the best-known myths is the
Baal cycle,1a
which describes how Baal earned his right to a leadership role among
the mountain gods, by defeating the great chaos monster,
Tiamat6. That battle was,
despite extensive preparation, risky and hard-fought.
Obviously the prophets of Jehovah had to respond
to those myths; and so they did, in many ways and on many levels.
Sometimes they simply gave the lie2;
sometimes they mocked myths3
for the human failings of the pagan Gods
and logical inconsistencies of the stories; sometimes they
subverted the stories4
to present a more accurate view of reality; sometimes they simply
co-opted mythic language5
to convey the significance of historical events they experienced.
We like to think of ourselves as not believing in myths. This is
dangerous self-deception. Human minds are designed to recognize
narratives, to recognize abstract patterns common to multiple
narratives, and to use those patterns as a map of reality forming
an entire worldview. We can hardly tell a story without seeking to
impose its patterns on our hearers. A "myth" is, from a literary
point of view, simply a
story that is archetypical
for a particular worldview. And we all believe in (or perhaps better,
"by means of") myths.
It is worth the effort to learn the cultural context, not merely
so the Psalms can shine with their full glory: we may also learn how
to face false myths, both ancient and modern, in our own culture.
Notes
1There is no shortage of
confusion and nonsense on this subject: online and in printed
books. Christians tend to thoughtlessly reject the old Hegelian
"rationalistic" ivory-tower history-of-religion theories tracing
Judeo-Christian beliefs back to the ancient paganisms: a pity; they
deserved thoughtful rejection. The neo-pagan revivalists deserve
pity: though it may be hard to take their beliefs seriously enough to
refute, we must make the effort.
Unfortunately, Christians are more likely to be deluded by
post-medieval faux-pietistic attempts to trace all paganism directly
to some imaginary primeval Pre-Jewish pre-Old-Testament Yahwistic
writings. Such theories are
historically absurd and logically unnecessary.
Sharing both the wildly speculative basis and the
obstinate ignorance of historical evidence with the Hegelian theories,
they deserve an even more full and final refutation: to tolerate them
for a moment is tantamount to asserting that our proclamation stands
on a basis of fantasy and falsehood; it is a fundamental betrayal of
the God of the Bible.
Nor am I persuaded by Joseph Campbell's sharply reductionistic
"the myth with a thousand essays" approach: I have the impression
that if he were a musicologist, he'd discourse learnedly about "the
use of the A-flat semibreve through thirty millenia." Probably, most
Christians simply ignore him, and that is probably best. Campbell's
approach at least has the merit of emphasizing that the human mind
seems wired to recognize or remember certain narrative patterns,
and therefore the memorable myths of every human culture must
reflect those patterns.
With these caveats, I'd recommend the work of such scholars as
James Pritchard, Alexander Heidel, Alan Millard, Michael Coogan, and
Peter Craigie. Based on
rediscovered ancient texts
and actual knowledge of the Old Testament, they
avoid both the wilder historical speculation and tendentious theology
so typical of previous writings. Pritchard's Ancient Near Eastern
Texts and Coogan's Stories of Ancient Canaan both present
very readable translations of the myths, with Biblical cross-references;
Craigie's Ugarit and the Old Testament illuminates the genuine
relationships between Pagan and Biblical writings in a simple and
sensible way. Online, the
Canaanite-Ugaritic Mythology FAQ
at pubpages.unh.edu/~cbsiren/canaanite-faq.html
gives a simple introduction based on these and other reliable sources.
Without attempting the impossible task of tracing religious ideas
through millenia of unrecorded history, we may at least see what the Biblical
writers thought of the pagan ideas (absurd, false, and pernicious), and
analyse how they used pagan language and stories to subvert and
correct pagan theology and morality.
1aKnown today from tablets
found in 1929 at Ugarit (Ras Shamrah, Syria).
2Compare
God, the Lord, a King remaineth.
3Compare
Not to us be glory given.
4Compare
Earth is eternally the Lord's.
5Compare
A Mighty Fortress is our God.
5aAlready
for the first Christians, the life of Jesus (that
they or their associates had witnessed) had become such a story:
not by being stripped of historical details, not by being marred by
unhistorical accretions, not in fact by any transformation on itself,
but by the transformation it wrought on its witnesses
and their hearers. It reshaped their conceptions not only of their
own livespan, but of the history and destiny of the universe. When
Peter said, "pattern your lives after Christ," or Paul said, "I have
died with Christ" or "All creation groans, waiting for redemption",
this is the mode of thinking that they were employing. They were not,
of course, demanding that others employ the same mode of thinking:
that was instinctive and inevitable. They were pointing to the story
upon which such thinking should be based, and suggesting directions
in which it should have been employed.
6Tiamat was also known
as Lotan (Leviathan), the "seven-headed dragon" or chaos-monster --
terms familiar from the Old Testament. The Old Testament sarcastically
transforms the story, of course: the very idea that any creature
could challenge the Creator-God! Instead, when the enemy arms
and musters for battle, God snickers. In one retelling, the
monster is His cute little pet salamander, puffing up in a challenge
display, while He picks it up to show off its colors. In another, He
simply invites the scavengers to a royal feast. Or, with "one word"
spoken, the threat is gone, as if (!) it had never been.
In this context, consider the modern theological speculation
about the so-called "Battle of Har-Megiddo." But it is no accident
that the book of Revelation mentions nothing whatsoever of a battle
there, merely the adversary's preparation for one. ("The Muster at
Megiddo" would be more accurate terminology.) In John's vision, as
in the Old Testament and
in A mighty Fortress,
the rebels are overthrown with a mere word.
9Similar patterns have
appeared repeatedly, as in Gnosticism and Scientology: the former
treated the Jewish God as a devil or merely an undistinguished
demon, the latter was avowedly athiestic.
10Rediscovered in
archaeological excavations from across the Fertile Crescent, most
notably from from late-second-millenium Ugarit in Syria.
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