ABSTRACT

The Problem The term ‘myth’ has endured a confused perception in recent years. On the one hand, there has been a long tradition of hostile intent towards it, typical for the most part, curiously, among biblical scholars and systematic theologians. Many have been at pains to distance themselves and the biblical literature from any association with it. I. Strenski, writing in a different context, even felt compelled to remark sardonically on its altogether false status:

He was here playing on the sheer elusive nature of the concept to deny it any real ontological or even conceptual validity. On the other hand, an increasing number of studies3 has brought about a process of rehabilitation, bringing a prodigal son back into the fold, and enriching the discipline with the insights he had gained while out in the cold, among alien peoples such as anthropologists and psychologists. While there is undoubtedly a positive reception in many quarters, even among some biblical scholars, of such a revisionist view of a category long held in deep hostility within this discipline, some elements of that hostility remain, and are still vocal. It still remains true to say that there is a powerful current of thought among biblical scholars that the Hebrew Bible is emancipated from myth.4 Some would perhaps go even further, and claim that the religion of ancient Israel was also emancipated from myth.5 One reason for this may be the explanation offered by H. Eilberg-Schwartz for the discontinuity often asserted between the subject matter of anthropology, that is ‘primitive peoples’ and ‘primitive religion’, and Judaism. He averred that

A similar point was made by M.M. Epstein, who observed that, ‘…the idea of myth did not fit their [Jewish scholars’] conception of what Judaism should be’,7 and went on to deplore the dogmatic avoidance of a useful literary category in the interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, from which scholars had deemed myth to be absent. In both instances, while it is explicitly Judaism which is represented as contrasted with ‘primitive’ religions, it is fair to say that the same judgment applies a fortiori to the Hebrew Bible, and explicitly so for Epstein.8 A slightly different account was given by H.-J. Kraus, who noted the excessively speculative nature of both S. Mowinckel’s work concerning the enthronement and New Year festivals,9 and what he evidently regarded as the pernicious influence of the British ‘myth-and-ritual’ school associated with S.H. Hooke.10 He was unhappy with a broad application of phenomenological principles to Israelite religion. In a barbed passage, he criticized Mowinckel (along with Pedersen),11 but was particularly scathing towards Hooke:

We may note here the use of the term ‘primitive’ which at least admits, if it is not deliberately intended to convey, something of the prejudice noted above. Kraus went on to criticize G. Widengren13 and I. Engnell,14 who characterized ‘the still more extreme approach of the Uppsala school’. All these scholars were guilty of a ‘tendency to lose sight of the distinctions in worship at different times and places behind a unifying and all-embracing phenomenology’.15 A phenomenological, rather like a comparative approach to religion, was evidently in bad odour because it threatened to break down the sharp barriers that could be maintained between Israelite religion and

other ‘pagan’ traditions, so long as the absolute distinction could be made. Kraus did not have much to say about myth in general, but complained (1966: 18) that the approach of the scholars cited tended to push history out of the arena in favour of myth, and finally (p. 207), in alluding once more to ‘the dogma of the “pattern” school of thought’, complained that, ‘there is no evidence within the Old Testament of this idea of a “mythicizing” of Yahweh, the Lord of history’. At last his own particular cat was out of the bag! Kraus stated another common view of the issue, of the kind associated with the ‘biblical theology movement’ to which we shall refer below. It is easy to sympathize with Kraus. But even though the views of the scholars he cited be viewed as excessive, it does not follow that every category with which they dealt (and here we are concerned with myth) is therefore to be banished. Kraus, like those he attacked, appears to have regarded myth and ritual as a largely indissoluble pair of categories, quite apart from his evident concern to grant to Israelite religion a privileged status. Anti-mythic views of this kind have at times been taken as axiomatic, as though the problem is over and done with, so that we can now get down to the serious business of an adequate, non-mythological study of the text and the religious beliefs to which it bears witness. Unfortunately, however, myth remains obstinate. Even apparently outvoted, it will not go away, and returns again and again to haunt us. One of the problems which besets the whole issue is that no adequate definition of myth has ever been agreed,16 and this is perhaps especially true among among biblical scholars, with the result that inadequate definitions have been paraded briefly, adopted uncritically, applied indiscriminately, and used dismissively. The brothers J. and W. Grimm once defined myths as ‘stories about the gods’,17 a definition taken up by H. Gunkel18 and O. Eissfeldt,19 thus conveniently excluding from the genre stories about God (singular) or stories about people (not gods). This somewhat restrictive view was attractive to generations of biblical scholars who felt constrained to contrast the allegedly mythical and primitive world-view of the surrounding cultures, to their disparagement, with the allegedly non-mythical and mature world view of ancient Israel. It spilled over into all the agonized debates as to the precise genre into which individual compositions were to be fitted, and was paralleled in New Testament Studies with the ‘demythologization’ programme of R. Bultmann and his allies, even washing up on the shores of systematic theology.20