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Michelle Belanger "author, lecturer, and avid reader"'s latest blog posts
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9:12 AM PDT, May 2, 2008
There is a grain of truth in every myth. This statement may sound trite and over-used, but it is nevertheless a concept that is very important to my personal theology. And, trite as it may sound, the concept becomes obvious in any serious study of the Bible (which, being raised Catholic, was the first mythic system I was ever exposed to).
The Bible is filled with stories about historical people and events. I have no doubt in my mind that there was a Solomon and a David, but I believe that their stories, as they appear in the Bible, are larger than life. There is truth the concept of their role in history, but from the time in which they really existed to the time in which their tales were written down, facts became blurry. Their stories were enlarged upon. If there was a blank in peoples' knowledge about their lives, it was filled in with a pastiche of events culled from the lives of other rulers, or borrowed from stories that were similar to their own.
In this way, history became myth. I think such a process is inevitable, especially when you're working with a system that began as oral tradition. But even in our modern age, where we are so very certain of our ability to record naked facts, consider how factual all the stories of our new gods can be: Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Princess Diana ... and a hundred other celebrities who live larger than life and whose media image is approached by many as if they were god-like avatars upon the earth.
I remember, when I was very little, visiting some of my older relatives. They had these images on their walls, pictures emblazoned on velvet or these vaguely three-dimensional, shimmering things. The images depicted Jesus, or Jesus and Elvis, or Jesus standing next to JFK. They were tacky, to be sure, but they were also iconic. In the execution of these images, both Kennedy and Elvis looked as beatific as Christ the Lord. To a child's eyes, there was no difference between them. And I think, even to an adults' eyes, it had to be obvious, that Elvis and JFK were being portrayed as gods on earth.
So we've seen this process, even in our lifetimes. The stories of real men and women, whose lives are significant and seem somehow bigger than our own -- these stories get told and retold until the grain of truth that was the living person is wrapped all around with the glistening, shimmering substance of myth. And that myth, like a pearl, seems to be so much better and grander and more worthy than the humble piece of sand that give it birth.
I think back to the Egyptian stories of Set and Horus. In the older myths, Set and Horus are twins, and they have the love-hate relationship of siblings. Set, who later becomes the prototype for our modern Satan, is actually a helpful deity. Recognized with the title "Great of Strength," he is the one who protects Ra's bark during its journey through the Underworld, spearing the great serpent Apophis. Ironic, then, that Set himself is later associated by the Greeks with evil serpents, in the form of Set-Typhon.
But Set, as much as myth wants to make him iconic, has a lingering sense of humanity. He is a complex being. All of the Egyptian deities are -- as are the gods and goddesses of the Greeks and so many ancient cultures. These beings, supposedly divine and therefore better than us, loved and hated, warred, and reproduced. They fought over rights of ascension. They struggled to gain recognition and fame for their favored sons.
Isn't it obvious that a grain of truth must lie behind their godly facades as well?
I remember, also as a child, reading about the discoveries of Schliemann. For those who didn't read as widely as I, he was the man who discovered Troy. Or rediscovered it, really. At the time that he was alive, Troy was not thought to be a real city. It appeared in Homer's Illiad and Odyssey, and because these tales involved both men and gods, historians had long looked upon them as nothing more than myth. But Schliemann had his suspicions, and, eventually following cues from myth and from Homer's texts, he located the site of the original city.
Did Achilles weep for Patroclus at this city's besieged gates? Did brave Hector stride out to meet his death at the hands of the grief-stricken demi-god? It's hard to say. But given what I've learned about myth over the years, I suspect that men with these names did exist, and that they were heroes, and eventually their stories were told so many times that the man was superseded by the myth.
But somewhere, underneath the onomatopoetic words of the ancient Greek bard, there is a piece of history, and it is based upon real facts.
Where we stand now, we only see the pearl, shimmering and unreal. But somewhere at its core, there is still that grain of very real sand.
--M
8:17 AM PDT, April 27, 2008
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