Myth Becomes Fact

What are we to make of the mythical elements in the Bible? It takes no scholar to notice that there are many stories (like the creation or the flood) that have mythical elements. Does this mythical element make the stories any less true?

In The Everlasting Man G.K. Chesterton wrote that Christianity is the fulfillment of all that was true in Pagan philosophy and art. C.S. Lewis expounded further. He noted this and added that Christianity itself was a myth. However, there was one aspect about the myth of Christianity that made it differ from all other myths—it was the one true myth.

The fact that other myths hint at the truth of Christianity is demonstrated clearly by looking at a couple Greek myths.

The Greeks believed there was one great God above all other gods. The lower and bad gods filled the waters; the most terrible under the earth. The worst of all gods was Hades, the god of the dead, a fearful snake.

The Greeks knew of the fall of man. According to Hesiod the first humans lived happily for many centuries. The earth fed and nourished them and they never aged. But the first woman introduced evil into the world by seeking knowledge through disobedience.

Like all other cultures, Greece had a flood story (the oldest and best preserved is found in the Epic of Gilgamesh). According to the ancient Greeks the iniquity of the human race provoked Zeus to overwhelm humanity with a flood. Only one man and his wife (Deucalion and Pyrrha) were saved in an ark that came to rest on top of a mountain. Ancient Greek scientists found evidence in this in the many marine fossils they found on the tops of mountains.

The fact that these stories are shared among every oral culture is strong proof that these events actually occurred. The Israelites were no different than other ancient nations in having a mythology; the difference lay in the fact that theirs was divinely inspired and without error.

Not only did the Greeks have knowledge of past truths, their religion foreshadowed truths to come.

In the story of Heracles (Hercules), the beloved son of god came to earth and suffered for mankind. He died, descended into Hades, then as raised to life and ascended to heaven.

Similarly, in the myth of Adonis we have the traditional vegetation theme—the annual death and resurrection of the soil. The corn dies to bring life. Acted out with this yearly planting was the story of a son of god dying to save mankind and bring it life. Man found holy communion with this god by drinking his blood and eating his flesh.

According to historian Will Durant, the age old question: is religion created by a priest, is settled by a careful examination of Greek religion. He states it is incredible to believe a conspiracy of primitive theologians should have begotten such a complex religion.

500 years before Paul and the apostles wrote the New Testament Xenophanes wrote, “There is one god, supreme among gods and men; resembling mortals neither in form nor in mind. The whole of him sees, the whole of him thinks, the whole of him hears. Without toil he rules all things by the power of his mind.”

Out of 1,000 religions I could not believe that 999 were totally false and only one was true. I could not believe that all these men were so completely wrong on the most essential question. What I would expect to find is exactly what I see: fallen men imperfectly striving toward a God they cannot reach on their own. They would grasp hold of some truths, while remaining completely wrong in others. God in His grace allows all men to know Him through nature (Romans 1). But since man is fallen all men know him incompletely. Yet their partial grasp of the truth allows them to fully recognize and accept the full truth when it is presented to them.

A man who observed that the higher a mountain is the longer snow remains on its slopes would not be surprised if he saw a mountain so high that snow never left its peak. That would be the fulfillment of the thing he knew to be true. In the same way Plato saw in Socrates’ death the reaction an evil world has towards goodness. He would not at all be surprised that the world killed Perfect Goodness (Christ) when it entered the world. In fact, given his observation and the principles they entailed, it would be exactly the result he would have expected.

The Greeks, in their myths, understood core principles. When the True Myth occurred many were able to grasp the fact that it was a fulfillment of all the truth they had known.