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The authors of the story likely believed it to be true. It forms part of the origin story of a major religion. It may have taken its grain of truth from real events, such as a catastrophic local flood. Fiction implies that the author knew they were writing a falsehood. Perhaps the author of the Ark myth did intend it as a fiction.
The story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God's myth where the others are men's myths: i. e. the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds ...
[54] [55] Moreover, as stories spread between cultures or as faiths change, myths can come to be considered folktales, their divine characters recast as either as humans or demihumans such as giants, elves and faeries. [3] [56] [57] Conversely, historical and literary material may acquire mythological qualities over time.
However, scholars of mythology can be roughly divided into particularists, who emphasize the differences between myths, and comparativists, who emphasize the similarities. Particularists tend to "maintain that the similarities deciphered by comparativists are vague and superficial", while comparativists tend to "contend that the differences ...
The mediaeval legend of Genevieve of Brabant connected her to Treves. Hippolyte Delehaye distinguished legend from myth: "The legend, on the other hand, has, of necessity, some historical or topographical connection. It refers imaginary events to some real personage, or it localizes romantic stories in some definite spot."
In fact, Greek mythology tells the story of a confrontation between Lycaon, a cruel king, and the Greek god, Zeus, in which Zeus ultimately punishes Lycaon by turning him into a wolf.
Within academic circles, the term myth is often used specifically to refer to origin and cosmogonic myths. Folklorists, for example, reserve the term myth for stories that describe creation. Stories that do not primarily focus on origins are categorized as legend or folk tale, which are distinct from myths according to folklorists. [5]
As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, [29] whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece. In the field of folkloristics , a myth is defined as a sacred narrative explaining how the world and humankind came to be in their present form [ 30 ] [ 31 ] [ 32 ] and how ...