Originally posted by sugiezdGot to disagree. There maybe always were people who did that, but that is not how the stories were started by the storytellers. I don't know if the literalist/historicist reading as normative is "modern," but I'd at least suggest that it is late, relative to the origin of the stories.
Sorry, don't agree with you.
All of this business about allegory is a modern take.
This fairy story was written at a time when such things were taken at face value.
Technically, I believe the notion of "fairy-tale" post-dates myth, and that fairytales are viewed as a kind of degenerated form.
I don't think the ancients who told the opening Genesis story thought that it mattered whether "six days" was metaphorical or literal. They told stories to explain the cosmos they existed in, and to mold some kind of meaning around that.
Originally posted by vistesdThe telling created a space in which the story was real. Once the telling was over, the gate closed and the audience was back in the mundane. So you could have stories that contradicted each other but they were all considered true.
I don't think the ancients who told the opening Genesis story thought that it mattered whether "six days" was metaphorical or literal. They told stories to explain the cosmos they existed in, and to mold some kind of meaning around that.
Originally posted by vistesdFairy story was intended to be derogatory.
Got to disagree. There maybe always were people who did that, but that is not how the stories were started by the storytellers. I don't know if the literalist/historicist reading as normative is "modern," but I'd at least suggest that it is late, relative to the origin of the stories.
Technically, I believe the notion of "fairy-tale" post-dates myth, an ...[text shortened]... es to explain the cosmos they existed in, and to mold some kind of meaning around that.
The notion that these were allegories is modern. THEY intended them to be taken literally.
Originally posted by Bosse de NageDepends what is meant by “reality.” You have a point: ancients projected personification onto elemental forces, which became “gods.” The question—that does not seem to be closed among mythologists or anthropologists, for example—is the extent to which they knew what they were doing with that creative endeavor, or whether they simply deluded themselves. I have no reason to believe that those ancients were any more self-delusive than moderns (and perhaps not any less), even if they didn’t have moderns’ scientific knowledge. They were close observers of the nature they lived in.
Correct--the value of myth for early societies was precisely the reality of the story, which took place "in that time", the Dreamtime if you like. Or, if you prefer, the function of the myth was to connect society with "true reality", abode of the gods.
Fancy a mushroom?
Your point about “dreamtime” is also well taken. But, again, any substantial disassociation from actuality for these folks would have been disastrous, in terms of survival. So any merger of dream and actuality—and I would argue, of myth an actuality—had to be limited.
Originally posted by Bosse de NageSorry, didn't see this post before I posted mine. Your statement itself shows that they were about something other than what we would consider a simple factual recounting, like a history book.
The telling created a space in which the story was real. Once the telling was over, the gate closed and the audience was back in the mundane. So you could have stories that contradicted each other but they were all considered true.
Originally posted by vistesdOf course--history didn't exist then, did it? Our history books don't have quite the same charge as myth, though, do they.
Sorry, didn't see this post before I posted mine. Your statement itself shows that they were about something other than what we would consider a simple factual recounting, like a history book.
Originally posted by vistesdRight. Permanent merging of the two was set aside for specialists--shamen. A tribe wandering around with its head in the clouds would soon be decorating some other tribe's lodge with their skulls! (In some parts of the world). As I said, the storytelling created a sacred space. Theatre still attempts to do that, arguably.
So any merger of dream and actuality—and I would argue, of myth an actuality—had to be limited.
Originally posted by sugiezdThe notion that these were allegories is modern.
Fairy story was intended to be derogatory.
The notion that these were allegories is modern. THEY intended them to be taken literally.
Allegory, per se—you might be right. I’ll do some research on the history of allegory as a genre.
THEY intended them to be taken literally.
What evidence do you have? I think its far more complex than that. They likely believed that the sun revolved around the earth, for example, and believed in a spirit world. That does not necessarily mean that they took the biblical account of genesis literally, nor that they actually believed that the walls of Jericho fell because of trumpets. Alternatively, look at some of the old Norse/Germanic mythologies.
Biblical fundamentalism is a relatively new phenomenon (probably not older than 17th-18th century). Even in Christianity, eminent church historian Jaroslav Pelikan noted that no second-century CE Christian writer interpreted the Hebrew Scriptures literally.
Why do people seem to think that everyone in the world at a given point in time thinks the same way? How can you make statements like "people used to think this". Some people did, some people didn't. Genesis story's are many and were written (or told) by many different people, for many different reasons and whether the people who heard them around the time they were written believed them we don't know for sure, but most likely some did and some didn't.
In the early 60's my father used to visit secondary schools around Zambia, including some very rural ones. He once asked a student whether he thought the world was round or flat. The boy said, "If asked by my teacher I will say it is round, but if I keep walking that way, I will fall off the edge."
Originally posted by Bosse de NageTheatre’s a good example. Our theatre is more often just a form of entertainment. Religious liturgy today is probably closer—and I would say is a kind of theatre.
Right. Permanent merging of the two was set aside for specialists--shamen. A tribe wandering around with its head in the clouds would soon be decorating some other tribe's lodge with their skulls! (In some parts of the world). As I said, the storytelling created a sacred space. Theatre still attempts to do that, arguably.
I also see no reason to assume that the ancients did not have a well-developed sense of symbolism, and even though the texts are sometimes laid out in a prose format, much of what is in the Hebrew scriptures, say, is clearly poetry (not just the psalms). Been awhile since I’ve read Joseph Campbell, but I think that one of his points was that ancients used myth and symbol to address what, for them, was not accessible to cognition.
Originally posted by vistesdRight.
Not as a dsicipline. Oral, and later written, "history" was woven into the mythology.
As for Genesis, by the time it was written down, things had already advanced considerably from illo tempore, the oral myths from which the account was drawn having already been edited into a different shape, reflecting transition from oral to literary culture. So Genesis, the text, was not intended to be taken literally, especially considering reading practices around missing vowels and so on (topics you've dealt with before).
Originally posted by twhiteheadWell said. And perhaps the final word...
Why do people seem to think that everyone in the world at a given point in time thinks the same way? How can you make statements like "people used to think this". Some people did, some people didn't. Genesis story's are many and were written (or told) by many different people, for many different reasons and whether the people who heard them around the tim ...[text shortened]... cher I will say it is round, but if I keep walking that way, I will fall off the edge."
Just some quotes by Joseph Campbell:
Because the imagery that has to be used in order to tell what can't be told, symbolic imagery, is then understood or interpreted not symbolically but factually, empirically. It's a natural thing, but that's the whole problem with Western religion. All of the symbols are interpreted as if they were historical references. They're not. And if they are, then so what?
A mythology is not just the fantasy of this, that, or another person; it’s a systematized organization of fantasies in relation to the values of a given social order. So that mythologies always derive from specific social environments.
I mean, the word myth has come to mean lie—because it is a lie to say that somebody has ascended to heaven. He hasn’t. What is the connotation of that metaphorical image? That’s a metaphor. And mythology is a compendium of metaphors. But when you understand a metaphor—you know, just high school grammar language—when you interpret the metaphor in terms of the denotation instead of the connotation, you’ve lost the message. That’s like going into a restaurant and reading the menu and deciding what you’re going to eat, and you eat that part of the menu. The menu is a reference to something transcendent of that piece of paper.
Well, I’m not a mystic, in that I don’t practice any austerities, and I’ve never had a mystical experience. So I’m not a mystic. I’m a scholar, and that’s all. I remember when Alan Watts one time asked me, “Joe, what yoga do you practice?” I said, “I underline sentences.”