Originally posted by Nemesio
I'm not sure I agree with this. Perhaps the initial storyteller was simply 'telling stories' (albeit
pregnant with meaning), but I'd be willing to be that after a generation or two, the successful
'stories' became sources of identity, ways to establish and confirm one's peers in one's propinquity
group, and thus something which took on a much greater s ...[text shortened]... ed that the moon was carried in a
boat rather than on the back of a bear.
Nemesio
I'm not sure I agree with this. Perhaps the initial storyteller was simply 'telling stories' (albeit
pregnant with meaning), but I'd be willing to be that after a generation or two, the successful
'stories' became sources of identity, ways to establish and confirm one's peers in one's propinquity
group, and thus something which took on a much greater significance, as people have been fighting
about religion/culture for millennia.
I don’t disagree with this at all; in fact, I’d tend in at least some cases to carry it to the initial storyteller. I don’t suggest that various creation stories originated as just spinning idle yarns for the fun of it. There were probably “entertainment” stories and “serious” stories.
I disagree that our ancestors took their “identity stories”
as literally as we tend to think they did. Within a mythological mindset, taking the stories seriously, and taking them as “journalistic” fact, are not the same thing. Remember, they were no less intelligent than we are; they simply thought about the world very differently. As you have often pointed out, it is a mistake to read—not only their mythology, but also their minds—from our modernist perspective. It is a modern phenomenon to think that a story must represent historical facticity to be “true.”
When a person of the tribe was punished for violating religious/mythic taboos, it was because such violation threatened the cultural fabric (which was probably not separate from the perceived ontological fabric), not because of theological disagreements (ala Thorg and Blerg). And, prior to the advent of what I might call “chauvinistic monotheism,” people did not tend to war on their neighbors because they worshipped the wrong gods, or the gods by the wrong names. They just had different gods, that’s all. At least that’s what I’ve gleaned from my reading. Religious wars do seem to be a “new trait” amongst humans—depending on how many millennia you want to go back. Rome had a long record of imposing Roman law, but not Roman religion—even vis-à-vis the Jews for a long time.
I recall an aboriginal storyteller who began the creation-story of his people with these words: “I cannot say that this is really the way it happened; I can tell you that the story is true.”
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With regard to the Yahwist narrative, you might want to take a look at
The Book of J, with commentary by literary critic Harold Bloom, but mostly to read the extracted “J” narrative as a piece (translated by David Rosenberg).