![]() Myths help a society organize itself by providing ritual and meaning. Not in the sense of falsehoods, but in the sense of founding narratives a culture tells itself. ![]() Prior to the Reformation, i.e., when the Bible had not yet been translated into vernacular languages and literacy was far from widespread, people nevertheless knew these stories. Large numbers of pre-literate children and illiterate adults know them. Reading the Bible is not a prerequisite for learning these stories. Plenty of people all over the world, including people who are not even nominally Christian, know stories that appear in the Bible: for example, that Jesus was born in a manger, or that he was crucified, or that he raised Lazarus from the dead. We learn the stories of the Iliad and the Odyssey in the same way that we learn Bible stories. What does "knowledge of the Iliad" mean? How does one gain knowledge about the stories told in these two epics? This comment is spot-on, and gets to the heart of the matter. I suspect that the Odyssey doesn't require knowledge of the Iliad. These were originally oral traditions rather than written books. ![]() On the nature of myth (hand-wavy background stuff) ![]()
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