Mythology

the Feast of Passover this event was celebrated with a ritual whose origin was far older than the historical event thus commemorated. Accompanying the ritual was the cult myth describing the event, not in historical terms, but in terms borrowed in part from Babylonian and Canaanite-myth. The function of the cult myth was to confirm the covenant relation between Yahweh and Israel, and to magnify the power and glory of Yahweh. In this new use of the myth it was divested of the magical potency which it had possessed in the ritual myth. We can see the cult myth still further developed in the prophetic use of it as a means of presenting the conception of ’salvation-history’ to Israel. The myth still describes a situation, and still has the function of securing the continuance of the situation, no longer by magical, but by moral force. The function of the myth has been lifted to a higher plane in the cult myth as we see it employed by the prophets of Israel. The Prestige Myth There is a form of the myth, distinct from any of the foregoing, which calls for notice. Its function is to invest the birth and exploits of a popular hero with an aura of mystery and wonder. While the story of the birth and exposure of Moses in an ark of bulrushes. on the Nile may ‘ rest upon historical tradition, it can be paralleled by similar stories relating to Sargon, Cyrus, Romulus and Remus, and other heroes of popular imagination. The birth and exploits of the Danite hero, Samson, are related in mythical terms intended to glorify the tribe of Dan and its hero. It may be remarked in passing that the attempt to find a sun-myth in the story of Samson is generally discredited. The stories of the exploits of Elijah and Elisha fall into the same category, although in this case the motive of magnifying the glory of Yahweh is also present. Prestige myths also tend to gather round the names of famous cities. Troy is built by the hands of gods, and even Zion is described in mythical terms borrowed from Babylonian and Canaanite mythology as being built ‘on the sides of the north’, the expression used in those myths to describe the abode of the gods. The Eschatological Myth Although it may owe something to the eschatology of Zoroastrianism, the eschatological myth is specially characteristic of Jewish and Christian thought. In the writings of the prophets, and above all in the apocalyptic literature, the conception of a catastrophic end of the present world-order has a prominent place. The prophets believed that the ’salvation- history’ must have its consummation in a decisive divine intervention. ‘It shall come to pass in the last days’ is a characteristic phrase in the prophetic vocabulary. When the prophets attempt to describe the final situation they have to fall back on the language of myth. The description of the conquest of the chaos-dragon by Marduk in the Babylonian Epic of Creation supplies them with the imagery which they use to describe Yahweh’s final victory over the forces of evil. Just as the divine act of creation lies outside the horizon of history and can only be described in the language of myth, so the divine act that brings history to a close can only be described in the same terms. The eschatological use of myth was carried over from Judaism into Christianity and appears in its fullest display in the Apocalypse of St John. It may, perhaps, be necessary to say that the application of the category of myth to the Gospel narratives is in no way intended to call in question their essential historical veracity. But for those who believe, as the prophets of Israel and the first disciples of Jesus did, that God has entered into human history, there are certain moments in history when events take place whose causes and nature lie beyond the range of historical causation. Here the function of

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