Mythology

are dealing with a living culture fully equipped with an extensive literature, and at the same time having its roots deeply laid in antiquity. Moreover, inasmuch as Christianity was a product of the welter of the religious movements that characterized the Greco-Roman world at the beginning of our era, it gave a new functional significance to the various ancient strands that are embedded in the new culture pattern.’ [1] In the course of the Christian religion as it has developed through the centuries, the focal points of the individual life, the great central moment of national life in the coronation of the sovereign, and, above all, the corporate life of the Church, have all been surrounded with a pattern of ritual consisting of significant acts accompanied by spoken words which are regarded as having power, sacramental efficacy. The spoken part of the ritual is its myth, its muthos, and describes a situation in which divine activity is operative to effect the purpose of the ritual. In the Christian rite of baptism certain symbolic acts are performed and certain words are spoken which, for those who regard baptism as a sacrament, have power to bring about a change in the condition of the baptized person, child or adult. For those who undergo the ritual it is a rite de passage, a rebirth into a new life, and the myth, the spoken part of the ritual, describes the original situation, the reception of children by Christ, which is reproduced by the words and actions of the priest in the ritual. In the Christian ritual of marriage, the myth describes the original creation of mankind as male and female, and repeats the divine words which declare that in marriage the man and the woman become ‘one flesh’ and are indissolubly united. The words and acts of the priest in the ritual have power to bring about the union described in the myth. The various rituals of ordination of priests and deacons, and of the consecration of bishops, all have this character in common of bringing about through symbolic acts and spoken words a fundamental change in the condition of the persons undergoing these rituals. The coronation of a sovereign has a long and complicated history. Its roots lie far back in the coronation rituals of Egypt and Babylon. A description of the English ritual lies beyond the scope of our study which is concerned primarily with the myth; but a full account of its history has been given by Professor E. O. James in his book Christian Myth and Ritual, Chapter 2. But it is in the great central ritual of the Eucharist that the relation of the myth to the ritual is most clearly seen. Here the function of the myth as the sacred word of power is fully displayed. Like the coronation ritual, the. ritual of the Eucharist has a long and complicated history which we shall not attempt to follow here. It has been fully dealt with by the late Dom Gregory Dix in his monumental work The Shape of the Liturgy. The first point which concerns us is that the Christian Eucharist is, in its origin, a transformation of the age-long Jewish ritual of the Passover. We have already seen that the celebration of this annual ritual meal was accompanied by the recitation of the cult myth of the Exodus. According to the Synoptic gospels, immediately before his death Jesus celebrated the Passover with his disciples at Jerusalem. It may be remarked here that many scholars, following the account in the Gospel of John, do not regard the Last Supper as a Passover meal; but recent discoveries relating to the different calendars in use among the Jews in the time of Jesus have removed the grounds for this view, and there is no longer any reason to doubt that Jesus did celebrate the Passover with his disciples. [2] The accounts of what happened at the Last Supper vary in details, but common to them all is the central fact that Jesus, by certain symbolic acts and significant words transformed the Passover ritual into a: new thing. He told his disciples that the Pascal bread which he had

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