It ain't necessarily so, the things that you're liable to read in the Bible!

Myth vs. Truth: Bible vs Science and Stories

The heading at the top of the page comes with apologies to George Gershwin and his brother Ira but the question about truth in the Bible is not something limited to the musical Porgy and Bess. Many people from contemporary Western cultures today, well-schooled in at least the basics of science and technology, tend to view stories from other cultures as being different in their perspectives about the universe, creation, and the origins of all things. That difference is understood negatively, consigning them to the same fate as fairy tales.  Because these cultures have created a cosmology based on human observations and primitive science, they cannot convey truth to our sophisticated world 

One significant part of the difference in interpretations is evident with the Big Bang theory of the formation of a universe understood as existing for its own sake. This is an important point of difference.  For science, the world exists for its own sake, in that it does not respond to human interaction.  A drought then is not a punishment for wayward people.   We see the world around us as a universe that can be observed and tested enabling scientists to revise their interpretation of what’s going on as more information comes in.  We live in that universe and react to it, but there is no personal interaction.  The world is a “thing” and is not a living reality. It does not care about people.

Myths are about meaning

Scientists work on the assumption that the ancients did not understand the true nature of the various natural phenomena they observed. Having no way of correlating and categorising what they observe, they developed myths that served them by way of explanation. The raw material for those myths comes from their observations of what is around them. 

Other scientifically trained scholars suggest that our human ancestors, lacking the benefit of our technology and the accumulated wisdom of the ages, simply misread the environment, populated it with needless spirits to fill in the gaps, and based their uncomplicated interpretations of it on false premises.

For scientists, the idea that the universe is alive with a rich variety of living, spirit beings, that it consists of properties that are transferable to people, and that every material object acts according to its own will has no validity.  No matter how effective such creation stories might be in positively shaping the everyday lives of those who cherish them, science is unwilling, unable even, to ascribe to them any scientific value. But myths operate on a very different level of knowledge and truth.

Science leaves out the human element

There is no place for human engagement with nature in the Big Bang theory. There is no role for human involvement in the machinations of an independent world.  It is at this point that myth moves off in a very different direction from science.  People are actively woven into the tapestry of these ancient and traditional creation stories.   We find them engaging in a dialogue with a multitude of gods, offering sacrifices as a way of winning over the goodwill of those same gods who manifest the best and the worst of the human psyche.  The ancients retell their creation myths in rituals, and in those ritual reenactments, they spell out and celebrate the intricate relationship between heaven and earth, seeing reality as unfolding a great cosmic drama in which humans have a significant role.  

On the other hand, the modern scientific narrative is built around an independent cataclysmic event that happened billions of years ago, long before the advent of humans.  That single event brought everything into existence, including those microscopic atoms that would eventually become human life.  It tells about what follows from that Titanic event, an event that unfolds independently of any human participation.

How myth works

Our role as humans is as observers, limited to measuring and documenting what we can see and harnessing its natural elements for the good of humanity. What they see “out there” exists regardless of the presence of men and women to observe them. There is no personal exchange between the world and humans.  We can only observe the changing condition of an immense universe that exists for itself. For all its greatness, the cosmos does not have an answer to the human search for meaning.

Ancestral folkloric stories of creation are commonly termed myths, a word that is understood in a variety of ways. From one perspective it is just a story—a traditional story that addresses natural phenomena all around them. They usually involve supernatural beings, an array of gods and spirits who are involved in an ongoing exchange with humans, providing meaning and purpose to their lives.   They contribute to the formation of moral codes, laws, customs, and the things necessary for human communities to live together in some degree of harmony.  But for others, they are little more than false beliefs that are nothing but fantasy or delusion.  It is “all made up” in the mind.

Myth is generally translated as a veiled or fabricated truth, a product of the fanciful imagination that can be debunked by science and replaced with the real truth. But for people who retell and pass on those myths, they relate to events they experience, to beliefs and practices in their lives.  From them myths are truth.

An example: There is a seasonal festival of the Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun.  It was a celebration of the winter solstice, a time to rejoice that the sun god had reached his turning point low in the winter sky. It emerged from the tale of Mithra, the fifteenth-century BC Indo-Iranian god of light, who winds his way among the constellations of the zodiac, ever watchful and protective of all who dwell below.

When he reaches the low point in the sky, it is the time of year when people enter the story—they need to engage with him in an act of renewal ensuring the seasonal cycle continues and sustains them.  The myth of the Unconquered Sun endures in a variety of styles.   There is not a culture in the world that does not have some version of this myth, the victory of light over darkness. It is usually celebrated in the middle of winter, a time of darkness, when all growth stops and people are restricted in their daily activities.

Early Christians, for example, adapted the Roman Dies Natalis to tell a story about the birth of their Savior—the one who brings light to the world. The climax comes with his death and resurrection during their Easter holiday. Victory over death and darkness, a victory that is repeated annually ensuring the proper and regular ordering of nature’s cycles.

Modern scientists tell a very different story about the Dies Natalis. They can draw up charts illustrating the variation in the number of hours of daylight through the winter months and calculate the insolation (the quantity of solar energy at various latitudes at different times of day on different dates). Their storyline can then correlate this data with the times of germination of various plants, the end period of hibernation of bears and beavers, daily temperature maximum and minimum, rainfall records, etc.  They know when to harvest and when to plant based on these observations of nature. Science can explain much of what we see, measure it and create theories about the way all these things come together and how it can benefit mankind.

Out of this collection of quantitative information, they can then arrive at truths. The world they then describe is deity-free. Theirs is a rational explanation of the seasonal turning of the sun. The language of myth, however, is different from the abstract mathematical and geometrical logical language of science. Its narrative consists of poetry and imagery, grammar, analogy and metaphor. It is not a matter of science or myth.  They represent different ways of reading the same reality.  Both lay claims to being faithful pilgrims in pursuit of Truth.

Why can’t people accept biblical myths as truth?

There need not be a conflict between myth and Christian theology.  Nor are mythical stories debunked by science.  Mythology is truth in a different form.   Mythology is a form of literature that expresses fundamental truths in a way that ordinary forms of expression prove to be inadequate.   The stories that make up the myths can sometimes be traced back to some historical reality, but that is not necessary.  They have a rationale all their own.

In an age of science and technology, much of the Bible does not stand up to scientific scrutiny.  It is this apparent gap between scientific facts and some biblical myths that puts people off because of the way some Christians insist that the Bible is true.  From a scientific standpoint, many of the "facts" in the Bible are simply wrong. According to Genesis, the universe is just over six thousand years old. According to physics, the Big Bang occurred 13.7 billion years ago.

Then we have the problem of having things that are scientifically impossible, going against the laws of nature like the tale of Joshua stopping the sun from moving across the sky. This story assumes (as was the thinking then) that the earth was flat and was at the centre of the universe. We simply know this to be false. Second, for the sun to stop would mean that the Earth would have to cease rotating on its axis, an action that would wipe us all out.

Then there are the cases where there are clear natural explanations that can explain miracles.  The authors of these stories lived in an age when people believed that solar eclipses were divine omens, disease was divine punishment, and mental illness was caused by demon possession. In the case of Jesus, healing was an important part of his ministry. However, today we can find faith healers in Haiti who practice voodoo and in tribal Africa who practice witchcraft. Many of these modern-day faith healers have patients who are healed by these practices. Doctors call this the placebo effect, an effect so powerful that drugs must undergo double-blind experiments.

It is clear from anthropological studies that many of the mythological stories in the Bible are not original.  The Epic of Gilgamesh, for example -- a Sumerian poem detailing the creation of the universe that predates the writings of Genesis by many centuries -- contains a flood story whose plot points are almost identical to the story of Noah.

The other world religions also contain rich histories of mythology and fantastical-sounding (to us) stories. On what basis can we Christians claim that our miracle stories are legitimate, yet theirs are flights of fancy?

The mythology surrounding the Buddha, who lived five hundred years before Jesus, includes tales of how he healed the sick, walked on water, and could fly. His birth was foretold by a spirit (a white elephant rather than the angel Gabriel) who then entered his mother's womb! At his birth, wise men predicted that he would become a great religious leader.

Contemporary scholars Mircea Eliade and Joseph Campbell record how some basic archetypal religious myths can be found in a wide range of diverse cultures.  These myths include myths that include the Cosmic Tree, Virgin Births, and The Resurrection.

From any objective reading of the Bible, the sacred book contains an abundance of discrepancies.  Which variation is the true story? 

But that question is a bit like Don Quixote.  It is fighting battles against a problem that does not exist.  The only time these apparent irregularities become problematic is when the narratives are read and interpreted by fundamentalists who insist on inerrancy.   They are unwilling to accept that those original authors were not setting out to give an accurate account of individual historical events.   The biblical narratives were more than likely based on a historical reality or persons, but their intent was not historical.  Their focus was on universal truths. 

Reading the Bible as a literal historical account of events from the past limits the power of these stories. Such literal interpretations limit the actions of God to certain events in history. What happens then is we limit God's actions in the world.  He then becomes a deity that is making billions of individual moves per second as he keeps the world going.  That is not the God of the Bible.  It is only in our mythical reading of these stories that we gain a full insight into what God is saying and revealing to us.  Science is the wrong tool for scriptural studies.

Because our contemporary world is so different from that recorded in the Bible, it comes as no surprise to find that when the Bible is read and interpreted in a literal way, people write it off as having nothing to offer them.  Its customs, laws, concepts of family life, gender differences, and concepts of justice are just too alien to bother reading them.  Even worse than that, there are those Christians who insist on presenting the Bible in its literal form, end up coming across in ways that are heard as too judgmental, promote injustices, and are unforgiving and sin obsessed.  Why would they bother?

None of this is new – except fundamentalism

Reading the Bible as mythology is not a new concept. Two of the early Church Fathers, Origen (185-254 AD) and Augustine (354-430 AD), interpreted Genesis metaphorically, rejecting literal interpretations. The idea that we can read the Bible as though it was inerrant, that in all its details it is factually correct is something relatively new.  It is an innovation from the 19th century, a response to the questioning arising out of the Enlightenment.

What we need to be doing today is empowering people to explore our sacred texts in different ways.  They need to be freed up so that they can explore them with an eye open to dig deeper, to explore them as being the ultimate stories about God.   They need to know that there are great things to discover, and that once they move deeper than the surface, they will experience the life of God that flows through them.

On a personal level, I sometimes find it difficult to discern where the line is between myth and history, where one ends and the other begins.  No honest biblical person would claim to be able to establish that same dividing line.   And that is a part of many problems with the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament for Christians.  The further back we go in time, the more obscure those details become.  Especially if we go back as far as human origins. 

Conclusion

Questions of factual and historical errors in the Bible should not frighten us. God can and does reveal sacred truths through inadequate and flawed science.  God was not worried about updating the science and was quite capable of overcoming those human limitations.  

Christians have long recognized that the Gospel accounts give us but a brief snapshot of moments in the ministry of Jesus, narratives that have been told and retold as cherished memories from the time they lived with and listened to Jesus as he went around Galilee obeying the will of his Father. They did not record everything but certainly highlighted those things that revealed Jesus as God and man. It is clear that many things were not recorded or were recorded but are now lost. We know enough to be able to celebrate God’s saving work among us.

The Bible is messy.  Inspired by God, yes, but collected, edited and written by fallible human beings. Even the fact that we can put together four differing Gospel accounts of the one story illustrates how these contradictions and repetitions did not concern the people of the time.  Because we would do it differently today does not mean they were wrong back then. 

Myth constitutes a vital part of the Hebrew Bible; it powerfully shapes the contours of biblical language, its various narratives, and theologies. That is, myth deeply defines what we might call the biblical world – populates the landscape with mythic monsters and deities and animates that world in which the God of Israel rises against forces of evil and, through victorious battle, creates order, erects his temple, and establishes his kingship… 

Paul K.-K. Cho

Bishop Michael Hough                                                                         February 2025