Myth assimilation

[NothingToFear]

How many myths of old, or of ancient cultures, do you know of being assimilated into the successive cultures? I know of the myths that seem to have become the Jesus story (Ossirris for instance) but what else has found its way into our every day lives?

 

[Quentin Woolery]

Well, we have taken the Samhain tradition and made it into Halloween. I remember a lot of people at churches started to not celebrate Halloween when this fact came out a few years back.

 

[Rhonda Tharp]

Eostra, Goddess of Spring - turned into Easter. Brigid - Goddess of Healing, Light, Wisdom became Saint Brigid, Flood myths, Hero myths - turned into fiction or movies. Take any archetype from these myths and you can find a correlational incident or character today.

 

[Willowtree]

Gee, that's amazing. I didn't know any of this. I was probably like the other 99% of the sheeple and just believed the party line. Interesting topic.

 

[RLynn]

The Feast of Sol Invictus and other Winter Solstice observances became Christmas.

 

[NothingToFear]

I didn't mean so much the religious stories, because I know that basically 95% of Christian stories came from earlier 'pagan' faiths. I do find it interesting though that so few believers in the faith realise that, and yet believe it whole heartedly.

 

[Libros]

That's a whole other can of worms though.

From the view of studying comparative mythology, of course it's easy to see the parallels between the stories. But a committed believer of a faith may take one of three routes if shown the comparisons:

A: "All of those stories are fictional myths from dead cultures so their similarity is coincidence and doesn't apply to the story from my faith, which is the truth. Gilgamesh and the Flood did not happen. Noah and the Flood did happen."

B: "Since these cultures' stories came before mine, the comparison is proof that the event did occur in the past. But they are distorted versions of mine, the true story. Someone older said that Gilgamesh and the Flood happened, therefore Noah and the Flood must have happened, but Noah is the truth of what happened."

C: "All of these stories are interesting metaphors and none of them literally happened, but we take meaning from them. Neither Gilgamesh nor Noah happened."

C can be agreed by both mythologists and believers.

 

[RLynn]

.....C: "All of these stories are interesting metaphors and none of them literally happened, but we take meaning from them. Neither Gilgamesh nor Noah happened."

C can be agreed by both mythologists and believers.

I agree that C can [note italics] be agreed to by believers as well as nythologists, but I think most believers would lean toward A or B..