Myth
in the footnotes:
"From Eden to Exaltation"

 

 A  definition of the term "Myth" would be appropriate at this point.  According to Mircea Eliade, Myths, Rites, Symbols, (New york: Harper and Row, 1975) pp. 2-7.  "Myth" is not fiction or fable as the modern world understand it, but "myth" means a "true story".  Myth "narrates a sacred history; it relates an event that took place in primordial time, the time of the Beginnings."  Myth tells the "real story" of "that which really happened."  Thus the term "MYTH" in this paper will imply and be defined as the "true story" of God's activities in the creation of the earth and mankind.

 

  Mircea Eliade, Myths, Rites, Symbols, (New york: Harper and Row, 1975) pp. 6-7.  Eliade lists five functions of creation myths:  "(1) constitutes the History of the Acts of the first parents; (2) This History is considered to be absolutely TRUE and SACRED (because it is concerned with realities).  (3) that myth is always related to a "creation," it tells how something came into existence;  (4) that by knowing the myth one knows the "origin" of things and hence can control and manipulate them at will...this knowledge that one experiences is done ritually by recounting the myth or by performing the ritual; (5) that in one way or another one "lives the myth, in the sense that one is seized by the sacred, exalting power of the events recollected or re-enacted."  Barbara C. Sproul in Primal Myths, Creating the World (New York: Harper and Row, 1979) p. 2, echo Eliade's words regarding the creation myths:  "Without it" (creation myths) "we cannot determine what things are, what to do with them, or how to be in relation to them.  The fundamental structures of understanding that myths provide, even though in part dictated by matter and instinct, are nevertheless essentially arbitrary because they describe not just the real world of fact but our perception and experience of that world."  Any endowment of power from on high that would come from myth and ritual must then contain the elements of the creation and our Heavenly Father's dealings with our first parents.  This, in order that we might better understand our role in creation, and have better control of our salvation while here on earth. Johns Pedersen in his article "Wisdom and Immortality" in Wisdom in Israel and in the Ancient Near East, Ed. M. Noth and D. W. Thomas, Sup. Vetus Testamentum Vol III (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1955) pp. 243-244, states that these myths about the creation are "not dogmas" but narratives which "describe the work of God and characterize their mutual relations... which are expressive of the relation between God and man."