Talk:Christian mythology

Flood myth

The article currently attributed several flood myths to Christian mythology. Other that the Genesis flood narrative, are there any others? Also, this narrative derives from Jewish mythology and predates Christianity itself. Should this be explained in text?Dimadick (talk) 13:24, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

AFAIK, the Genesis flood myth is the only flood myth that exists in the Christian religion. There exist many others, even one other in particular that also involved a man named Noah riding the flood out on a boat, albeit radically different than the Jewish version, however, these myths should not in any sense be labelled Christian And/or Jewish. And yes, the article should absolutely not label the Genesis flood story as being exclusively Christian. It IS Christian, but it is Christian by extension of it being Jewish, and the article text should reflect that. Firejuggler86 (talk) 08:13, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Table

I honestly have no idea where to start when it comes to problems with the table I recently removed with this edit. I suppose I will start with the basic format of the table. For one thing, it represents a patently outdated and simplistic nineteenth-century scholarly view of religions as progressing through a hierarchy from "animism" to "shamanism" to "polytheism" to "monotheism." It also treats different religious traditions as monolithic wholes, without recognizing how incredibly complicated and diverse these traditions are/were. It also makes bizarre and incorrect assumptions about how religions have historically originated by listing a specific "founding date" as well as a column titled "adapted from." All this makes it sound like religions are consciously created by a specific individual or group of individuals, who are intentionally reworking ideas from an older tradition. Religions do not develop that way, though; they develop like languages and cultures, evolving naturally and gradually over time with many different people playing important roles in shaping them. Furthermore, the "influenced by" column, once again, ignores the incredibly multifaceted dimensions of cross-cultural influence and makes it sound as though a religion can be described as only having one or a few "influences," when, in fact, even the cult of one particular deity almost always combines aspects derived from a vast number of other cultures and traditions. This column also fails to clarify which aspect of the religion in question was "influenced by" the other, or which group within the religion, since one group within the religion may be influenced without any of the other being influenced as well.

Finally, moving on to the specifics, almost every one of the specific details in this table is wrong or grossly oversimplified. The notion that people were originally "animists" in any real sense is entirely unsupported speculation; we have very little idea of what prehistoric religion was like, but surviving artifacts tend to indicate that, at least by the Neolithic, people were worshipping some kind of personified deities. The existence of a Nostratic language family at all is only accepted by a minority of linguists and there have been plenty of linguists who have dismissed the category altogether as unsupported by empirical evidence. The idea that the original speakers of a Proto-Nostratic language were in any sense "shamans" is, again, unsupported speculation. (Not to mention that the very definition of the word "shamanism" is also highly ambiguous, so it is unclear exactly what it would mean if they were.) The column for "Greek polytheism" lists "Egyptian polytheism" as the only influence, but the Egyptians were far from the only influence on the Greeks and they were not even the most prominent influence, since the Mesopotamian and Canaanites actually exerted far greater evident influence on Greek religion than the Egyptians. The dates given for all of these religions are also thoroughly arbitrary and inaccurate. (For instance, the date given for the "founding" of Judaism is given as 950 BC, yet Judaism actually developed over the course of the entire first millennium BC, as well as the first half of the first millennium AD. The dating of Gnosticism as a hundred years earlier than Christianity is just ridiculous, because any religious scholar knows that Gnosticism developed out of Gentile Christianity in the late first century AD and continued to develop well into the second and third centuries.

The idea that Judaism was influenced by Atenism is speculative and highly improbable, given that Judaism only became monolatristic towards the end of the first half of the first millennium BC and did not become monotheistic until even later and in Babylon. It is hardly conceivable that Jews of those periods would have had any knowledge of Atenism. Similarly, the idea that Christianity was influenced by Mithraism, despite its prominence in pop culture, is likewise highly dubious; we do not even know if Mithraism existed before Christianity and almost everything we know about the supposed similarities between Christianity and Mithraism comes from the writings of early Christian apologists who are well-known to have intentionally exaggerated similarities between Christianity and pagan cults in effort to show their pagan contemporaries that they were not so different after all and that there was therefore no reason for singling out Christians for persecution. Also, I do not know whose decision it is that Islam was "adapted from" Judaism, but only "influenced by" Christianity. It was quite clearly greatly influenced by both, not to mention countless other influences such as Manichaeism, which is not even listed here.

This is honestly just the beginning of problems with the table. The only source provided for the whole table is "Simon E. Davis, The Evolutionary Tree of Religion," which, judging from the sort of garbled and oversimplified nonsense cited to it, hardly seems even close to being a reliable source. --Katolophyromai (talk) 17:09, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

The table:

Evolutionary tree of mythology

Founding date approx.	Belief system	Adapted from	Influenced by
100,000 BCE	Animism
15,000 BCE	Shamanism (Proto-Nostratic)	Animism
12,500 BCE	Middle East Shamanism	Nostratic faith
3,500 BCE	Proto-Indo-European Polytheism	Shamanism (Proto-Nostratic) (15,000 BCE)
3,000 BCE	Canaanite Polytheism	Middle East Shamanism	Mesopotamian polytheism (4,000 BCE)
2,500 BCE	Indo-Iranian Polytheism	Proto-Indo-European Polytheism (3,500 BCE)
2,000 BCE	Greek polytheism	Proto-Indo-European Polytheism (3,500 BCE)	Egyptian polytheism (3,000 BCE)
1,100 BCE	Zoroastrianism	Indo-Iranian Polytheism (2,500 BCE)
950 BCE	Judaism	Canaanite Polytheism	Zoroastrianism (1100 BCE), Atenism (1348 BCE)
100 BCE	Gnosticism	Greco-Roman mystery cults (750 BCE) ← Greek polytheism (2,000 BCE) ← Proto-Indo-European polytheism
33 CE	Christianity	Judaism	Mithraism (70 BCE), Gnosticism (100 BCE), Zoroastrianism (1100 BCE)
620 CE	Islam Shi'ite, Sunni	Judaism	Christianity
1054 CE	Catholicism	Christianity
1517 CE	Protestantism	Catholicism

AsherahGoddess (talk) 21:52, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Reliability of sources should be judged based on the reputation of the publisher and/or the author. In this case, I see no indication that the source meets the requirements of WP:RS. Eperoton (talk) 00:39, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

Ok. I won't put it into the article now but it's a nice table anyway. 188.147.230.141 (talk) 07:55, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

Removed material not about myth

From the section "Mythical Themes and Types", I removed material about the Eucharist, atonement theology, transference of evil (original sin), and witches. There are several different academic definitions of "myth," but they all agree that a myth is a story. To be appropriate for this article, a topic must meet at least one of two criteria: (1) it is specifically a traditional Christian *story* or (2), even if it isn't a story, a reliable source explicitly applies the term "myth" or "mythological" to it. As far as I can tell, the material that I removed meets neither criterion. The Eucharist is a ritual, not a myth. The belief in the atonement is a theological concept, not a myth. If the subsection on the atonement were reworded so that it explicitly focused on the *story* of Christ atoning for humanity's sins, framed as such (that is, as a story), then the subsection might be okay. The story of the transmission of original sin is indeed a traditional Christian story and, hence, a myth, but the article should either (a) frame it more clearly as a story or (b), better, cite a reliable source that explicitly connects original sin to the more general mythological theme of transference of evil and labels transference of evil as a "mythical" or "mythological" theme. There are indeed traditional stories (myths) about witches, but a discussion of medieval beliefs about witches, rather than stories about them, is out of place here. —Phatius McBluff (talk) 20:48, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

@Phatius McBluff: Thanks for discussing this in talk. I didn't notice this message at first. I agree with your criterion. However, the very first section you removed, Sacrifice, does cite a source which discusses the Binding of Isaac under the rubric of myth. So, unless the cited source is badly misrepresented, it looks like your edit didn't quite apply this criterion. For the sections where the cited sources don't establish the connection to myth, I suggest we tag the section with Template:Off_topic, and give other editors some time to consult other sources which may establish the connection before removing them. Eperoton (talk) 03:29, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

@Eperoton: Sorry for the late response. Good point about the Sacrifice section! I must have removed that part by mistake, because I didn't mention it in my comment and I agree that it should stay. In fact, I remember contributing to that section back when I regularly edited this article. As for the other sections that I removed, my personal editing philosophy (such as it is; I'm no longer a regular editor) is that any statement should be removed immediately if reliable sources do not explicitly tie it to the article topic. However, I think your edit is a good compromise for now. --Phatius McBluff (talk) 14:20, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

On further reflection, I can't think of any good reason to keep the sections that you tagged as possibly straying from the topic. Can you think of a reason? I'm stumped. --Phatius McBluff (talk) 14:26, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

@Phatius McBluff: This is in keeping with WP:PRESERVE. Even if the article doesn't cite RSs which tie those sections to the article topic, the relevance or irrelevance of those sections rests on subtle conceptual distinctions, and it's not inconceivable that such RSs exist. A maintenance banner can prompt other editors to look for them and verify this question. If no such sources come to light within a reasonable period, we should see if otherwise well-sourced content can be used to improve other articles, rather than simply delete it. Eperoton (talk) 02:35, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

@Eperoton: Fair enough. I was unaware of WP:PRESERVE. --Phatius McBluff (talk) 15:08, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Conflation of myth with literal untruth

As examples of Biblical myths, Every cites the creation account in Genesis 1 and 2 and the story of Eve's temptation. Many Christians believe parts of the Bible to be symbolic or metaphorical (such as the Creation in Genesis).

I think that the second of these two sentences doesn't belong here. As far as I can tell, the second sentence's purpose is to reinforce the point (suggested in the first sentence) that some Christians categorize some biblical stories as "myths." The second sentence works for this purpose only if one assumes that myths are symbolically or metaphorically true as opposed to literally true. But this assumption contradicts one of the major points that Wikipedia editors have tried to make in "[insert religion here] mythology" articles, namely that (in the relevant academic fields) calling a story "myth" has nothing to do with the story's truth or falsity, that a myth is a traditional story, not (as in popular speech) a falsehood. Also, many myths are regarded as literally true by their tellers, so the fact that many Christians regard their stories as symbolically or metaphorically true is irrelevant to whether to classify those stories as myths. --Phatius McBluff (talk) Phatius McBluff (talk) 15:00, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Since no one has objected to my argument above, I will remove the second of the two sentences quoted above. --Phatius McBluff (talk)

References

Celestial spheres sentence doesn't belong here

Even in the New Testament Paul the Apostle is said to have visited the third heaven, and Jesus was portrayed in several books as going to return from Heaven on a cloud, in the same way he ascended thereto. The official text repeated by the attendees during Roman Catholic mass (the Apostles' Creed) contains the words "He ascended into Heaven, and is Seated at the Right Hand of God, The Father. From thence He will come again to judge the living and the dead". Medieval cosmology adapted its view of the Cosmos to conform with these scriptures, in the concept of celestial spheres.

The last sentence quoted above is problematic for several reasons:

• It says that the medieval concept of the celestial spheres derives from Christian scripture. This is false. The concept comes from Aristotle and is not mentioned in the Bible.
• Situated where it is in the article, it implies that the Apostles' Creed is "scripture." Although the Apostles' Creed might function as scripture (by various social-scientific definitions of "scripture") within more traditional forms of Christianity, Christians don't include the Creed among the canonical scriptures.
• By being included in this article, it implies that the concept of the celestial spheres is a myth. As the article itself explains, a myth (in the sense used here) is a traditional narrative. The theoretical concept, such as that of the celestial spheres, is not a narrative and therefore can't be a myth.

I suggest that the last sentence quoted above be removed from this article. --Phatius McBluff (talk) Phatius McBluff (talk) 15:10, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Since no one has objected to my argument above, I will remove the second of the two sentences quoted above. --Phatius McBluff (talk)

References

Deletion of "Abrahamic Mythology"

At some point, the article Abrahamic Mythology was deleted and redirected to "Abrahamic religions", which covers an entirely different topic than the prior article did -- the "unofficial" folk myths that sprung up *around* Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, such as the story of the Golem, the Lesser Key of Solomon, or 1001 nights. This article talks about the Christian facet of that to some degree, but mostly seems to talk about the mythological flavor of canonical Christian beliefs and doctrine. Islamic mythology and Jewish mythology also seem to mostly focus on the mythological flavor of "official" beliefs, rather than what the old Abrahamic mythology article spoke about, although Jewish folklore does seem to at least exist.

Am I looking in the wrong places? Is there a better target (or targets) to point people toward to explain the concept of non-scriptural Abrahamic stories? (To be clear, I cannot WP:BOLD on this -- I'm working on a different site where we had been linking to the old wikipedia article to explain a concept outside of the scope of our coverage, and recently learned it had been removed due to someone raising a fuss at us calling characters like Barbatos mythological).Not even Mr. Lister's Koromon survived intact. 01:59, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're talking about. As far as I can tell, the Abrahamic mythology page was redirected back in 2009, basically because it was unsourced WP:OR. You might be interested in looking through some categories like Religion in popular culture and Religious folklore PepperBeast (talk) 13:39, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Edited with more detail

I edited the article, adding more detail and explanation of the religion, as this article seems to focus alot on calling it a myth rather than going into detail about Christianity. The edit was reverted though, bc of “POV and original research.” Research is fine on an article, but considering this is Wikipedia, you can’t make a biased article centered around perspective. Sbtoast (talk) 02:09, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

The text you added was just generic text about Christianity, not addressing the topic of the article. It was mostly unsourced personal opinion with no citations. Most importantly, the first few paragraphs of an article are supposed to summarise the rest of the article; they shouldn't be an essay on a different topic. "Considering this is Wikipedia" is a good idea: learn about the type of writing required for Wikipedia (using the links that have been posted on your Talk page) and consider that whenever making an edit. Wikipedia isn't for repeatedly publishing your own personal essay on a topic; there are lots of places around the Internet for that. Cheers, MartinPoulter (talk) 18:53, 25 April 2024 (UTC)