Genesis 1 tagged as Literary Type of "Myth"

Greg

Does anyone know why Logos has Genesis 1:1-31 tagged as "Literary Type" of "Myth"

According to the The Lexham Glossary of Literary Types, a myth is defined as:

Myth — (OT) A story describing supernatural events.

Mangum, D. (2014). The Lexham Glossary of Literary Types. Lexham Press.

Who tagged Genesis in this way?

Is this coming from some liberal theologian who doesn't believe the Bible is God's Word?

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Comments

Justin Gatlin

Biblical scholars use "myth" as a statement that does not say anything about the historicity of the event. I think the definition you provide shows that: it is a story describing supernatural events. The Babylonian creation story is a myth because it is a story that describes supernatural events. The Old Testament creation account is also a myth, but a true one.

Andrew Batishko

From the resource description of the Glossary:

[quote]

This glossary defines the types and devices identified in the Tooman Literary Type Analysis of the Old Testament and the Mackie Literary Type Analysis of the New Testament.

Kiyah

Myth is simply a literary term to describe the style/genre of writing. Myth doesn't mean it's not true and not the word of God, it just means it's communicating that truth through a different genre. Literarily a Myth is story about the activity of a god or gods. Genesis 1 is written in the ancient style of Creation Myth. The creation story in Genesis tells us that the God of Israel created the heavens and the earth, which is true.

MJ. Smith

Is this coming from some liberal theologian who doesn't believe the Bible is God's Word?

Very unlikely. Rather it is more likely coming from someone who uses definitions of "myth" from literary criticism and folklore ... the disciplines most tightly tied to literary type/genre. This coding has been used by Logos as far back as I can recall genre being an available piece of information. Andersen-Forbes was the other early genre coding. But this is an excellent example of why I have a soapbox from which to proclaim, "know what the tags mean". If one assumes the popular misunderstandings of the terms, one can be unnecessarily concerned.

Greg

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1235244#Comment_1235244

Thank you for this information. I expected that was the reason.

I see this is the industry standard for Literary types, but the industry standard is not a good standard for the Bible.

I can see how this categorization can be useful for the many other categories, but I think the category of Myth should be deleted from the list of categories

According to The Concise Oxford English Dictionary, the definition of the word myth is: (bold font added by myself):

myth

■ noun
1 a traditional story concerning the early history of a people or explaining a natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.
2 a widely held but false belief.
▶ a fictitious person or thing.
▶ an exaggerated or idealized conception of a person or thing.

Soanes, C., & Stevenson, A., eds. (2004). In Concise Oxford English dictionary (11th ed.). Oxford University Press.

That's fine for secular books, but the Bible is no ordinary or secular book. It is Holy.

It is interesting that only 3 passages are categorized by these authors as Myth in the Bible, as identified by the Bible Browser Tool:

Genesis 1-2 Creation

Genesis 6 Noah

Job 1-2, 42

Is it possible to hide this category, like I do with other liberal resources that come as part of a package?

Jan Krohn

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1235254#Comment_1235254

There's a difference between popular use and academic use of a term. The Oxford dictionary lists popular definitions, not academic ones.

The tagging as myth is accurate, even in conservative evangelical academia.

DMB

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1235254#Comment_1235254

I can see how this categorization can be useful for the many other categories, but I think the category of Myth should be deleted from the list of categories

Personally, I agree with you. Everyone knows what a myth is. In fact, it's almost synonymous with 'not true'. "Well, that's just an old myth." eg baseless.

That said, Logos does position itself in the 'scholar' world; not the church world. From a Bible college or seminary perspective, I'm really not sure where it would end up. At ours, I think a prof got hounded out on a rail, for some 'myth' attempts. But read the article in the Faithlife Bible Dictionary. Page after page it gets all tangled up, sure that the Bible isn't myth, but contains myths (depending on the scholar of course).

Change it? I guess it'd depend on Faithlife's positioning.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1235254#Comment_1235254

I can see how this categorization can be useful for the many other categories, but I think the category of Myth should be deleted from the list of categories

You would be left with an evangelization language that could not be understood correctly by those you wish to evangelize if you carried this practice through to its logical conclusion. In fact, even intra-faith discussions would be hobbled. I was raised in a conservative Protestant home. My first year of college was at an evangelical college where my experience was so bad, I refuse to acknowledge I know anything about the school. One experience was having a biology professor teach that a particular chemical which he considered essential to the theory of evolution, could not be made in the lab. Unfortunately, my honors chemistry professor had taught us how to make the chemical about two weeks earlier. My reaction was to wonder why the biology professor's faith was so weak that he had to remain willfully ignorant to support it. I would have the same response to a professor of literature or folklore who had to exclude or redefine terms in order to maintain his beliefs.

Kiyah

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1235254#Comment_1235254

1 a traditional story concerning the early history of a people or explaining a natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.

Even Oxford is giving you the correct usage for academia in the first definition, which is the relevant usage in this case. A word never means all of its possible usages at the same time, that's not how words work. The word is defined as the one who used it intended, and we can determine that by the context. The context here is academic use in literary analysis for biblical scholarship, and so the label is correct and should not be changed just because you're used to the more popular usage of (2) "a widely held but false belief." That's not how it's being used and therefore it should not be a concern. It's not speaking to true or false, it's simply speaking to genre/style of writing.

Kiyah

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1235254#Comment_1235254

Is it possible to hide this category, like I do with other liberal resources that come as part of a package?

As Jan Krohn said, it's not liberal, it's academic, even among conservative scholars.

EastTN

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1235259#Comment_1235259

I can see how this categorization can be useful for the many other categories, but I think the category of Myth should be deleted from the list of categories

You would be left with an evangelization language that could not be understood correctly by those you wish to evangelize if you carried this practice through to its logical conclusion...

The issue that's been highlighted here is that the technical use of the term "myth" in literary and biblical studies is very different from its use in everyday speech. And by "everyday speech" I don't just mean the backyard conversations of poorly educated individuals. If you run into the word "myth" in a Washington Post or New York Times story on politics or local affairs, odds are that it won't be used in the technical sense, but rather will indicate something that's patently untrue. It isn't unreasonable to note that using the term in this technical sense could at least potentially give the wrong impression to an average "non-scholarly" user.

MJ, on another note, I get your point. It's an accurate scholarly use of the term. But being uncomfortable with the impression it may give about Scripture to non-scholars because of its more common vernacular meaning is not the same as excluding or redefining terms. (It's even less comparable to a chemistry teacher lying about whether a particular compound can be synthesized in a lab - which is obviously outrageous.) And honestly, outside the academy, "myth" is probably not the best choice of words to lead with in an evangelistic setting.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1235263#Comment_1235263

And honestly, outside the academy, "myth" is probably not the best choice of words to lead with in an evangelistic setting.

I am a firm believer in adjusting one's language to fit the situation.

Jan Krohn

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1235263#Comment_1235263

Misunderstanding by non-scholarly users is one thing. i don't think it's such a big issue at all. The typical non-scholarly user would normally not own a base package that includes this kind of tagging.

Atheist polemicists pick such classifications, and deceive their audiences claiming that even Christian scholars consider Genesis 1 a myth. And these guys know what they're doing. This kind of deception is deliberate.

What we actually need is widespread education about the academic definition of "myth" so that those polemicists can no longer easily deceive an uneducated Christian audience and lead many into deconstruction.

Greg

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1235261#Comment_1235261

1 a traditional story concerning the early history of a people or explaining a natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.

Thanks for trying to give a rational explanation but I even have a problem with the first definition (definition #1), that says this was a "Natural" creation. I consider creation to be supernatural, not natural. To call it natural is blasphemy to me.

Kiyah

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1235276#Comment_1235276

Thanks for trying to give a rational explanation but I even have a problem with the first definition (definition #1), that says this was a "Natural" creation. I consider creation to be supernatural, not natural. To call it natural is blasphemy to me.

Oxford was giving a general definition (as dictionaries tend to do) and was not specifically talking about the creation story in Genesis, so calling that blasphemy is extreme. It's also not a bible dictionary.

If the literary typing data bothers you this much, you can remove the section from the passage guide and the information panel. Just hover over the guide or info panel section and click the X to remove it and Logos will remember it so you don't have to remove it each time. It's not possible to hide or delete one element of a dataset but you have the option to simply not use the tools that present the data.

Jan Krohn

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1235276#Comment_1235276

I even have a problem with the first definition (definition #1), that says this was a "Natural" creation.

The first definition includes three options separated by the word "or". A natural phenomenon is only one of the three options.

And even that option can be applied to creation if one has the end result in view. The created universe is natural. It only has a supernatural origin.

Greg

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1235276#Comment_1235276

I understand that academics and scholars use "learned language" that is so esoteric and arcane that nobody else can understand what they mean, and what they mean can mean the opposite of what they say.

That worked great in the dark ages but now we have educated people who expect more of people who claim authority, and yet speak in ways that are useless.

In the German language, these people are called Die Gelernte, meaning "the learned ones". An old word, more fitting to the dark ages and pre-reformation, pre-enlightenment eras.

The liberal German theologians did much to advance their liberal sinful "theologies". I believe this led to a nation filled with intellects that couldn't discern, separating God's truth from error, which led to the Holocaust and World Wars.

Getting our thinking and discernment skills right, is important.

May God bless America so it never becomes what Germany became in that time. It starts in how people identify and discern truth and error.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1235276#Comment_1235276

I consider creation to be supernatural, not natural. To call it natural is blasphemy to me.

We clearly don't speak the same language - and I mean that seriously to indicate how easily we could misunderstand each other. By definition, the supernatural requires that the natural exists for it to be "above/super". What was created must include both the natural and the supernatural. By definition, as I understand it, blasphemy can only apply the supernatural, religious, or divine -- it cannot apply to the natural. What is important to understand is that Faithlife has to serve both people who use language as you do and people who use language as I do. And isn't it a fundamental skill of exegesis to be able to understand language as intended by the author?

Greg

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1235279#Comment_1235279

Other than this, so far, I like using the Bible Browser tool, which doesn't seem to have a way to hide this category.

Thanks everyone for trying to explain this.

I wish it could be hidden. Until then, I have to avoid it the same way I have to avoid using other things.

Thanks again

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1235279#Comment_1235279

academics and scholars use "learned language" that is so esoteric and arcane that nobody else can understand what they mean

Huh? scholars' and academics' language is not esoteric or arcane -- it is language that has grown out of the necessity to speak precisely and clearly in order to transmit their knowledge to their students and colleagues. Believe me, the academic credentials on my mother's side are very deep, and the appreciation of academic credentials runs deep on my father's side.

Greg

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1235282#Comment_1235282

I love precision in language too! Thank you for trying to help!

If Logos could ever let me hide certain categories or sub-categories in the browser, I would appreciate that.

But I'm not holding my breath it will happen.

DMB

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1235290#Comment_1235290

Well, today's reading stumbled over 'legend'. Judges 6:25 (monograph discussion).

Now, EBD is quite clear:

"A genre of narrative whose content and structure typically emphasize the virtue of the protagonist. The goal of the legend is to edify its audience. “Legend” stems from legenda, the Latin term for “things to be read,” used for the medieval Christian stories about the lives of saints. Although in popular usage today the term has come to mean an “untrue or exaggerated story” about historical events or persons, the established use of the term in scholarship does not presume either historical accuracy or inaccuracy."

But LCOG demurs:

"An event from the past that is believed by many people but cannot be proved to be true."

In theory, LCOG should stop at 'proved'.

Well, 'scholarly' should be scholarly, right?

Greg

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1235358#Comment_1235358

EBD = Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible

Myth

...

Congruent to the influx of foreign mythologies into late-18th-century Europe, exploration also recovered ancient Egyptian and Babylonian artifacts that shortly thereafter generated the decipherment of hieroglyphics and cuneiform writings. A new library of Near Eastern antiquity emerged, and scholars discovered discomforting similarities between the stories of these pagan religions and the sacred texts of Judeo-Christianity. Until this time, scholarship resisted any comparison that might compromise the privileged position of these sanctioned texts, but German scholarship, in particular, moved forward in the application of its higher criticism. In the wake of Johann Salomo Semler’s (1725–1791) contested distinction between dogma (theology or the teachings of the Church) and religion (historical experience), J. G. Eichhorn (1752–1827) drew attention to similarities between the creation and flood stories in classical and biblical narrative, using the word “myth” for the first time to describe them. These stories were not records of actual happenings, but the expressions of a religious and pre-scientific consciousness. Although “myth” became one of the most contentious of higher critical terms, biblical scholarship continued to use the comparative study of mythology as a means to elucidate its understanding of biblical history. Nowhere was this more in evidence than in the work of David Friedrich Strauss (1808–1874), whose demonstration of early Christian myth in Das Leben Jesu generated a new era of scholarship focused upon the issue of mythology and Christian history. Despite many attempts to delimit if not erase the proximity of the mythological to the Christian gospel, success was not forthcoming; it became evident that the perception which Christianity shared with the rest of the 1st-century Mediterranean world was a perception fastened to the mythological. Efforts then focused upon the act of interpretation as a means to address the truth of Christianity’s mythic quality, culminating early in the 20th century with the introduction of demythology by the German NT scholar Rudolf Bultmann. These analyses sought not to eliminate the mythological but to recast its message in the language of Heideggerian existentialism, a hermeneutical procedure whereby the essential substance (Sache) of the early Christian proclamation (kḗrygma) was divested of its mythological element and invested with the language of postenlightenment sensibilities, thereby preserving the essence of the Christian gospel.
Although subsequent studies have not appreciably advanced our understanding of the relationship between Judeo-Christian literature and the language of myth, there is renewed effort to reassess demythology’s narrow understanding of myth, and to address the issue of Christian origins in view of contemporary cultural anthropological observations and postmodernist theories of language and literature.

Humphries, M. L. (2000). Myth. In D. N. Freedman, A. C. Myers, & A. B. Beck (Eds.), Eerdmans dictionary of the Bible (pp. 934–935). W.B. Eerdmans.

Dangerous liberal views hide behind the authority of the word "Scholar"

I suppose Satan appeared to Adam and Eve to be a Scholar.

As I said before, liberal German scholars led to many intellectuals who could not discern good from evil, that led to the Holocaust and Word War II.

These are reasons to consider investing in tools that give the option to "Hide" certain categories and subcategories of metadata tags, which pollute our thinking as users do research.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1235409#Comment_1235409

Dangerous liberal views hide behind the authority of the word "Scholar"

I suppose Satan appeared to Adam and Eve to be a Scholar.

Please quit maligning liberals and scholars especially as a pastor-friend labeled me so conservative as to be mistaken for a liberal/so conservative as to be positively medieval. The forum guidelines discourage the discussion of theology and this thread has crossed the line IMO.

These are reasons to consider investing in tools that give the option to "Hide" certain categories and subcategories of metadata tags, which pollute our thinking as users do research.

One's mind is polluted only by what one chooses to hold on to ... let that which is not useful flow by in the current of the river of time and it will not pollute one.

Tony Walker

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1235416#Comment_1235416

I'm now almost 40 and working on an mdiv at a divinity school, and would differ from my first college, but I went 20 years ago to a small unaccredited fundamentalist king James only, red back hymnal, premillennial, pretribulational, soul winning, camp meeting, say amen right there, kinda place… I have heard some terms slung around at other people who love Jesus that would get someone banned from these forums.

and this thread has caused me to go from grinning knowing what was about to unfold, subscribing so I could watch what unfolded… to thinking with sadness because it reminds me of myself in my 20s, "what in the world." this is not the place to feel that one is earnestly contending for the faith. its a forum for questions about software, a question about software was asked, was answered, and unless the software developers plan to implement something for one person (that I have not seen asked in these forums since I got here around 2014), that should be enough. or you could submit it at the voting area to see how many upticks you get with like-minded believers to cause it to get on faithlife's radar.

the company has already been through enough in the last few months. I am sure these forums are something else added to someone's plate. the last thing they need is the extra stuff added to their plate to cause them grief. myth, cult, cultic, critical are all words that have a connotation to them that my formal school would have condemned. Yet, all it took is for me to right click on myth and tap 'look up' to see that the first definition listed clearly shows it does not have to mean the very first thing would would come to someone's mind.

NB.Mick

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1235409#Comment_1235409

liberal German scholars led to many intellectuals who could not discern good from evil, that led to the Holocaust and Word War II.

I don't want to join this debate at all, other than to state that this one sentence is blatantly wrong from a historical perspective. Unfortunately it was also the non-liberal conservative Christians (especially those in the evangelical free churches and parachurch organizations, proud to be not in the same boat as the 'liberals') who applauded the "fuhrer" and were blind to discern good from evil.

GaoLu

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1235480#Comment_1235480

Eat the meat; spit out the bones.

And it never hurts to look your meat over if you intend to swallow it whole.

Doc B

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1235409#Comment_1235409

Word War II

So is this thread Word War III?

[:D]

Jan Krohn

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1235553#Comment_1235553

What....?

I'll volunteer to report all these occurrences.

Kiyah

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1235244#Comment_1235244

Not trying to restart this argument, but for those interested, I found a great definition of 'myth' as used in scholarship in a commentary while studying Revelation 12:

[quote]

By “myth,” the science of the study of religion understands a narrative portrayal of primordial proceedings between gods, demonic powers, and heroes, which wishes to provide information regarding the origin and essence of the world, the place of human beings in it, and the genesis of the relationships and norms that define their existence. Myth seeks to explain what is now and what is experienced as real in that it interprets it as a consequence of an event between supernatural beings.

Jürgen Roloff, A Continental Commentary: The Revelation of John (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993), 142.

Just documenting for posterity; again, not trying to start a new argument.

DMB

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1253026#Comment_1253026

Just documenting for posterity; again, not trying to start a new argument.

Well, the definitions definitely 'grind'. We once had a historical-Jesus person give a lecture at one of the churches here (Peterson, I think). He explained, he was a 'historian', which per him, left out 'un-natural' events ... I guess one would say, he instead dealt in 'mythical events'.

DAL

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1253033#Comment_1253033

I’m both a legend and a myth, but I still exist 👍😁👌