The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion by John Hinnells

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believer and infidel was fused with the dichotomies of oppressed and oppressor and colonized and colonizer.

Resentment of the presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia and what bin Laden viewed as the subjugation of Saudi Arabia pervaded his early statements (see Munson 2004). Indeed, bin Laden has condemned the Saudi regime as heretical because of its subordination to the United States. This is significant. Saudi Arabia is viewed by most outsiders, including many Muslims, as a thoroughly fundamentalist state in which all aspects of society are governed by Islamic law. Yet bin Laden condemns the Saudi government for serving the interests of American imperialism!

As he became more famous, bin Laden downplayed the specifically Saudi grievances that dominated his early statements and focused more on the Palestinians and the deaths of Iraqi children because of sanctions. Thus in his videotaped message of October 7, 2001, after the attacks of September 11, he declared:

What America is tasting now is nothing compared to what we have been tasting for decades. For over eighty years our umma [the Islamic world] has been tasting this humiliation and this degradation. Its sons are killed, its blood is shed, its holy places are violated, and it is ruled by other than that which God has revealed. Yet no one hears. No one responds …

A million innocent children are being killed as I speak. They are being killed in Iraq yet they have done nothing wrong. Yet we hear no condemnation, no fatwa from the reigning sultans. And these days, Israeli tanks wreak havoc in Palestine, in Jenin, Ramallah, Rafah, Beit Jalah and elsewhere in the land of Islam, and we do not hear anyone raising his voice or moving.

(bin Laden 2001)

Bin Laden’s statements invariably focus on what he sees as oppression of Muslims by the United States and Israel, rather than on moral issues like the status of women or homosexuality. He would of course take very conservative, if not reactionary, positions on such issues, but he rarely mentions them in his public statements. His emphasis on the suffering of the Palestinians and Iraqis has made him a hero even in the eyes of many Muslims who might be unsympathetic to his goal of a totalitarian Islamic state. Gilles Kepel found that even Arab girls in tight jeans saw bin Laden as an anti-imperialist hero. A young Iraqi woman and her Palestinian friends told Kepel in the fall of 2001, ‘He stood up to defend us. He is the only one’ (Kepel 2002: 65–6). Bin Laden’s heroic stature in the eyes of many Muslims is illustrated by the following joke often told after September 11, 2001. A woman is walking toward the men’s room in a restaurant. Several employees of the restaurant try to stop her. She then asks, ‘Is Bin Laden in this restroom?’ They say no, and she responds, ‘Then I can go in because there is only one man left in the Arab and Muslim world: him’ (Kepel 2002: 41). This joke reflects the sense of impotence and the rage that pervade much of the Islamic world.

Such anecdotal evidence of the sources of bin Laden’s appeal meshes with the evidence provided by public opinon surveys. For example, in March 2008, Professor Shibley Telhami and Zogby International surveyed 4,046 Arabs in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (Telhami 2008). When asked, ‘When you think about Al Qaeda, what aspect of the organization, if any, do you sympathize with most?’ 30 percent answered ‘That it confronts the US.’ 21 percent said, ‘I do not sympathize at all with this

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organization.’ 18 percent said, ‘That it stands for Muslim causes such as the Palestinian issue.’ Only 7 percent said, ‘That it seeks to create an Islamic state like that of the Taliban in Afghanistan.’ In other words, most Arabs who sympathized with al-Qa’ida did so either because it defied the US or because it championed causes like that of the Palestinians. Such causes are essentially nationalistic, but are widely viewed – in the Islamic world – as involving Muslims fighting domination by infidels.

There are two common forms of myopia regarding the appeal of Islamic militancy. There is a tendency on the Right to focus only on the reactionary and anti-Semitic dimensions of such movements, while there is a tendency on the Left to focus only on the nationalistic, anti-imperialist, and social grievances they articulate. It is important to recognize that there is some truth to both perspectives. As a practical matter, diminishing the appeal of Islamic militancy entails addressing the nationalistic, anti-imperialist, and social grievances that fuel it. But it also entails encouraging a more tolerant interpretation of Islam.

Conclusion

The use of ‘fundamentalism’ as an analytical category for comparative purposes remains controversial. In fact, one good reason to avoid the term is to avoid having to waste time defending it. That said, we can discern a fundamentalist impulse in the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Sikh movements commonly called fundamentalist insofar as they insist on strict conformity to holy writ and to a moral code ostensibly based on it. (The actual links between moral codes and sacred scriptures are sometimes more tenuous than religious conservatives recognize.) Such an impulse is lacking in Hindu nationalism and it is not of equal significance in all Christian, Jewish, and Muslim movements.

We have seen that militant religious Zionism has a very strong nationalist dimension, with the Maccabees seen as models of the Jew who refuses to submit to the Âgentile. It is very hard to draw the line between the religious and national dimensions of religious Zionist militancy. This makes it possible for secular Zionists firmly committed to the retention of the territories Israel won in 1967 to cooperate with militant religious Zionist settlers despite their lack of interest in a Jewish state based on strict conformity to religious law. Militant religious Zionists would agree with most religious conservatives on issues like homosexuality and abortion, but their political activities have focused primarily on settling and retaining the land Israel won in 1967 rather than on moral issues involving the regulation of personal conduct.

There is also a nationalist and anti-imperial dimension to most Islamic militancy. Hamas is a fundamentalist movement in the sense that it advocates a state based on strict conformity to Islamic law, and the followers of Hamas are expected to follow a strictly Islamic code of conduct. At the same time, however, Hamas is clearly a Palestinian nationalist movement that echoes most of the traditional demands of the Palestinian Liberation Organization before it accepted the idea of the partition of pre-1948 Palestine into a Jewish state on 78 percent of the land and a Palestinian state on the remaining 22 percent (Munson 2003a). To speak of Hamas only in terms of its fundamentalist and anti-Semitic rhetoric while ignoring its nationalist dimension would be to distort the nature of the movement (see Roy 2003). But it is also wrong to ignore its fundamentalist and anti-Semitic dimensions (see Litvak 2005).

The case of Shas illustrates the fusion of politicized religious conservatism with demands on behalf of an ethnic group that believes it has been discriminated against. To speak of Shas only as a fundamentalist movement without reference to the sense of ethnic grievance that fuels it would be, once again, to ignore the social and political context that produced it. Just

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as religion often serves as a badge of national identity, so too does it often serve as a badge of ethnic identity within nations.

To speak of all groups that have a fundamentalist dimension simply as ‘revolts against modernity’ is inadequate insofar as it tends to downplay or ignore the nationalist and social grievances that often fuel such movements. This is not to suggest that religious outrage provoked by the violation of traditional religious values cannot induce people to undertake political action. If someone believes that abortion is murder, then it is perfectly natural that such a person would engage in political action to prevent abortion. And it is a mistake to attempt to ignore what people say when they explain their political acts in terms of their religious beliefs and assert that they really do what they do because of some sort of alleged disorientation caused by ‘rapid modernization’. But while we should avoid reducing all apparently religious motivation to underlying secular causes, we should also recognize that moral outrage provoked by the violation of traditional religious values is sometimes meshed with outrage provoked by nationalistic and social grievances. (This too may be a form of moral outrage.)

Comparing the various politicized forms of religious conservatism and religiously tinged nationalism is useful. But this must be done with careful attention to the distinctive features of the movements in question and the specific historical contexts that have shaped them. The neglect of such features and contexts can transform comparison into caricature.

Bibliography

Almond, G. A., R. S. Appleby, and E. Sivan (2003) Strong Religion: the Rise of Fundamentalisms around the World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Appleby, R. S. (1995) But All Crabs are Crabby: Valid and Less Valid Criticisms of the Fundamentalism Project. Contention 4 (3): 195–202.

Aran, G. 1991. Jewish Zionist Fundamentalism: The Bloc of the Faithful in Israel (Gush Emunim). In Fundamentalisms Observed, edited by M. E. Marty and R. S. Appleby. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

This is an excellent ethnographic overview of national-religious settlers.

Beale, D. O. (1986) In Pursuit of Purity: American Fundamentalism since 1850. Greenville, SC: Unusual Publications.

Berger, P. (1997) Secularism in Retreat. The National Interest (Winter 1996/97): 3–12.

bin Laden, O. (2001) The Arabic original of bin Laden’s message of October 7, 2001 was at one time accessible at http://www.alitijahalakhar.com/archive/35/here35.htm (last accessed April 9, 2005). I have used my own translation. This message is also translated in Lawrence 2005: 103–5.

Bruce, S. (1998) Conservative Protestant Politics. New York: Oxford University Press. ——Â(2000) Fundamentalism. Cambridge: Polity.

Carroll, J. (2001) Constantine’s Sword : The Church and the Jews, a History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Faux, E. (2008) Le nouvel Israël: Un pays en quête de repères. Paris: Seuil.

Halliday, F. (1995) Fundamentalism and the Contemporary World. Contention 4 (2): 41–58. Heilman, S. C., and M. Friedman. (1991) Religious Fundamentalism and Religious Jews: The Case

of the Haredim. In Fundamentalisms Observed, edited by M. M. E. and R. S. Appleby. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

This is an excellent introduction to the ultra-Orthodox, although it might be confusing to students with no knowledge of Judaism.

Hirschberg, P. (1999) The World of Shas. New York: The Institute on American Jewish–Israeli Relations of the American Jewish Committee.

This is an excellent and readable introduction to Shas, although it does not cover the many important developments since 1999.

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Juergensmeyer, M. (2000) Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Kepel, G. (2002) Chronique d’une guerre d’Orient. Paris: Gallimard.

Khomeini, R. (1977) Durus Fi Al-Jihad Wa-Al-Rafd: Yusatiruha Al-Imam Al-Khumayni Khilal Harakatihi Al-Nidaliyah Al-Ra’idah. S.l.: s.n.

——Â (1981) Islam and Revolution in the Middle East: Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini. Translated by H. Algar. Berkeley, CA: Mizan Press.

Lawrence, B., ed. (2005) Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden. London: Verso. This is the best anthology of bin Laden’s statements in English. It is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand bin Laden.

Lehmann, D. and B. Siebzehner (2006) Remaking Israeli Judaism: The Challenge of Shas. New York: Oxford University Press.

Litvak, M. The Anti-Semitism of Hamas, Palestine-Israel Journal of Politics, Economics and Culture, 2005 (http://www.pij.org/details.php?id=345, last accessed October 5, 2008).

Lustick, I. 1988. For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel. New York: The Council on Foreign Relations.

This remains a classic study of the militant national-religious movement in Israel.

Mahmood, C. K. (1996) Fighting for Faith and Nation: Dialogues with Sikh Militants. Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

This presents a good overview of the militant Sikh perspective.

Marsden, G. M. (1991) Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism. Grand Rapids, MT: W. B. Eerdmans.

This is an excellent and readable introduction by a respected evangelical historian.

Martin, W. C. (1996) With God on our Side: the Rise of the Religious Right in America. 1st edn. New York: Broadway Books.

This is an excellent and readable narrative history. Broadway Books published a revised edition in 2005 with a brief ‘Afterword’ covering events since 1996.

Marty, M. E. and R. S. Appleby (1991a) The Fundamentalism Project: A User’s Guide. In Fundamentalisms Observed, edited by M. E. Marty and R. S. Appleby. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

—— and ——Â(1991b) Conclusion: An Interim Report on a Hypothetical Family. In Fundamentalisms Observed, edited by M. E. Marty and R. S. Appleby. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Munson, H. (1988) Islam and Revolution in the Middle East. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ——Â(2003a) Islam, Nationalism, and Resentment of Foreign Domination. Middle East Policy 10 (2):

40–53.

——Â(2003b) ‘Fundamentalism’ Ancient and Modern. Daedalus 132 (3): 31–41.

——Â (2004) Lifting the Veil: Understanding the Roots of Islamic Militancy. Harvard International Review 25 (4): 20–23.

——Â(2005) Religion and Violence: A Review Essay. Religion 35/4 (October 2005): 223–246. ——Â(2008) ‘Fundamentalisms’ Compared, Religion Compass 2/4: 689–707.

Norton, R. A. (2007) Hezbollah: A Short History. Princeton: Princeton University Press. This is the best overview of Hezbollah in English.

Oberoi, H. (1993) Sikh Fundamentalism: Translating History into Theory. In Fundamentalisms and the State, edited by M. E. Marty and R. S. Appleby. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Pape, R. (2005) Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. New York: Random House.

This is an influential study stressing that terrorism often assumed to be motivated primarily by Islamic fundamentalism is actually primarily aimed at resisting foreign occupation. Pape goes too far in downplaying the role of Islamic fundamentalism and he focuses too much on resistance to foreign occupation as opposed to resistance to foreign domination in general. This is, nonetheless, a very important book.

Ravitzky, A. (1996) Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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This is a classic intellectual history, but it is difficult reading for students with no knowledge of Judaism.

Raychaudhuri, T. (1995) Shadows of the Swastika: Historical Reflections on the Politics of Hindu Communalism. Contention 4 (2): 141–62.

This is very useful although some might argue that Raychaudhuri is unfairly critical of Hindu nationalism.

Ribuffo, L. P. (1983) The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right from the Great Depression to the Cold War. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

This is a valuable work.

Roy, S. (2003) Hamas and the Transformation(s) of Political Islam in Palestine. Current History, January, 13–20.

Said, E. W. (1992) Impossible Histories: Why the Many Islams Cannot be Simplified. Harper’s Magazine, July. Accessed through Academic Search Premier.

——Â(1993) Culture and Imperialism. 1st edn. New York: Knopf.

Sengupta, S. (2002) Oh, the Heartache! They Want Cupid Banished. New York Times, February 12, 2002. Shulman, D. (2007) Dark Hope: Working for Peace in Israel and Palestine. University of Chicago Press.

This is an excellent account of how ‘dovish’ Israeli intellectuals have tried to prevent ‘nationalreligious’ settlers from attacking Palestinians.

Sprinzak, E. (1991) The Ascendance of Israel’s Radical Right. New York: Oxford University Press.

This is an excellent and essential study of Israel’s religious-nationalist settlers and their supporters, but it is difficult for students with little or no knowledge of Israeli politics.

——Â(1999) Brother Against Brother: Violence and Extremism in Israeli Politics from Altalena to the Rabin Assassination. New York: The Free Press.

Like The Ascendance of Israel’s Radical Right, this is excellent, but difficult for students with little or no knowledge of Israeli politics.

Telhami, S. (2008) 2008 Annual Arab Public Opinion Poll, Survey of the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland (with Zogby International). Accessible at http:// sadat.umd.edu/surveys/index.htm (last accessed October 5, 2008).

Viorst, M. (2002) What Shall I Do with This People?: Jews and the Fractious Politics of Judaism. New York: Free Press.

This is an excellent and readable introduction to the political role of Judaism in modern Israel and to Jewish history in general.Â

Wade, W. (1987) The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America. New York: Simon and Schuster. This remains an excellent and very readable source although it does not cover recent decades.

Suggested reading

Bergen, P. L. (2006), The Osama Bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of Al-Qaeda’s Leader. New York: Free Press.

This is an insightful portrait of bin Laden based primarily on interviews with people who have known him.

Heilman, S. (1992), Defenders of the Faith: Inside Ultra-Orthodox Jewry. New York: Schocken Books. This is a wonderfully human and readable ethnographic study of ultra-Orthodox Jews of European origin in Israel.

Hirschberg, P. (1999), The World of Shas. New York: The Institute on American Jewish–Israeli Relations of the American Jewish Committee.

This is an excellent and readable introduction to Shas, although it does not cover the many important developments since 1999.

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Lawrence, B. ed. (2005), Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden. London: Verso. This is the best anthology of bin Laden’s statements in English. It is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand bin Laden and the way his anti-imperialism is meshed with reactionary fundamentalist Islam.

Lehmann, D. and B. Siebzehner (2006), Remaking Israeli Judaism: The Challenge of Shas. New York: Oxford University Press.

This is a valuable study of Shas.

Lustick, I. (1988), For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel. New York: The Council on Foreign Relations.

This remains a classic study of the militant national-religious movement in Israel.

Marsden, G. M. (1991), Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism. Grand Rapids MT: W. B. Eerdmans.

This is an excellent introduction by a respected evangelical historian.

Martin, W. C. (1996), With God on our Side: the Rise of the Religious Right in America. 1st edn. New York: Broadway Books.

This is an excellent and readable narrative history. Broadway Books published a revised edition in 2005 with a brief ‘Afterword’ covering events since 1996.

Norton, A. R. (2007), Hezbollah: A Short History. Princeton: Princeton University Press. This is the best and most readable overview of Hezbollah available in English.

Pape, R. (2005), Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. New York: Random House. This is an influential study stressing that terrorism often assumed to be motivated primarily by Islamic fundamentalism is actually primarily aimed at resisting foreign occupation. Pape goes too far in downplaying the role of Islamic fundamentalism and he focuses too much on resistance to foreign occupation as opposed to resistance to foreign domination in general. This is, nonetheless, a very important book.

Peri, Y., ed. (2000), The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

This is an important collection of essays on the significance of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in the context of Israel’s ‘culture war’.

Ravitzky, A. (1996), Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

This is a classic intellectual history, but students often complain that it is too ‘dry’, Dry or not, it is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand Israel’s Religious Right.

Schattner, M. (2008), Israël: L’autre conflit. Laïcs contre religieux. Bruxelles: André Versaille.

This is an excellent history of the role of religion in Zionism and the modern state of Israel. For students seriously interested in such matters, it would be worth learning French just to read this book. The author, a secular Franco-Israeli journalist, begins his book by describing how his daughter became ‘ultra-Orthodox’ (haredi) and how now he cannot read the stories of Babar the elephant to his grandchildren. But he nonetheless does an excellent job of conveying a sense of how both the ultra-Orthodox and the national-religious Orthodox see the world.

Sprinzak, E, (1991), The Ascendance of Israel’s Radical Right. New York: Oxford University Press.

This is a classic study of Israel’s religious-nationalist settlers and their supporters, but it is difficult reading for students with little or no knowledge of Israeli politics.

——Â(1999) Brother against Brother: Violence and Extremism in Israeli Politics from Altalena to the Rabin Assassination. New York: The Free Press.

Like Sprinzak’s The Ascendance of Israel’s Radical Right, this is excellent but difficult for students with little or no knowledge of Israeli history.

Chapter 22

Myth and ritual

Robert A . Segal

This chapter is divided into three sections: myth, myth tied to ritual, and ritual. The title of the chapter is meant to refer to myth by itself and to ritual by itself as well as to myth linked to ritual. The subject of each section is not actual myths or actual rites but theories of myths and theories of rituals as well as theories of the two combined.

Theories are accounts of some larger domain, of which myth or ritual or myth tied to ritual is a subset. For example, anthropological theories of myth or ritual are theories of culture applied to the case of myth or ritual. Psychological theories of myth or ritual are theories of the mind. Sociological theories are theories of society. Theories may go back to ancient times, but modern theories, which go back 150 years, come largely, though hardly entirely, from the social sciences, which themselves began to emerge as independent disciplines in the second half of the nineteenth century. Theories from outside the social sciences hail from the hoarier disciplines of philosophy, religious studies, and literature.

Myth

What unite theories across the disciplines are the questions asked. The three main questions are those of origin, function, and subject matter. By ‘origin’ is meant why and how myth arises. By ‘function’ is meant why and how myth persists. The answer to the why of origin and function is usually a need, which myth arises to fulfill and lasts by continuing to fulfill. What the need is, varies from theory to theory and from discipline to discipline. By ‘subject matter’ is meant the referent of myth. Some theories read myth literally, so that the referent is the straightforward, apparent one, such as gods. Other theories read myth symbolically, and the symbolized referent can be anything.

Theories differ not only in their answers to these questions but also in the questions they ask. Some theories, and perhaps some disciplines, concentrate on the origin of myth; others, on the function; still others, on the subject matter. Only a few theories tend to all three questions, and some of the theories that tend to origin or to function deal with either ‘why’ or ‘how’ but not both.

It is commonly said that theories of the nineteenth century focused on the question of origin and that theories of the twentieth century have focused on the questions of function and subject matter. But this characterization confuses historical origin with recurrent one. Theories that profess to provide the origin of myth claim to know not where and when myth first arose but why and how myth arises wherever and whenever it does. The issue of recurrent origin has been as popular with twentieth-century theories as with nineteenth-

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century ones, and interest in function and subject matter was as common to nineteenthcentury theories as to twentieth-century ones.

There is one genuine difference between nineteenthand twentieth-century theories. Nineteenth-century theories tended to see the subject matter of myth as the natural world and to see the function of myth as either a literal explanation or a symbolic description of that world. Myth was typically taken to be the ‘primitive’ counterpart to science, which was assumed to be wholly modern. Myth and science were not merely redundant but outright incompatible, and moderns, who by definition are scientific, therefore had to reject myth. By contrast, twentieth-century theories have tended to see myth as almost anything but an outdated counterpart to modern science, either in subject matter or in function. Consequently, moderns have not been obliged to abandon myth for science.

Besides the questions of origin, function, and subject matter, questions often asked about myth include: is myth universal? is myth true? The answers to these questions stem from the answers to the first three questions. A theory which contends that myth arises and functions to explain natural processes will likely restrict myth to societies supposedly bereft of science. By contrast, a theory which contends that myth arises and functions to unify society may well deem myth acceptable and perhaps even indispensable to all societies.

A theory which maintains that myth functions to explain natural processes is committed to the falsity of myth if the explanation given proves incompatible with a scientific one. A theory which maintains that myth functions to unify society may well circumvent the issue of truth by asserting that society is unified when its members believe that the laws they are obliged to obey were established long ago by revered ancestors, whether or not those laws really were established back then. This kind of theory sidesteps the question of truth because its answers to the questions of origin and function do.

Definition of myth

That myth, whatever else it is, is a story may seem self-evident. After all, when asked to name myths, most of us think first of stories about Greco-Roman gods and heroes. Yet myth can also be taken more broadly as a belief or credo – for example, the American ‘rags to riches myth’ and the American ‘myth of the frontier.’ Horatio Alger wrote scores of popular novels illustrating the rags to riches myth, but the credo itself rests on no story. The same is true of the myth of the frontier.

All of the theories considered here deem myth a story. But what is myth a story about? For folklorists above all, myth is about the creation of the world. In the Bible only the two creation stories (Genesis 1 and 2), the Garden of Eden story (Genesis 3), and the Noah story (Genesis 6–9) would qualify as myths. All other stories would instead constitute either legends or folktales. Other disciplines are less rigid and instead define myth as simply a story about something significant. Some theories insist that the story take place in the past. Others allow the story to take place in the present or in the future too.

For theories from, above all, religious studies, the main characters in myth must be gods or near-gods. Other disciplines tend to be more flexible. But all disciplines insist that the main figures be personalities – divine, human, or even animal. Excluded would be impersonal forces like Plato’s Good.

Save for Rudolf Bultmann and Hans Jonas, all of the theorists considered here tend to the function of myth, and Bronislaw Malinowski tends to it almost exclusively. Theorists differ over what the function of myth is, but for all of them the function is weighty – in contrast

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to the lighter functions of legend and folktale. Myth accomplishes something significant for adherents.

In today’s parlance, myth is false. Myth is ‘mere’ myth. But the ‘mere’ is misleading. Used negatively, ‘myth’ still captures the strength of the false conviction, and does so more fully than would tamer phrases like ‘erroneous belief’ and ‘popular misconception.’ A myth is a conviction false yet tenacious.

By contrast, the phrase ‘rags to riches myth,’ which sums up the traditional American conviction that anyone with determination can succeed, uses the term myth positively. Ironically, some Americans who continue to espouse the rags to riches credo may no longer refer to it as a ‘myth’ because the term has come to connote falsity. Let, then, myth here be deemed a story that expresses a tenaciously held conviction, be the conviction true or false.

The obvious way to classify theories of myth is by the disciplines from which they come. But this categorization turns out to be less than clear-cut, for a theory that formally falls within one discipline can seemingly also fall within another. For example, the anthropologist Malinowski entitles his classic essay on myth Myth in Primitive Psychology. The theory of the literary critic René Girard rests on a psychology that is pitted against Freud’s. The categorization used in this chapter ignores disciplinary boundaries. Theories are classified by their positions on the relationship of myth to science.

Whether or not myths are as old as humanity, challenges to myth are as old, or almost as old, as myths themselves. In the West the challenge to myth goes back at least to Plato (c. 428–348 or 347 bce), who rejected Homeric myth on, especially, moral grounds. It was above all the Stoics who defended myth against this charge by reinterpreting it allegorically. The chief modern challenge to myth has come not from ethics but from science. Here myth is assumed to explain how gods control the physical world rather than, as for Plato, to describe how gods behave among themselves. Where Plato bemoans myths for presenting the gods as models of immoral behavior, modern critics dismiss myths for explaining the world unscientifically.

Myth as true science

One form of the modern challenge to myth has been to the scientific credibility of myth. Did creation really occur in a mere six days, as the first of two creation stories in Genesis (1:1–2:4a) claims? Was there really a worldwide flood? Is the earth truly but six or seven thousand years old? Could the ten plagues on the Egyptians actually have happened? The most unrepentant defense against this challenge has been to claim that the biblical account is correct, for after all, the Pentateuch was revealed to Moses by God. This position, known as ‘creationism,’ assumes varying forms, ranging, for example, from taking the days of creation to mean exactly six days to taking them to mean ‘ages.’

At the same time creationists vaunt their views as scientific. ‘Creationism’ is shorthand for ‘creation science,’ which appropriates scientific evidence of any kind both to bolster its own claims and to refute those of secular rivals such as evolution. Doubtless ‘creation scientists’ would object to the term ‘myth’ to characterize the view they defend, but only because the term has come to connote false belief. If the term is used neutrally for a firmly held conviction, creationism is a myth that claims to be scientific. For creation scientists, it is evolution that is untenable scientifically. In any clash between the Bible and modern science, modern science must give way to biblical science, not vice versa. Creationism, which may have its counterparts in other religions, thus goes beyond other versions of fundamentalism in claiming to be both religious and scientific, not religious rather than scientific.

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Myth as modern science

A much tamer defense against the challenge of modern science has been to reconcile myth with modern science. Here elements at odds with modern science are either removed or, more cleverly, reinterpreted as in fact scientific. Myth is credible scientifically because it is science. There might not have been a Noah able single-handedly to gather up all living species and to keep them alive in a wooden boat sturdy enough to withstand the strongest seas that ever arose, but a worldwide flood did occur. What thus remains in myth is true because scientific. This approach is the opposite of that called ‘demythologizing,’ which separates myth from science.

In their comment on the first plague, the turning of the waters of the Nile into blood (Exodus 7:14–24), the editors of the Oxford Annotated Bible epitomize this rationalizing approach: ‘The plague of blood apparently reflects a natural phenomenon of Egypt: namely, the reddish color of the Nile at its height in the summer owing to red particles of earth or perhaps minute organisms’ (May and Metzger 1977: 75). Of the second plague, that of frogs (Exodus 8:1–15), the editors declare similarly: ‘The mud of the Nile, after the seasonal overflowing, was a natural place for frogs to generate. Egypt has been spared more frequent occurrence of this pestilence by the frog-eating bird, the ibis’ (May and Metzger 1977: 75). How fortuitous that the ibis must have been away on holiday when Aaron stretched out his hand to produce the plague and must have just returned when Moses wanted the plague to cease!1 Instead of setting myth against science, this tactic turns myth into science – and not, as is fashionable today, science into myth.

Likewise for the American Near Eastern scholar Samuel Noah Kramer (1897–1990), Sumerian creation myths evince observations about the physical world and scientific-like hypotheses drawn to account for them:

It cannot be sufficiently stressed that the Sumerian cosmogonic concepts, early as they are, are by no means primitive. They reflect the mature thought and reason of the thinking Sumerian as he contemplated the forces of nature and the character of his own existence. When these concepts are analyzed; when the theological cloak and polytheistic trappings are removed, … the Sumerian creation concepts indicate a keenly observing mentality as well as an ability to draw and formulate pertinent conclusions from the data observed.

(Kramer 1961: 73)

Gods are mere personifications of natural phenomena, and their actions are mere metaphors for natural processes. Thus the mythic pronouncement that ‘The union of [the male heaven-god] An and [the earth-goddess] Ki produced the air-god Enlil, who proceeded to separate the heaven-father An from the earth-mother Ki’ is to be translated as follows: ‘Heaven and earth were conceived as solid elements. Between them, however, and from them, came the gaseous element air, whose main characteristic is that of expansion. Heaven and earth were thus separated by the expanding element air’ (Kramer 1961: 74, 73). Again, myth is science – modern science.2