In the book, Genesis As Myth, by Edmund Leach. He stated that everybody had
different views on myth’s in Genesis. For example German theologian who
defined myth as the “expression of unobservable realities in terms of
observable phenomena.” This German theologian, who is relating this to the
devout Christian, which indicates that all sanctimonious Christians believe that
the bible is strictly a myth. I in the other hand disagree to that argument
because, the Christians believed that the bible was not a myth, and the events
that happened in the bible are true. My reasoning for that remark is, that most
Christians were raised to believe that the bible was true and we weren’t able
to argue with it’s readings. We feel that the importance of the myth is more
likely to be less probable. This German theologian believed that communica¬
tion has an important role in myth’s throughout the bible. I believe that all
mythological systems that recur in stories, oc¬ cur in many different versions.
He stated that “man is created in Genesis, and then he created all over again.
And, as if two first men were not enough, we also have Noah in chapter eight.”
A quote from the bible that states “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the
beginning and the end, saith the Lord.” The German Theologian says that “God
against the world and the world itself for ever dividing into opposites on
either side: male and female, living and dead, good and evil, first and last.”
In a different example Edmund Leach stated that “Solomon the wise, the great
king, the builder of the temple, nevertheless is a sinner in that he loved many
strange woman, together with the daughter of Pharaoh, woman of the moabites,
Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians and hittites.” Taken as its face value, the
text of the old testament represents the relation between the various tribal
groups involved as one of “binary segmentation” of the most consistent kind.
The view that history in the old testament has more in com¬ mon with production
than with history in an “ordinary aca¬ demic sense” is not itself at all
new. Relatively orthodox Van Rad points out that “Sauls disasters seem to
follow one upon another with the inevitability of Greek tragedy” I Think That
Van Rad demonstrated the existence of a kind of patterning which was not
previously suspected in the previous verses of the bible. To illustrate another
point, Edmund Leach expresses that the “So-called primitive ignorance of
paternity is nothing else but a very imperfect knowledge that intercourse is a
necessary though not sufficient condition of the woman being ‘opened up’.”
Jesus is a legal status as a man and his essential natural as God. Joseph is the
husband of Mary, and in this legal sense he belongs to the “lineage” of
David. The divine basis derives from the fact that the male fragment of his
conception was the holy spirit which entered Mary’s body by a unnatural route.
Edmund Leach indicated that “Mary was impregnated through the ear.” In
conclusion I feel that Edmund Leach was a very good author and his logic was
very influential in my understanding why myth’s can miss-guide one’s
judgement and beliefs. I’ve tried to see the connections between the facts and
the myth’s as we know them. In this book of Genesis and Myth’s. I feel that
it is hard to determine the myth’s from the facts, as we discussed in class
earlier. Although this book helped me look into things more deeply. It made me
wonder what is actually true or is it a myth?