DeMythologizing Religion with Joseph Campbell
During my freshman year in college, I was fortunate to have Dr. Gessman
for Latin and for Ancient History. Dr. Gessman was a great scholar and a multilinguist.
He wrote, spoke, or read 23 languages. What he shared about the origins, connections, and underlying
meanings of things was so intriguing. His teaching prepared me well for my later theological studies. On
reading a 4-volume set of Joseph Campbell, I recognized many of the esoteric myths in the history of
religion that Dr. Gessman first introduced to me by 35 years ago
—myths of creation, heroes, virgins, and serpents.
O
n completing The Masks of God,1 Joseph Campbell wrote that this 12-year enterprise confirmed
for him: “the unity of the race of man, not only in its biology but also in its spiritual history, which
has everywhere unfolded in the manner of a single symphony.”2
The cultural history of mankind can be studied as a
unit, because themes like fire-theft, flood, virgin birth,
resurrected hero, sibling murder, forbidden fruit, tree of
life, tree of knowledge, etc., have worldwide distribution.
No human society has yet been found without such myths.
Humanity apparently cannot maintain itself in the universe
without belief in some arrangement of this general
inheritance of myth.3 Explaining this universality, Joseph
Campbell cites four functions of myth:
1.
2.
3.
4.
to reconcile one to the mystery of the universe;
to render a cosmology for interpreting it;
to reinforce a moral order; and
to unveil the psyche.
Despite which function the myth serves, all myths emerge within cultures in two ways:
1
2
3
•
As Art, myth reflects a spirit of fantasy and play to instruct as well as entertain. Greek myths
emerged as Art with classical heroes Hercules, Theseus, and Perseus studied as literature; and
•
As Religion, myth poses as factual or revealed truth to confer spiritual authority and temporal power.
Judeo-Christian myths emerged as Religion with the Hebrew patriarchs Noah, Moses, and Abraham-even Jesus--studied as history.
Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, vol. 1; Oriental Mythology, vol. 2; Occidental Mythology, vol. 3;
Creative Mythology, vol. 4 (New York: Viking, 1964).
Ibid., Introduction to each volume.
James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough: The Roots of Religion and Folklore (New York: Avenel Books, 1981); Jessie Weston, From
Ritual to Romance (Cambridge: University Press, 1920); F.R.B. Godolphin, Great Classical Myths (New York: Random House,
1964); Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Princeton: University Press, 1973); Carl G. Jung, Symbols of
Transformation, translated by R.F.C. Hull (New York: Pantheon, 1956); Robert Graves, The Greek Myths (New York: Penguin,
1955); and Mircea Eliade, Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return, translated by Willard R. Trask (New York:
Harper & Row, 1959).
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Demythologizing Religion with Joseph Campbell
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SCIENCE UNVEILS THE MYTHS
T
he unveiling of these myths began in modern times through the scholarship of the early 19th century
through archeology, anthropology, philology, and psychology. This scientific unveiling was
particularly disruptive to religions that had inherited their myths as revealed truths. Most of Genesis in
the Hebrew scriptures could no longer be accepted as literally true. Such demythologizing shook the Jewish
and Christian claim to divine authority.
In Archeology
T
he Rosetta Stone was discovered4 as the key to Egyptian hieroglyphics, which revealed a civilized
religious literature 2,000 years earlier than the Greek or Hebrew. Two decades later, excavations of the
ancient cities of Ninevah and Babylon unearthed the treasures of the Mesopotamia civilization.5 Further
excavations of Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon man and the civilizations of Troy, Mycenae, and Crete produced
a growing consensus on the universality of basic mythological themes. Archeological discoveries revealed that
the two Iron-Age Eastern Mediterranean traditions—Greek and Hebrew—had common elements derived from the
preceding Bronze-Age civilization of Mesopotamia but with very discordant approaches.
In Philology
T
he first surprising revelation in the study of written records was that Sanskrit and Latin were remarkably
alike.6 A comparative study of the grammatical structures of Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Persian, and German
determined that they all had a common source.7 Closely related but broadly scattered tongues distributed over
the majority of the civilized world were now considered Indo-European languages.8 Europe was elated and
the Grimm brothers went to work collecting fairy tales.9 The similarity of myth was revealed in languages
and literary forms from Ireland to India. This discovery of ethnic continuity united Greek Humanism with
German Paganism with Indian Upanishads and Buddhist Sutras and with Judeo-Christian beliefs.
In Anthropology
R
esearch revealed that the earliest Indo-European tribes, centered around the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
were already a mix of races. The myths thought to be an Indo-European invention were actually derived
from much earlier and more highly developed cultures of ancient Egypt, Crete, and Mesopotamia. The divine
source of the higher religions was now recognized as universal mythology not peculiar to any single tradition
but common to the religious lore of mankind. Boundaries dissolved that had previously distinguished
orthodox from gentile or high church from primitive. Once the underlying mythology of all religions was
recognized, another query presented itself. Whether such myths as virgin birth, hero’s death and resurrection,
creation out of nothing, etc., should be dismissed as primitive superstition or interpreted as transcendent
symbols representing values beyond rationality.
In Psychology
wareness about the unconscious had to await the 20th century for application to ethnology, initiated
specifically by Carl G. Jung.10 Earlier psychologists11 had prepared the way along with work by
Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche as well as Goethe, Ibsen, and Wagner. Hypotheses about the
A
4
Jean François Champollion, 1821.
Sir Austen Henry Layard, 1845-1850.
6 Father Coeurdoux, a French Jesuit in India, 1767.
7 Franz Bopp (1791-1867).
8 Sir William Jones (1746-1794).
9 Jacob (1785-1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786-1859).
10 Carl G. Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious. translated by Dr. Beatrice M. Hinkle (New York: Moffatt, 1916).
11 Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) and Jean Martin Charcot (1825-1893).
5
S.T. Harty
Demythologizing Religion with Joseph Campbell
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unconscious could now be applied in the fields of religion, mythology, pre-history, folklore, literature, and
the arts. The discipline of psychology asked whether these universal myths were spontaneous products of the
psyche or inventions of particular times and persons that either appeared independently around the world12 or
spread by migration and commerce.13
THE SACRED WORD
T
he results of modern scholarship in archeology, anthropology, philology, and psychology changed
thinking toward the world’s great religions. The sacred scriptures of religions could no longer be
relied upon for an understanding of God, rather they more truly provided an understanding of the
believers themselves.
Unlike the religions of “the Book” (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), which enshrined their sacred
traditions in a book guarded with authority, Greek “theology” was not formulated by priests and prophets but
by poets and philosophers.14 Greek tales of the gods were not meant to be affixed in the mind as reality but to
reflect beyond. The difference is immense.
Sacred scriptures give the appearance of conscientious history, whereas they reflect myths or poetry from
a vested point of view.15 Thus, we understand religions by demythologizing their scripture, not by accepting
their “revealed” truths.
For example, scholarly analysis of the Hebrew scriptures reveals five separate source materials and
points of view, ranging from the 9th century to the 4th century BCE.16 To demythologize these interwoven texts,
scholars separate the earlier from the later sources as well as rework the earlier by the later, then compare
languages, symbols, and images with other and earlier textual material, both within and beyond that culture. In
doing so, they are able to distinguish myth from history.17
ORIGINS BEYOND MEMORY
L
et’s start with creation. The world is full of creation myths and, as Joseph Campbell said, all of them
are false—factually! In what way they are false depends on how old the myths are. Creation myths
follow an evolutionary sequence.
1.
2.
3.
4.
The oldest ones have the world born of a goddess on her own.
The older ones have the world born of a goddess with a male consort.
The newer ones have the world fashioned from the body of a goddess by a male warrior.
The newest ones have the world created by the unaided power of a male god alone.
In Early Sumerian Creation Myths18
T
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
he goddess Nammu, whose name is written with the pictograph for “primeval sea,” was the mother by
herself of both Heaven and Earth, which were pictured in the singular form of a cosmic mountain.19 Yet,
The theory of parallel development.
The theory of diffusion.
F.M. Cornford, Greek Religious Thought from Homer to the Age of Alexander (New York: Dutton, 1923).
William Foxwell Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity: Monotheism and the Historical Process (New York: Doubleday, 1957).
Bernard W. Anderson, Understanding the Old Testament (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1966). Also, Robert H. Pfeiffer, The Books
of the Old Testament (New York: Harper & Row, 1965).
Elmer W.K. Mould, H.Neil Richardson & Robert F. Berkey, Essentials of Bible History (New York: Ronald Press Co., 1966).
3,300 to 2,000 BCE.
Dr. Samuel Noah Kramer, From the Tablets of Sumer (The Falcon’s Wing Press, 1956).
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Demythologizing Religion with Joseph Campbell
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significantly, this primordial form had a dual nature: the base, which was female, was Earth; the summit,
which was male, was Heaven. Then, Heaven begot the Air, which separated Heaven and Earth, tearing them
apart. We see this “splitting” of One-into-Two in many mythic variations.
In Sumeria, Nammu and her pantheon of gods lived in their heaven, tilling their crops of grain. Much
later when the crops failed, Nammu asked one of her sons to help the other gods.
My son! Arise from thy couch and bring to pass some great work of wisdom.
Fashion servants for the gods who will assume their tasks.
At his mother’s bidding, he reached for a handful of clay from the bottom of the earth and, with the help
of the earth-mother and several goddesses, shaped it as a newborn in the image of the gods and called it man.
The other gods gave praise for this wonderful invention of a race of humans that would serve the gods by
tending their fields of grain.
Several Sumerian seals of the 2nd millennium BCE depict a sanctuary with all the familiar symbols of the
Garden of Eden: the tree, the fruitful bounty, the serpent, one figure with fruit in hand extended toward
another, the eternal sun, and the living waters. In this early Sumerian representation, however, both figures
are female. Nor is there any sign of divine wrath or danger in the garden. Fruit is eaten without guilt.
In Babylonian Creation Myths20
T
he primordial, world-creating sacrificial figure was a monstrous female, goddess of the world abyss,
Tiamat.21 From the library of the ancient Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal, we see the splitting myth of Oneinto-Two in the only extant Babylonian document. The young and newly risen sun-god Marduk uses the
body of his great great great grandmother Tiamat:
Marduk split the body of Tiamat like a shellfish into two halves and set one as a
heavenly roof...and assigned guards to watch that her waters above not escape.
Compare this with Genesis 1:7,
And so it was, God made the vault and it divided the waters above the vault from the
waters under the vault.
In each of these creation myths, we see the splitting of the One into Two. The Babylonian myth is an
appropriation of the earlier Sumerian myth in which the god Marduk has taken over the role and function of
the goddess Nammu. As we shall see, the Hebrew myth changed what was appropriated even more.
In Greek Creation Myths22
B
efore the familiar Greek gods came into being, Chaos reigned and her child was Night and another child
was Erebus, the unfathomable depth where death dwells. Love was born from darkness and death. Love
then created Light and its companion, Day. The Greek poet Hesiod gave us the creation of Earth:
Earth, the beautiful, rose up broad-bosomed, she that is the steadfast base of all
things. And fair Earth first bore the starry Heaven, equal to herself...
This early Greek creation myth is older, since Gaia, the goddess Earth, brings forth Heaven, Uranus, by
herself—that is, without a consort. In the Greek myth by Hesiod where Gaia and Uranus are separated by
20
21
22
1,700 to 700 BCE.
Stephen Herbert Langdon, Semitic Mythology: The Mythology of All Races (Boston: Marshall Jones Company, 1931).
800 to 100 BCE.
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Demythologizing Religion with Joseph Campbell
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their son Kronos,23 we see again the splitting myth of One-into-Two. Then, conceiving through her son
Uranus, Gaia produced the race of Titans and conceived a second race of monsters through her other son,
Pontus. The Greeks retained a kind of honest promiscuity that contrasts with the unexplained Hebrew
mystery of Cain and Abel’s progeny.
The Greeks have more than one account of how mankind was created.24 One version was a task delegated
by the gods to the wise Prometheus, whose name means “forethought,” and to his brother, Epimetheus,
whose name means “afterthought” and was not so wise. Before making men, Epimetheus gave all the best
qualities to the animals—strength, swiftness, courage, cunning—until nothing good was left for man. So
Epimetheus asked his brother for help. Prometheus took over the task of creation, thinking out a way to make
mankind superior to the animals. He went to the sun, where he lit a torch, and brought down fire to protect
and assist mankind.
The second Greek version of creation came in stages of the races of man: the golden, the silver, the brass,
a race of heroes; and an iron race. These two creation stories are strikingly different; however, each had one
thing in common: there were no women. Woman was created later by Zeus in revenge on Prometheus. Zeus
created a great evil to give Prometheus but shaped it in the likeness of a shy maiden, sweet and lovely to
behold. All the gods gave her gifts and so called her Pandora. From her came the race of women, who were
an evil to men.
In Hebrew Creation Myths25
L
ike the Greeks, the Hebrews also had two versions of creation—Genesis Chapter 1 and Genesis Chapter
2. Both of these—plus the creation epic of the Babylonians—derive from a general fund of
Sumerian/Semitic myth. The Biblical versions are a later stage of the patriarchal takeover in which the
female principle, represented in both the Greek and the earlier Babylonian version as a great mother goddess,
has in the Hebrew version been reduced to its elemental state, abstracted as “the deep.” Linguists have
remarked that the name of the Babylonian mother goddess “Ti’amat” is related etymologically to the Hebrew
term “tehom,” which appears in Genesis 1:2 as “the deep.”
Now the earth was a formless void, there was darkness over the deep, and God’s spirit
hovered over the water.
Genesis 1 is attributed to priestly editors late in the 4th century BCE and contains the famous seven days
of creation. The animals are created on the fifth day before man. On the sixth day, God created man and
woman together as Genesis 26-27 reads:
And God said, Let us make man in our own image… So God created man in his own
image…male and female he created them.
Genesis 2, from 9th century BCE, is the older or earlier of the two creation myths. It differs in every detail
and sequence from the other account. As Genesis 2:7 reads:
And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life….
That’s a variation on the Sumerian myth where Nammu’s son molded man from clay. Then, in Genesis
2:8, God plants a garden. We can recognize the old Sumerian garden, but Eden has two trees instead of one
tree with two fruits. Man is also created as a servant of God to tend the garden as in both the Sumerian and the
Babylonian myth. In Genesis 2:18-19, God creates the “beasts of the field and fowl of the air” as “it is not
23
24
25
Hesiod, Theogonia, 750 BCE.
Edith Hamilton, Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes (New York: New American Library, 1942).
900 to 400 BCE.
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good for man to be alone.” Adam naming the animals reminds us of Epimetheus giving qualities to the
animals. Not until Genesis 2:22 does God take a rib from Adam and create woman. That’s a variation on the
Babylonian Marduk forming man from bones and blood.
How Chapter 1 and 2 of Genesis have been accepted for centuries as a tale of sequence despite so many
contradictory elements can only be explained by faith being as blind as love.
When the first five books of Hebrew scripture were believed to be rendered directly from God to Moses,
the truth was understood as paradoxical. We know today that much of this material was set down by a priestpoet in the century of Aristotle and that other material was borrowed and adapted from the Babylonian myths
of Marduk, 1500 years before, which itself borrowed from the earlier Sumerian myths. The Catholic
Jerusalem Bible at least labels Genesis 2 as a “second account of creation.”
Oriental Creation Myths
T
he creation myths of the Orient diverge from those of the Occident specifically in their opposite versions
of the mythic first being. The Sumerian, Babylonian, Greek, and Hebrew split the One into Two. In
contrast, the Indian Upanishads has god become the creation, so everything is still One—a manifestation of
Brahma. The Oriental pantheistic view of creation has God as co-extensive with the universe; the Occidental
view recognizes a creator distinct from his creation.
THE RIVALRY OF GODS
O
ne mythic element found in creation myths is a pantheon of ruling gods who enjoy a period of
unchallenged dominion followed with an overthrow of an older generation by a younger one or of an
earlier matriarchal culture by a later patriarchal one. In either case, the intention of the new cosmic
genealogy is to refute the claims of the earlier theology in favor of the new gods and a new moral order. We
see the victory of the Babylonian Marduk over Tiamat and the Greek Titans overthrow of their parents. The
motive of such mythic revolutions is deeper than rivalry between genders or generations. It’s a dialectic of
competing truths.
In the Greco-Roman myths, the victory of the patriarchal deities over the earlier matriarchal ones was not
as decisive as in the myths of Hebrew scripture. These early pre-Homeric goddesses survived in popular
Greek temple rites and women’s cults. In the not-so-matriarchal post-Homeric Greece, goddesses survived
because the patriarchal gods at least married the goddesses of the land, who then succeeded in regaining
influence. The later warrior gods, Zeus and Apollo, reduced the power of the goddesses; but in biblical
mythology, the goddesses were exterminated altogether—along with the benign character of the serpent.
Virgins
G
ods always seem to be born of virgins. Gautama Buddha was born of the virgin Maya in India 600 BCE;
Horus was born of the virgin Isis in Egypt 1550 BCE; Attis was born of the virgin Nama in Phrygia 200
BCE; Adonis was born of the virgin Ishtar in Babylon 2300 BCE; Krishna was born of the virgin Devaki in
India 1200 BCE; and Mithra, and Indra, and Zoroaster.26 Such parentage differentiates them from mere
mortals, such as the classical Greek myth of the death and birth of Dionysus.
Demeter, the goddess of agriculture, hid her daughter Persephone who was conceived by Zeus.
Nevertheless, Zeus approached his daughter in the form of a serpent while she sat weaving, and she
conceived a son, Dionysus—the ever-dying, ever-living god of bread and wine—who was born in a cave,
26
John Shelby Spong, Born of a Woman: A Born of A Woman: A Bishop Rethinks the Birth of Jesus (New York NY: Harper Collins,
1992), pg 56.
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killed as a babe by jealous Titans, then resurrected by his father Zeus. Comparably, in the Christian myth
derived from the same archaic myth, Mary is conceived of the Holy Spirit and bears a son, who is born in a
manger, persecuted and crucified, then resurrected and sacramentalized through bread and wine.
Serpents
hroughout the cultures of the world, myth uses the serpent to represent rebirth, because of the serpent’s
wonderful ability to slough its skin. In the earlier Sumerian myth, the serpent was a consort to the earth
mother goddess. In Greek myth, many maidens were given to or saved by serpents, such as Ovid’s account of
Andromeda. In the Hebrew myth, the signs of the old earth mother and her spouse, the serpent, remain but the
relationship changed as well as the character of these symbols. Two trees are mentioned in the Garden of
Eden: the tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In Genesis 3:15, Yahweh cursed the serpent:
T
I will make you enemies of each other: you and the woman, your offspring and her
offspring.27
Because the woman was beguiled by the serpent, Yahweh cursed the woman to bring forth in pain and be
subject to her spouse. Thus, the patriarchy was set in the Garden of Eden, but there are echoes of the evil
thing that Zeus created in the shape of Pandora.
In the earlier Bronze-Age Sumerian myth, there is one tree that bears two fruits: the fruit of
enlightenment, and the fruit of immortality. In a Sumerian seal, we can see a serpent sitting behind a female
figure who sits on the opposite side of a tree from her consort. Two fruits hang, one on each side of the tree
to which they each reach. In the biblical Hebrew myth, two trees exist and eating one fruit from one tree
exiles them from the Garden of Eden.
These Iron-Age Hebrews of the 1st millennium BCE adopted mythic symbols from the neolithic BronzeAge Sumerians of the 2nd millennium BCE, but the Hebrews inverted the mythic symbols to render an
argument the opposite of its origin. It was a conceptual overthrow.
Sons
T
he rivalry of sons is another familiar mythic structure in the dialectic of competing truths. In the Genesis
story of Cain and Abel, the myth was used to exalt the Hebrews over the older peoples of the land. The
people of Canaan were agriculturists like Cain, who tended the fields; the Hebrews were keepers of sheep
like Abel, who tended the flocks. When Cain and Abel each brought an offering of produce to Yahweh (Cain,
the fruit of the field; Abel, the first of his flock), the Hebrew deity prefers Abel, the shepherd. An older
Sumerian cuneiform text of 2050 BCE also tells the tale of an argument between a farmer and a shepherd for
the favor of a goddess, but—in her culture—the farmer wins.
Although Yahweh prefers Abel over Cain in the Genesis account, Cain slays Abel; so doesn’t that mean the
farmer wins? The preference of Abel over Cain is significant, despite Abel being slain, because Cain is the elder son.
Going against deference to this tradition is evidence of a conceptual overthrow.
The explanation is that the original source of the biblical Eden is not a mythology of the desert—that is, a
primitive Hebrew myth in which the shepherd would win. Rather, the Genesis story is an old planting
mythology borrowed from peoples of the soil in which the farmer would win. However, in the Hebrew
retelling (Genesis 3:10-12), the story is turned on its head, i.e., agriculture is made to suffer.
Now be accursed and driven from the ground that has opened its mouth to receive
your brother’s blood at your hands. When you till the ground, it shall no longer
yield you any of its produce.
27
All biblical quotations from The Jerusalem Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1970).
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Another reversed element is that the murder by Cain of Abel does not render fecundity to the soil, such
as other agricultural mythic murders do. Moreover, the murder of Abel by Cain was transformed to duplicate
the Fall motif of sin and punishment as found in the Adam and Eve story. Joseph Campbell sums up the
biblical inversions of these universal mythic symbols:
In the older mother myths and rites, the light and darker aspects of the mixed thing that is
life had been honored equally and together, whereas in the later, male-oriented, patriarchal
myths, all that is good and noble was attributed to the new heroic master gods...
MOTIVE BEHIND THE MYTHS
T
he archeological discoveries in Ninevah and Babylon radically changed the scholarly understanding about
the first five books of the Hebrew scriptures, known as the Law of Moses.28 All of the earlier historical and
mythological material of the Hebrew scriptures had to be reinterpreted. The Books of Exodus, Leviticus,
and Numbers, which had been attributed to Moses during the years wandering in the desert, were actually
brought from Babylon to Jerusalem much later. They were already law books of a thoroughly orthodox priestly
tradition, which were ceremoniously established as a Book of Law binding for all Hebrews by the Persian
emperor Artaxerxes.
No knowledge of the Books of Moses was recorded before 621 BCE, which is 600 years after Moses
died—if he ever lived. Joseph Campbell explains that the legend of Moses—at least his birth—is modeled on
the earlier birth story of the Assyrian Sargon of Agade in 2350 BCE, who was also found in the bulrushes as
an infant. The adaptation was composed in the 8th century BCE and follows the general mythic formula for
the birth of the hero.29 That is, a noble or divine birth, then the infant is exposed or exiled, then found and
adopted by a lowly family, and ultimately returned to his true estate with those responsible being laid low.
Such legends held great appeal for biographers of ambitious kings and prophets. As with most mythic
adaptations, some elements are reversed to make a point. Here, the Hebrew Moses—though adopted—is born
lowly and adopted nobly.
Despite drawing on the same mythic fund, all religions have a distinct theology that unifies the myths
recorded in their sacred scriptures. The theology of the Hebrews, which unified the first five books of their
scriptures, was that the twelve tribes of Israel descended from Abraham were given a divine blessing to be
realized in their common history. The Hebrew narrative—of the pastoral patriarchs, an Egyptian interlude,
then conquest and settlement in Canaan—served a mythic function. We know this narrative is myth and not
history because the inconsistencies are easily detected against historical and archeological records.
1. The Hebrew conquest of Canaan had commenced long before the earliest plausible date
for the Exodus from Egypt.
2. The cities of Pithom and Raamses, which the enslaved Jews supposedly built, were not
constructed until one century later in the period of Ramses II.
3. The Bedouin tribes of Hebrews invading Canaan were not of one family but of many and
entered Canaan in stages and from various directions.
Viewed as an origin myth—instead of as history—the narrative reveals both the form and function of the
religion’s message: a great cycle of descent into the underworld and a triumphal return, i.e., the ancient
patriarchs entered Egypt and the Chosen Hebrews emerged.
28
29
Wette.
Otto Rank, The Myth of the Birth of the Hero, 1806.
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In contrast to other such myths, the Hebrew myth is very different in one degree. The hero is not an
individual—not even Moses—instead, it is the Hebrew people. Just an aside, but the festival of the Passover
commemorates the exodus of the “people.” This feast occurs on the same date as the annual sacrifice and
resurrection of the Greek god Adonis, who was the consort as well as the son by virgin birth of the mother
goddess Demeter. Christianity appropriated this feast date for Easter, which celebrates the death and
resurrection of Jesus who was the son by virgin birth of the religion’s only remnant of the primordial mother
goddess, Mary. In both the Greek pagan cult and the Christian theistic cult, the resurrection is of a god;
whereas in the Hebrew cult, the redemption is of a people.
The Hebrew people’s mythic history serves a function that in other cults belongs to an incarnate god.
This fundamental difference throughout history has remained Judaism’s second point of distinction among
religions of the world—the first being its transcendent monotheism. As Joseph Campbell explains:
One millennium later, the patriarchal desert nomads arrived and all judgments were
reversed in heaven as on earth.
Thus lies the power of myth.
© Copyright, Sheila Harty, 1999.
Sheila Harty is a published and award-winning writer with a BA and MA in Theology. Her major was in Catholicism, her minor in Islam,
and her thesis in scriptural Judaism. Harty employed her theology degrees in the political arena as “applied ethics,” working for 20 years
in Washington DC as a public interest policy advocate, including ten years with Ralph Nader. On sabbatical from Nader, she taught
“Business Ethics” at University College Cork, Ireland. In DC, she also worked for U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, former U.S.
Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, the World Bank, the United Nations University, the Congressional Budget Office, and the American
Assn for the Advancement of Science. She was a consultant with the Centre for Applied Studies in International Negotiations in Geneva,
the National Adult Education Assn in Dublin, and the International Organization of Consumers Unions in The Hague. Her first book,
Hucksters in the Classroom, won the 1980 George Orwell Award for Honesty & Clarity in Public Language. She moved to St. Augustine,
Florida, in 1996 to care for her aging parents, where she also works as a freelance writer and editor. She can be reached by phone at
904 / 826-0563 or by e-mail at s t h a r t y @ b e l l s o u t h . n e t . Her website is h t t p : w w w . s h e i l a - t - h a r t y . c o m