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Myth and the Biblical Tradition
By Bernhard W. Anderson

"The primary 'images' which shaped Israel's religious consciousness did not arise out of the reservoir of pagan myths or from the collective unconscious. . . . Rather, biblical imagination was inspired by certain 'normative' motifs which were actually given to Israel through her own unique, historical experience. . . . These motifs gathered unto themselves traditions once independent, were recapitulated in new historical situations, were supplemented by still other motifs born out of Israel's history, and attracted pagan images which, in the process of appropriation, were transformed to enhance the Israelite story with a cosmic and universal meaning."

CONTEMPORARY discussions of myth, whether in the realm of Christian theology or disciplines of the humanities, at the outset run squarely into the problem of the definition of the terms "myth," "mythical," "mythological." Will Herberg, who has already helped to clarify theological discussion by identifying five different but overlapping meanings of the word "historical," ¹ has recently sought to bring order out of the confusion that engulfs the current usage of the term "myth." He has singled out a number of variant meanings, ranging all the way from the popular notion that myth is "a fantastic story with no substance in fact" to the existential view of myth as "dramatic presentation of human existence in the face of Being [of God, man, and the world]." Here I propose to build upon this (as yet unpublished) perceptive analysis and to re-

Bernhard W. Anderson, now Professor of Old Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary, occupied a similar position for many years at Drew University. His most recent book, Creation Versus Chaos, appeared in 1967. This article is part of a series of lectures delivered in April, 1970, at Oberlin College under the auspices of the Haskell Lectureship.
¹ Will Herberg, "Five Meanings of the Word 'Historical,"' The Christian Scholar, XLVII, 4 (1964), pp. 327-330.

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consider the subject of myth and the biblical tradition,² moving out from the "existential" understanding of myth which figures prominently in current phenomenological study of religion.

I

It is only in relatively recent times that mythology (that is, the logos about myth, hence the science of myth) has been freed from the anti-mythical prejudice which has persisted, with few exceptions, down through the centuries. In one of his essays on the history of religions, Raffaele Pettazzoni points out that the "contempt for myth," which is expressed even yet in the popular notion of myth as a "fantastic story," had its origin in classical antiquity , pre-eminently in the sixth century B.C. when Xenophanes directed his scathing criticism against Homer and Hesiod for perpetrating upon mankind the scandalous tales about the gods. Here the objection was not merely that the myths were factually untrue, but above all, that they were unworthy of the gods. This negation of myth, Pettazzoni points out, was inherited by the church Fathers who, for the most part, scorned the myths as "a diabolical counterfeit of the Old Testament," that is, as a pagan "lie." Such hostility, rooted both in classical antiquity and in the patristic period, is said to have "passed to scholasticism, from St. Thomas to Luther, from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, and continues to modern times." Pettazzoni maintains that Gianbattista Vico (1668-1744) was the first to deal positively with the originality of myth as "the spontaneous production of poetic fancy, awakened in primitive man by the imposing and terrifying spectacles of Nature," ³ a view which was later echoed independently of Vico by the Romantics, like the great Herder, or still later by the Grimms. But by and large these minority voices were unable to shake the view that prevailed from the sixth century B.C. to the twentieth century A.D.

Pettazzoni pays tribute to the work of some Old Testament scholars, especially Hermann Gunkel who himself was profoundly influenced by Herder and who, in his Schöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit (1895), perceived the importance of myth in cultic recitations and specifically showed the influence of pagan myth upon

² Cf. especially Brevard Childs, Myth and Reality in the Old Testament, Studies in Biblical Theology, No. 27 (1960).
³ On Vico see most recently W. Taylor Stevenson, History as Myth: The Import for Contemporary Theology (1969); reviewed by Will Herberg in Interpretation, Oct. 1969, pp. 497f. See also the article by Isaiah Berlin, New York Times Sunday Magazine, Nov. 23, 1969.

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the biblical tradition. Pettazzoni draws attention primarily, however, to the positive evaluation of myth which is reflected in the studies of a number of phenomenologists of religion such as G. van der Leeuw and Mircea Eliade. These new scientists of myth have attempted to understand "the authenticity of myth." They have " opened the way to a discovery of the true worth of myth, not merely a poetical value in Vico's sense, or a symbolic one in the sense of the allegorists of Creuzer's type, but a positive, concrete worth, a functional value, an existential value as regards the condition of mankind. " ⁴

It may be questioned whether the "poetic truth" of myth, as advocated by Vico and the Romantics, can be simply set over against myth as "a truth of faith, of life," as advocated by the new historians of religions. Pettazzoni maintains that the recovery of the "existential value" of myth, as distinguished from its "poetic value," accords with the scientific spirit which emancipates itself from traditional anti-mythical prejudice and describes the way a myth functions in exposing the human situation. This is essentially a phenomenology of myth, that is, an "effort to grasp and display the essential features of what it is that appears," ⁵ in this case, myth as a phenomenon of the human spirit. This approach brackets out the questions of how the myth arose in the context of a particular historical community and whether the particular myth is true in comparison to other myths, when judged from some theological or philosophical standpoint. The myths are "true," says Pettazzoni, "for those who have and tell these tales" in distinction from "false" ones which do not deal with "the transcendent" reality which is "the sine qua non of present reality." ⁶ Hence myth may be regarded as "true history," that is, "sacred history," which in cultic recital and enactment puts man in touch with the holy and transcendent.

The phenomenological study of myth is profoundly illuminated by the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, who attempts to reinstate the poetic function of language as found in man's elemental experience in the face of Being. He maintains that it is the poets who understand most profoundly the way language functions-not as a

⁴ Raffaele Pettazzoni, Essays on the History of Religions, Studies in the History of Religions (Supplements to Numen), 1 (1967), pp. 24-25.
⁵ In this connection, see Will Herberg's succinct exposition of the phenomenological enterprise in his article, "The 'Death of God' Theology"; the first article on "The Philosophy Behind It," National Review, August 9, 1966.
⁶ Pettazzoni, "The Truth of Myth," op. cit., pp. 1lff.

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tool of man under his control, but as a window, so to speak, through which Being unveils itself and man lives in relation to Being. Accordingly, he cites the lines of Hö1derin:

Full of merit, and yet poetically, dwells
Man on this earth.

Man "poetizes himself" through language, so that language becomes an act, an event. In poetry, as Robert Funk puts it succinctly, "Being calls to man, and in responding he, in turn, calls being out of chaos, so to speak, by giving it a place to dwell in language."⁷

From this standpoint, it is no longer satisfactory merely to examine the content of the myths (for example, the structure of the pantheon or the details of the story of the gods), nor is it adequate only to consider the way a myth was recited or enacted in a cultic setting (for example, the Enuma Elish on the fourth day of the Babylonian New Year festival). Rather, it is important to understand how the myth functions in relation to the human situation, how "the Word, in fact, becomes a sort of primary force, in which all being and doing originate." ⁸ This is to consider both the "existential value" and the "poetic value" of myth together, the two being inseparable. For myth has a twofold function: On the one hand, it appears to disclose the structure of human existence-man's struggle between authenticity and inauthenticity, between being and non-being, between order and chaos; on the other hand, mythopoetic language is said to point the way out of this essentially human condition into the "clearing" (Lichtung) where the light breaks through in the dark forest and Being discloses itself. To use Eliade's expression: Man has "an ontological thirst." The "archaic man" of primitive (or modern) society "thirsts for the real." But "he sees himself as real, i.e. as truly himself, only and precisely insofar as he ceases to be so"only insofar as he turns away from the ceaseless change of history and participates in the primordial archetypes expressed in myth and reactualized in the cult.⁹ While it may seem paradoxical that a historical being seeks his true existence by emerging from "historical time" in order to recover "primordial time"-time which moves in a circle, is ever the same, and therefore belongs to eternity-it must

⁷ Cf. Robert W. Funk, Language, Hermeneutic, and Word of God (1966), p. 39, where the text from Hö1derin is quoted and discussed. The entire chapter 2, which deals with "language as event," is important in this connection.
⁸ Ernst Cassirer, Language and Myth (1946), p. 45. His entire discussion is important.
⁹ Mircea Eliade, Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return (1959), p. 34; The Sacred and the Profane (1961), p. 88.

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nevertheless be said that the myth functions historically, that is, mythical language is man's response to the Reality upon which he, as a historical being, is dependent.¹⁰

II

It is not my purpose here to explore in detail the "existential" or poetic" value of the myths of "archaic man," the man living in a society where the primitive power of language has not yet been weakened and virtually destroyed by technology, urbanization, and positive science. This broad field has been investigated by many experts from Sir James Frazer (The Golden Bough, 1918) to scholars of our own time. ¹¹ These studies have shown the pervasiveness of myth in human culture as the sine qua non of all human existence, the basis of all social life and institutions. Furthermore, when the bond between language and religious consciousness is viewed from the standpoint of Heidegger's ontology, it becomes apparent that man, when he is truly man, is fundamentally a myth-maker. The truth of myth is not a truth of "reason" but a truth of "existence" (echoing Pettazzoni once again), for through mythical language man seeks to grapple with the polarities of his existence and to be and become himself in relation to what is Real. ¹² It follows from this that the outcome of "mythology," when it is a proper science of myth, should not be to demythologize man's language, that is, to eliminate images and stories which function in an existential way, but rather to recover the authentic meaning of myth.

At this point the question of "the truth of myth" runs into a major difficulty which is of the utmost concern to the biblical theologian. On the one hand, the strict phenomenologist may "bracket out" the large question of whether a myth is true in contrast to other myths from some philosophical or theological standpoint of judgment. In terms of this approach, norms of "evaluation" are rather irrelevant.

¹⁰ This point is stressed by Robert Funk (op. cit., p. 40).
¹¹ In addition to the studies of Pettazzoni and Eliade cited above, see also such works as H. Frankfort and others, The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man (1946) [Pelican Book title: Before Philosophy]; G. Van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation (1938); T. H. Gaster, Thespis (1961), and his latest compendium, Myth, Legend, and Custom in the Old Testament (1969); Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil (1967).
¹² It should be added here that since this observation is itself a product of critical reason about myth, the intention should not be to disparage the kind of reason which is purely conceptual, as in positive science and much philosophy, in contrast to the more "representational" views found in myth. Herberg (who has given me the benefit of his criticisms of this essay) observes that science operates with "constructed concept" (Begriff), while myth deals with "representation" (Vorstellung). It is not the intention of this essay to move into the question of the "truth" of science.

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Particular myths are simply true for those who share and recite these tales; they are existentially true for them. Yet, on the other hand, the affirmation that the myths are "existentially true" intimates that they touch the realities of human existence as such and therefore expose dimensions of meaning in which many men, perhaps all men, may share. Myth has universal truth to the degree that it exposes the human condition and brings men into contact with what is Real.

This is a significant observation for biblical understanding. The "revelation" to which the Bible bears witness is addressed to man, as man, in a universal sense. This, of course, is the point of the Urgeschichte (Gen. 1-11) which stands as the preface to the Bible. It is well-known that these stories, according to the portrayal in Genesis 2-3, do not concern Israel in particular but rather man ('Adam) as he exists. It is important to take with the utmost seriousness the mythical materials which enter into the portrayal of the primeval history (Creation, Paradise Lost, the Flood, the Tower of Babel), for these stories, which were drawn from non-Israelitic sources, are clearly intended to establish contact with human experience generally. To this extent the phenomenology of myth throws light upon the human condition which, according to Genesis 1-11, is the presupposition for the response to divine revelation, as that revelation is witnessed by the Israelite community.

The biblical theologian must, however, grapple with the problem that these "mythical" materials are only a preface to the main historical drama which begins to transpire in Genesis 12 with the call of Abraham. It would seem, on first glance, that the Bible begins with the human situation generally and then proceeds to Israel's historical experience, as though the latter were only an illustration of the former. The arrangement of the Pentateuch in its present form, however, is deceptive. If one thing has become clear in recent form-critical and traditio-historical investigation of the Pentateuch, it is this: The faith of Israel was not grounded in general human experience which, may be portrayed in mythical language but, on the contrary, in a unique apprehension of Divine Reality mediated through particular historical experiences. The Bible does not move from the general to the specific, but precisely in the opposite direction: from the specific to the general. Traditio-historically, the materials in Genesis 1-11 represent a late elaboration of what Israel had to say out of her peculiar historical existence.

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In this connection, it is appropriate to observe that the phenomenological approach often fails to take adequate account of the different historical ways in which myth functions. Even though myth appears to deal with what is generically human, it is inevitably molded or conditioned by what is specifically historical. Accordingly, it is difficult to reduce the mythical language of the Babylonians, Egyptians, Canaanites, Hittites, and Israelites to a common pattern of "myth and ritual" though, of course, this has been attempted by scholars during the past generation. When attention is concentrated on the question of how a particular pattern of myth arose (that is, the older history of religions question), it is apparent that myths had differing accents owing to the peculiar geographical location, political history, and economic problems of the historical community or group in question. Hence scholars have observed that a Babylonian myth, like the Enuma Elish, reflects a rather dynamic, conflict-torn understanding of Reality which was occasioned by the precarious historical position of Babylonia in relation to conditioning geographical and economic factors, as well as the political situation occasioned by the transition from Sumerian culture to the order of the state of Hammurabi.¹³ Egyptian myth, on the other hand, seems to reflect a more static understanding of Reality. As Henri Frankfort has observed, the changes that are important are those which manifest the fundamental order given in creation.¹⁴ This static view of the universe was surely conditioned by the geographical and political situation of Egypt, where the stability of life was symbolized and guaranteed by man's dependence upon the daily circuit of the sun (cf. Ps. 19: 4c-6; also the influence of the Hymn to the Aton upon Ps. 104) and the annual overflowing of the Nile. A similar observation could be made regarding Canaanite myth (as found pre-eminently in Ugaritic literature) which reflects the peculiar situation of an agricultural people in an area where life was dependent upon the rainy seasons, rather than the inundation of great rivers. Naturally, this kind of myth would have an existential appeal to other peoples, like the Israelites, who came into the area. As to the Hittites, it is not clear to me how their myths (for example,

¹³ The Enuma Elish myth in its present form establishes the finality of the power of Marduk, and therefore of the Babylonian state. While dependent upon the older Sumerian form of the myth, the later myth shows how the older gods are superseded by the younger gods (especially Marduk), and thus the balance of political power is shifted.
¹⁴ See especially his comments in Ancient Egyptian Religion (1948), pp. 49ff.

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the Telipinus myth) functioned in the context of the political realities of a people who were more or less locked behind the mountains of Asia Minor. Whatever existential power Hittite myth and ritual had in that area was evidently not widely influential beyond their immediate borders. For although Canaan was known as the land of the Hittites and other pre-Israelite peoples, the major influence of the Hittites upon Israelite traditions seems to have been by way of a political treaty form (the so-called suzerainty treaty form) ¹⁵ which provided an analogy for the understanding of Israel's covenant relationship.

It seems, then, that myth, when viewed phenomenologically, shows that generic man has a "capacity" to evince profound ontological crises and to project them in mythical representation. Yet, as Herberg has pointed out to me, such a generic man is actually an abstraction; as a matter of fact, "man" is always a historical man whose myth-making takes place under appropriate historical and social conditions. This raises the question, to which we must return at the end of this study, as to what is left of the allegedly universal human meaning of myth after mythical forms have been appropriated by Israel.

If the mythical understanding of Reality was conditioned by historical (that is, geographical, sociological, economic) factors in the above-mentioned cases, we may ask how Israel's peculiar historical situation as a "people" conditioned her use of mythopoeic language. For the moment, I am bracketing out any "normative" understanding of Israel's faith which (a' la Walther Eichrodt) set Israel apart from her neighbors. Even from a phenomenological approach, it is difficult to see how the phenomenon of Israel can be put under the same category as the manifestations of human spirituality in Egypt, Babylonia, Canaan, or the Hittite empire. After all, scientific study has to allow for the appearance of the unprecedented and the novel. It is significant that Eliade's phenomenological approach, which draws upon data from the whole realm of human experience without regard to historical factors, admittedly breaks down at one point. At the outset of his study, Eliade recognizes that the man who stands in the Hebrew-Christian tradition has a different understanding of Reality, and hence a different self-understanding, than so-called archaic man who readily belongs within the spirituality

¹⁵ See the studies by George E. Mendenhall, Klaus Baltzer, Dennis J. McCarthy, et al.

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represented by "universal" mythical thinking.¹⁶ It remains to be seen whether Israel's faith is actually an exception to the general rule. However, Eliade's observation is a warning against making too much of generalizations drawn from allegedly universal human experience.

III

The appearance of a unique or exceptional phenomenon does not necessarily stand in contradiction to a phenomenological effort to display the essential features of what appears, that is, to "tell it as it is." The appearance of the historically unique could lead to a commendable sobriety, as in the case of Martin Noth's The History of Israel. At the beginning of this scientific study Noth admits that "Israel," despite its similarities with other contemporary peoples, is nevertheless "a stranger in the world of its own time, a stranger wearing the garments and behaving in the manner of its age, yet separate from the world it lived in." Consequently, he says, "at the very center of the history of 'Israel' we encounter phenomena for which there is no parallel at all elsewhere, not because the material for comparison has not yet come to light but because so far as we know, such things have simply never happened elsewhere." ¹⁷ This is an unusual statement to stand at the beginning of a study which rigorously attempts to bracket out any specific theological bias. It is, nevertheless, scientifically honest to let the phenomenon of Israel appear as it is.

Here we must go beyond the limits of the methodology to which Noth has committed himself in his History of Israel and venture into the realm of biblical theology. It is hard to see how Israel's existence as a "stranger" in the ancient world could be understood from any other viewpoint than her special apprehension of Divine Reality, an apprehension which is concentrated in the Name (Yahweh). Israel's faith is grounded, in the first instance, not upon the general human condition in the face of Divine Reality, but rather in a novel apprehension of Divine Reality which bad as its effect the constitution of a "peculiar people," the 'am Yahweh. This

¹⁶ He writes, "The chief difference between the man of the archaic and traditional societies and the man of the modern societies with their strong imprint of judaeo-Christianity lies in the fact that the former feels himself indissolubly connected with the Cosmos and the cosmic rhythms, whereas the latter insists that he is connected only with History." Cosmos and History (1959), p. vii.
¹⁷ Noth, The History of Israel (rev, ed., 1960), pp. 2f.

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sense of strangeness is characteristic of Israel from an early time (cf. Num. 23: 9; Ex. 33: 16); and the role of a peculiar people in the world was inherited and transformed by the Christian church. Indeed, regardless of the problems which arise in understanding the relation of the Old Testament to the New, the bond which unites the Testaments is more impressive than the gap which separates them. In some sense it must be said that the biblical faith represents a radical discontinuity with the religio-historical consciousness of the ancient world, though at the same time it establishes essential connections with man's universal experience.

This is the issue to which Arend van Leeuwen addresses himself in his book, Christianity in World History. He maintains that the situation in the world does not conform to the expectation expressed by C. R. Northrup in The Meeting of East and West, that is, a mutual interaction of the faiths of East and West. The West is not being easternized, except in a most superficial sense; rather, the whole world is being westernized. Van Leeuwen views the process of westernization as the providential working of God in human history (not a cultural imperialism!), for in this way the values, historical attitude, and style of existence rooted in the Christian tradition are being mediated to all mankind, though in a secularized, broken, and even distorted form. To understand the impact of Christianity upon a revolutionary world, he turns to the Bible and especially to Israel as the bearer of the divine purpose. "The people of Israel," he writes "do not constitute one among many species of mankind. Rather is mankind to be understood in the light of the history of Israel." "¹⁸ Further, he maintains that the heart of the struggle between "Israel" and "the nations" was a zealous antagonism between Yahweh and the gods that is, between Israel's historically grounded faith and the mythical view of reality which was fundamentally homogeneous throughout the ancient world, despite diversities of expression. He shows how Israel, when confronting the nations, borrowed heavily from mythical patterns (myths of Creation, Paradise, Flood, Tower of Babel, Kingship); yet in the Torah, he observes, Israel brought these elements into the service of a new understanding of Divine Reality, which even today is a revolutionary ferment in world history.

Without going into the major thesis of van Leeuwen's book, the

¹⁸ Arend Theodoor van Leeuwen, Christianity in World History (1964), p. 53.

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question may be raised as to whether myth and history may be simply set over against each other sharply in this manner. If myth is defined as a "dramatic-historiform presentation of aspects of human existence in the face of God, man, and the world" (Herberg), then the "sacred history" of Israel seems to function linguistically like the sacred stories (myths) of Babylonia, Egypt, or Canaan.¹⁹ Is the story which unfolds in the Torah history or myth? Oscar Cullmann argues that in the Bible the myths of beginning-time and end-time are "historicized," that is, they are brought into the context of a historical presentation which is anchored in a selection of particular historical events.²⁰ Johannes Pedersen, on the other hand, argues that the "Passover Legend" in Exodus 1-15 is told, not for the sake of giving "the correct exposition of ordinary events but, on the contrary, to describe history on a higher plane, mythical exploits which make of the people a great people, nature subordinating itself to this purpose." ²¹ In the latter case, we should speak of a "mythicizing" of history. Indeed, this mythicizing process may have started very early in the history of Israel's traditions as the Israelite story was told and retold at cultic festivals. "Even in the cult of the [tribal] league," Frank Cross observes, "themes of mythological origin can be detected, standing in tension with themes of historical memory or enhancing redemptive events by assimilating them to cosmic events." ²²

Admittedly, the sharp distinction often drawn between "mythical" and "historical" needs reconsideration. Phenomenologists can speak of myth as "true history" (cf. Pettazzoni); and theologians can speak of Israel's Heilsgeschichte as "mythical." Indeed, Bultmann's complaint is that the Heilsgeschichte is, as Robert Funk puts it, "inherently mythological" and therefore "biblical language must be deobjectified or existentialized in order to make its intent clear." ²³ Bultmann's negative conclusion, however, does not necessarily fol-

¹⁹ This seems to be the argument of W. Taylor Stevenson in his History as Myth, for he observes that "the myth of history shares in what we take to be the formal characteristics of myths." He argues that "mythic" history also purports to be man's "true history," that it calls for decision in relation to historical events which are not demonstrably true, and that it provides certain linguistic images, based on originating events, which enable us to apprehend Divine Reality. Yet see Herberg's critical review, referred to in note 3.
²⁰ Oscar Cullmann, "The Connection of Primary Events and End Events with the New Testament Redemptive History," The Old Testament and Christian Faith (1963), B. W. Anderson, ed., pp. 115-123.
²¹ Johannes Pedersen, Israel: Its Life and Culture, III-IV (1940); appendix on "The Crossing of the Reed Sea and the Paschal Legend," pp. 728ff.
²² Frank M. Cross, Jr., "The Divine Warrier in Israel's Early Cult," in Biblical Motifs, ed. by Alexander Altmann (1966), pp, 11-30. The quotation is from p. 18; italics mine.
²³ Funk, op. cit, p. 22,

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low from the premise, once serious attention is given to the intent and function of the stories and "images" (motifs) that were normative for Israel's faith.²⁴

IV

It is noteworthy that Israel, when she recounted the story of her life, considered some "images" to be more crucial than others. The motifs associated with the Exodus (patriarchal promise, deliverance from Egypt, victory at the Sea of Reeds, guidance in the wilderness, covenant at Sinai, inheritance of the land) constitute the focus of one major stream of tradition, and this language is dominant in the Deuteronomistic history (Deuteronomy-II Kings). Moreover, the motifs associated with the Davidic kingdom (the anointing of David, the centrality of Zion, the Temple as the central sanctuary) constitute another focus, and this imagery is dominant in the Chronicler's history (Ezra-Nehemiah, I-II Chronicles). These historical motifs were decisive for Israel's understanding of God and her covenant relation to him. To be sure, Israel could draw freely upon mythical imagery in elaborating the linguistic forms normative for her faith. But this was not a weak and spineless syncretism. Israel was highly selective in the way she appropriated mythical materials from the environment. At some points the lines were drawn sharply. In a time when Canaanite mythical elements had a powerful influence (as evidenced from early psalms used in Israelite worship, for example, Ps. 29), prophets like Elijah intolerantly announced the jealous claim of Yahweh, the God who had brought his people out of the land of Egypt. In one sense the conflict between Yahweh and Baal was a conflict over the "images" of the religious imagination. Some images were appropriated by Israel; others were flatly rejected.

Considering the intensity of this struggle over pagan imagery, great doubt is cast upon the view of Jungian interpreters who maintain that Israel's knowledge of God was shaped by images which have their source in the unconscious deep. Jung's method is phenomenological. He deals with the phenomena of psychic life as they appear throughout the entire range of human experience, including of course the Judaeo-Christian tradition. He examines not only the

²⁴ The semantic distinction between "images" and "motifs" needs more careful consideration. "Images" (for example, the sacred marriage or the raising up of the serpent in the wilderness) do not need to be "historically grounded." However, "motifs," as used in this context, are essential to the history which Israel remembers, even though they are used imaginatively (for example, Second Isaiah's use of the Exodus as a type of the New Exodus).

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data of the personal unconscious, but also the deepest layers of the collective unconscious as attested in the materials of dreams, fantasies, and visions. Moreover, the psychic data are also found in myths, whose symbolism allegedly exposes the universal human condition. Most important for our purpose is his theory of archetypes-the instinctive responses made at the deepest unconscious level to certain situations, or "psychological processes transformed into pictures.²⁵ " The number of Jungian archetypes is said to be relatively limited, corresponding to the "possibilities of typical fundamental experiences" such as human beings have had from the beginning of time. As human responses in picture-language, the motives of the archetypal images are said to be the same in all cultures. Thus Jung's analysis is syncretistic. For instance, the archetype of the "Great Mother" is found to be present in the soul of modern man as in mythical times. Basic psychic motives are portrayed in the images of Prometheus as the stealer of fire, the Virgin Birth, the myths of Creation, the fall from Paradise, the sacrificial mysteries, the dismembering of Osiris, and others. "The sum of the archetypes," says Jacobi, "signifies thus for Jung the sum of all the latent potentialities of the hyman psyche-an enormous, inexhaustible store of ancient knowledge concerning the most profound relations between God, man, and the cosmos. To open this store to one's own psyche, to wake it to new life and to integrate it with consciousness, means therefore nothing less than to take the individual out of his isolation and to incorporate him in the eternal cosmic process." ²⁶

A penetrating critique of Jung's depth psychology has been given by Martin Buber who points out that the fatal weakness, from the standpoint of biblical faith, is that Jung advocates a religion of "pure psychic immanence"; for "he conceives of God not as a Being or Reality to which a psychical content corresponds, but rather as this content itself." ²⁷ Moreover, an analysis which eclectically lumps together the myths of the mother-goddess with distinctively biblical motifs fails to take account of one significant fact: Israel's faith protested vehemently against certain pagan "archetypes." To a modern psychologist, the biblical imagery may seem psychologically inade-

²⁵ See Jolan Jacobi, The Psychology of Jung (1943), pp. 40ff. Note that Mircea Eliade distinguishes his use of "exemplary models," "paradigms," "archetypes" from the archetypes of C. J. Jung. See the preface to Cosmos and History, pp. vii-ix.
²⁶ Jolan Jacobi, op. cit., pp 46-47. The results of this analysis for biblical interpretation may be seen in Jung's Answer Job (1954).
²⁷ Martin Buber, The Eclipse of God (1952), pp. 104-122,171-176.

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quate in that it gives no place to the "motherly" image, and it may seem that Roman Catholicism, with its veneration of Mary, is more satisfying. But the repudiation of the mother-goddess by the prophets was based on their insight that the view of Reality evoked by that image was incompatible with Israel's historical faith. A kind of cultural syncretism was allowed, but only at the expense of the capitulation of the gods to the sole and jealous authority of Yahweh and the subordination of all pagan imagery to the motifs which were crucial for Israel's understanding of Reality. Hosea, for instance, boldly appropriated the image of the sacred marriage, but he transformed its existential meaning by speaking of a historical marriage between Yahweh and his people Israel at the time of, the Exodus. Similarly, Second Isaiah invoked the ancient myth of the .slaying of the dragon, known as Rahab or Yamm, to portray Yahweh's creation of his people at the time of the Exodus from Egypt (Isa. 51: 9-1 1), the event which was for the prophet a historical type of the New Exodus (Creation). ²⁸

The primary "images" which shaped Israel's religious consciousness did not arise out of the reservoir of pagan myths or from the collective unconscious which expresses itself in universal archtypes. Rather, biblical imagination was inspired by certain "normative" motifs which were actually given to Israel through her own unique, historical experience. The creative power of these crucial motifs may be seen in the formation of the Pentateuchal tradition. The sequence of historical events, expressed in nuce in the early credos, formed the basis of the emerging tradition: the promise to the fathers, the deliverance from Egypt, the Sinai covenant, the testing in the wilderness, the inheritance of the land .²⁹ Israel's tradition did not arise eclectically but was shaped to a profound degree by the creative power of given historical motifs, chief of which was, the Exodus. These motifs gathered unto themselves traditions once independent, were recapitulated in new historical situations, were supplemented by still other motifs born out of Israel's history (for example, the traditions of the Davidic covenant), and attracted pagan images which, in the process of appropriation, were transformed to enhance the Israelite story with a cosmic and universal meaning.

²⁸ See my essay, "Exodus Typology in Second Isaiah," in Israel's Prophetic Heritage (1962), ed. by B. W. Anderson and Walter J. Harrelson, pp. 177-195; also Frank M. Cross, "The Divine Warrior," loc. cit., pp- 27-30.
²⁹ See Martin Noth, A History of Pentateuchal Traditions (1970).

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V

To speak of these fundamental motifs as "normative" is an oblique reference to Israel's role as a peculiar people whose history was, according to biblical testimony (for example, Gen. 12: 1-3; Isa. 4055), the chosen medium of God's self-revelation. Due consideration must be given to the fact that in the Bible, as we have noticed, the movement is not from the generic human situation to Israel's history, but just the opposite. The whole human situation, and indeed the cosmos itself, is viewed in the light of God's revelation to Israel. Hence the stories in Genesis 1-1 1, which deal with the general human condition, are a retrospective preface to Israel's Heilsgeschichte. Properly, this universal portrayal is an extrapolation out of Israel's particular understanding of her relation to Divine Reality.

Israel did not say a flat "no" to the surrounding culture where myth, in the setting of cultic enactment, provided "the original bond between the linguistic and the mythico-religious consciousness." ³⁰ Israel's appropriation of mythical language from her neighbors was a qualified endorsement of the intention of mythical language to present man's existence in relation to Being. On the other hand, Israel did not say a simple "yes" to the surrounding culture; for the starting point was the particular revelation of Divine Reality in the Name (Yahweh), the Name so holy that all other designations of deity ('El,'Elohim, Shaddai,'El'Elyon, Rock, etc.) were subordinate to or epithets of this God who makes a jealous (zealous) claim upon the allegiance of his people.³¹

In his Bampton Lectures entitled The Glass of Vision (1948) Austin Farrer dealt with the relation between God's self-revelation and man's imagination, or his ability to know God in terms of images. He observes that running through the gospels are certain "dominant images" in terms of which Jesus' ministry was understood: the Kingdom of God, the Son of Man, the Suffering Servant, Israel with his twelve sons, the Covenant, etc. Without these images, he says, Christ's ministry would not be "supernatural" revelation but only instruction in piety and morals (p. 42). "The great images interpreted the events of Christ's ministry, death, and resurrection, and

³⁰ The phrase is from Ernst Cassirer, Language and Myth, p. 44f., who in this context discusses the primordial power of the Word and the mythical matrix out of which all symbolic forms arise.
³¹ Significantly, in the Old Testament the title Baal is not accepted as an epithet for Yahweh. Moreover, Yahweh has no consort, for the whole dimension of masculine-feminine relationship within the divine realm is repudiated from the outset.

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the events interpreted the images: the interplay of the two is revelation. Certainly the events without the images would be no revelation at all, and the images without the events would remain shadows on the clouds" (p. 43). He goes on to say that we could not know God at all unless our finite experience provided analogies in terms of which he could be apprehended. Without images to reflect his light, his revelation would pass through us completely "as perpendicular light through a pane of perfect glass" (pp. 86 f.). "When finite objects happen to have been brought into such a mental focus that they are capable of acting as symbols of the infinite, then the mind's power to know the infinite leaps into actualization, seeing the finite in the infinite, and the infinite in the finite" (p. 90). He is careful to point out that while the images are "authoritatively communicated," the images themselves are not what is primarily revealed, but are only the instruments of revelation. "Divine truth," he says, "is supernaturally communicated to man in an act of inspired thinking which falls into the shape of certain images" (p. 57). ³²

Although Farrer's theory of "inspired thinking" has led him into extremes of typological thinking,³³ he has drawn attention to a significant point: the revelation of God, as attested in Scripture, is shaped by dominant historical images (motifs) like the Exodus and the Davidic kingship, so much so that to "de-imagize" Scripture would be to empty it of its central theological content. The revelation of God did not come to Israel as a bolt out of the blue. It came to a people who, in the power of religious imagination, understood Divine Reality and the meaning of human existence in and through the great historical motifs which were given in their history. In the Old Testament, it is pre-eminently the event of the Exodus which captured the imagination and provided the creative power for the formation and successive reinterpretation of traditions which finally issued in the completed Pentateuch. It is not accidental that in the Pentateuch the faith of Israel finds normative expression in the form of a story wherein major themes, pre-eminently the Exodus, were elaborated with ever-new overtones as the tradition was reap-

³² Cf. Paul Tillich's discussion of the knowledge of God, Systematic Theology, I (1951), pp. 238-241, especially his observation: "Religious symbols are double-edged. They are directed toward the infinite which they symbolize and toward the finite through which they symbolize it. They force the infinite down to finitude and the finite up to infinity. They open the divine for the human and the human for the divine" (p. 240).
³³ In A Study of St. Mark (1951), Farrer tries to show that the Gospel of Mark falls into symbolic patterns, and he adduces many Old Testament "types" to illumine the episodes of Jesus' ministry.

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propriated by succeeding generations. Yet it must be said emphatically that the revelation attested to in Scripture is not mediated through "images" which arise out of man's reason or out of the generic experience of mankind; rather, revelation is mediated through a history, whose motifs are rooted in a dramatic presentation which makes a claim upon the existence of all men. In a fundamental sense, the Bible bears witness to a "historical" revelation which is "datable."

VI

In conclusion, I am reminded of some remarks made by my colleague, Daniel Migliore, during a recent panel discussion on the place of the Bible in the modern world. The fundamental hermeneutical task, he said, is the appropriation of "key stories, images, and metaphors which belong to the Christian story," which "make an impact upon the shape, style, and direction of human life," and which have the creative power to be "person-forming and community-forming." The Bible, he went on to say, provides a wealth of creative images which come to focus supremely in God's action in Jesus Christ. The "demythologists," he observed, are wrong in that they attempt to get rid of the imagery instead of recovering its creative power. On the other hand, the "Christo-imperialists" are wrong in that they stress the biblical imagery to the point of not being able to deal with modern images (or, I may add, myths) which are present in a pluralistic society. He remarked, rightly I believe, that people in our culture are searching for new images which can "provide shape and style for life" as a counterforce to those things which dehumanize man. The hermeneutical problem, then, is how to take seriously the "normative" character of the biblical imagery (motifs) and the whole story which culminates in God's action in Christ, yet not to treat the biblical imagery as "exclusive imagery" which has no contact with the images and myths of our culture. The question is: How does the normative imagery of the biblical faith interact with metaphors that come out of our own personal and communal life? ³⁴

³⁴ In this connection see the illuminating article by James H. Smylie, "On Jesus, Pharaohs, and the Chosen People: Martin Luther King as Biblical Interpreter and Humanist," Interpretation XXIV (1970), pp. 74-91. King, it is pointed out, turned to the Exodus motif as "an archetypal experience," one which provided "the metaphorical language" for understanding not only black experience but the struggle of all oppressed peoples for justice and full humanity.

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This, it seems to me, is a contemporary statement of the process of interaction which we can see going on in the Bible, where the linguistic forms of Israel's faith came into contact with the myths which functioned with primordial power in the surrounding culture. The dominant or normative motifs of Israel's faith, given to her in the concreteness of her history, were not "exclusive." Rather, they were filled with the creative power which attracted and appropriated the imagery of the surrounding world of myth. As a result, the revelation of God to Israel was presented more fully in its cosmic scope, and it established firm contact with the human situation to which the ancient myths, in various ways and degrees, bore witness. Yet we must emphasize again that this was not an eclectic but rather a selective appropriation. Not all of the imagery of the mythical world could be appropriated, as though all myths bore witness to a universal human experience of which the biblical tradition was only an illustration. Some myths had to be flatly rejected. Here we may ponder the modern conflict between the biblical faith and, for example, the Nazi myth, the Communist myth, or even the American myth. In other words, human existence is perverted by sin, and this is reflected in the projections of man's ontological concerns in the form of myth. The "interaction" between the normative motifs of the biblical faith and the images and myths of modern culture may result in outright conflict, as in biblical times. In other cases, mythical elements may be appropriated to enrich and enhance the biblical faith.

We must conclude, then, that phenomenological analysis of myth encounters a major problem when the literature of biblical faith is viewed in its own terms. As we have said, the biblical tradition does not pretend to view man in abstraction, in some generic or universal sense. It knows only the man who exists historically. Such a man has the capacity to project in myth the ontolog ical crises of his existence, but he is always conditioned by the historical circumstances in which he has his being. When the Old Testament begins with stories which transcend Israel and lay claim to universal human relevance, the intention is to say that any man, who comes to share with Israel the historical meaning which she confesses, will know the truth of the confession of Israel's God. Yet such a "universalism" requires a conversion (cf. Isa. 2: 2-4; Mic. 4: 1-4; the poems of Second Isaiah, etc.), that is, the acknowledgment that the revelation

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to which Israel bears witness is actually the truth of all human existence, to which the myths bear witness in a sincere but distorted form. For it is fundamental to the biblical witness that man is not urged by his "ontological thirst" to flee from the "terrors of history" (to use Eliade's expression); rather, the God of Israel summons man to find himself in the covenant community and to be a responsible participant in a historical drama which, from beginning to end, is governed by a divine wisdom and grace surpassing human understanding.