What do people truly believe? Do they base their lives on,
and make their important decisions by, what they know to be true or only on
what they think is true?
My contention is that myth is far more powerful to most
people than reality, and the main reason for saying this is that most people
have little idea that what they take to be real is actually myth. But does that
actually matter?
Religion
A myth has been defined (by James Feibleman, an American
writer and philosopher) as “a religion in which no one any longer believes”,
and that is worth thinking about. Every ancient civilization that developed
both writing and religion has bequeathed its mythology to later generations,
and those myths were what formed the basis of its religion. The Ancient Greeks
did actually believe that the gods, led by Zeus, lived on Mount Olympus.
And what about religious belief today? What is it based on?
In most cases, the answer is what is contained in its holy books, and for
Christianity that means the Old and New Testaments of the Bible – for Judaism
it is the Old Testament plus a number of other religious works. The Christian
and Jewish religions exist because its adherents take as fact certain things
that are contained in the Bible – Jews do not accept certain things in the New
Testament that Christians take as fact. For Jews, these Christian “facts” are
myths.
But how do we know that any of it is fact? Could not all of
it be myth? For example, the story of Moses leading the Hebrew slaves out of
Egypt towards the Promised Land is a very powerful story, but it only exists
within the pages of the Judaeo/Christian holy books. The Ancient Egyptians were
meticulous recorders of just about everything that went on under their
jurisdiction, but there is not a single word anywhere that refers to anyone
called Moses or to the existence of thousands of Hebrew slaves who suddenly
departed their territory (actually this could not have happened, because the
“land of Israel” was still part of Egypt at the time these events were supposed
to have taken place).
Likewise, there is only the sketchiest evidence that anyone
called Jesus ever existed, outside the pages of the New Testament. Virtually
every supposed confirmation of his existence outside the pages of the Bible is
open to severe criticism – even the often quoted mentions by Josephus are open
to extreme doubt.
However, these doubts do nothing to dent the faith of those
people who believe in them. The stories have “myth” written all over them, but
they are live myths instead of dead ones, because people still believe in them.
Politics
The role of myth in politics is extremely strong, and always
has been. When a king or emperor wanted to enthuse his people to go to war he
would spin the yarn that supported his case and make sure that the stories that
said the opposite were suppressed. The former were facts and the latter were
myths. When he wanted to justify his actions, he would make sure that his myth
was believed.
An example of the latter would be the commissioning by King
William I (the Conqueror) of the Bayeux Tapestry to perpetuate the myth that
his claim to the English crown was justified by the fact that King Harold had
broken a sacred oath to yield the throne to William on the death of Edward
the Confessor. But apart from the Tapestry there is no evidence to suggest that
such an oath was ever taken. That did not matter – what mattered was that the
myth was believed.
Modern politics is also full of myths, and the plethora of
“fake news” stories is confirmation of this. When a politician wants to gain
support for a point of view, spreading a mythical story is usually a good idea.
Adolf Hitler spread the “big lie” that the Jews would destroy Germany and must
therefore be expelled; the “Brexiteers” delight in the myth that the UK is
being swamped by immigrants from Europe when in fact they are essential to
maintaining public services. The list goes on.
When politics and religion combine
When politicians hold fast to religious myths they add an
extra dimension of confirmation that becomes almost impossible to break.
There is no better example of this than the situation in the
Middle East, where the rights of the State of of Israel are given far more
credence in the West – especially the United States – than those of the
Palestinians who had occupied the land of Palestine long before the foundation
of modern Israel in 1948.
The myth in question is that of the expulsion of the Jews in
70 AD by the Roman Emperor Titus. It is said that the Jewish nation was
scattered across Europe and elsewhere by the Romans and their “right to return”
was paramount, because of the sacred link between the people and the land.
However, a closer examination of the facts calls this
scenario into question. There is no evidence that the Romans expelled the Jews
from Palestine, although it is quite possible that some elite members of Jewish
society decided to leave after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. The
Romans did not expel whole populations when they conquered a territory – it
would hardly have been in their interests to do so.
A far more likely scenario is that the vast majority of the
Jewish people stayed put and endured Roman rule, much as they had done in earlier
times. The descendants of these people were subject to conquest in later
centuries by the forces of Islam and many would have converted to the new
religion. In other words, today’s Palestinian Arabs are far more likely to be
the true inheritors of the land that comprises modern Israel.
The vast majority of Jewish people today cannot claim
descent from anyone who ever lived in Biblical Palestine – almost all their
ancestors were converts to Judaism outside the Middle East.
However, that story does not fit the myth of a Jewish
diaspora with a God-given right to occupy the land of Israel, especially as the
myth has the backing of governments across the world.
What matters more?
What matters most to people is what they take most comfort
in believing. In other words, a comfortable myth will always take precedence
over a troublesome truth. Only when they stop believing will their beliefs –
religious, political or whatever – be recognized as the myths they usually are.
© John Welford
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