Foundations of Mythology Essay

Foundations of Mythology

University of Phoenix

Dustin Joines

HUM 105

        All across the world the word “myth” has many different meanings. The most popular meaning of the word is a tale or a story. According to Google, when searching for the phrase “myth in today’s terms,” results like sleeping myths, ten myths about your diet and myths about love and sex are returned. The word myth is generally used as something to say things are false, generalized as falsehoods or tales.

        Without myths, so many cultures would not exist as they are today.  According to Leonard, S. & McClure, M. (2004), myths are ancient narratives that attempt to answer the enduring and fundamental human questions such as “Where do we come from?” “How did the world come to be?” and “Who are we are. In this instance, a myth could be described as a story that explains something about our lives or our culture. People came up with these myths or stories to explain the haunting questions of who we are, where we came from and what we are supposed to do with our lives. Myths also offer stories of magic and majestic wonder. This also fulfills the human want for power, knowledge and mystery.

        Myths across many different cultures can have very similar ideas.  In fact, some myths are exactly the same story with only different names for the gods or beings, yet still explaining the same details of how we came to be or how something in the world works. One of the main reasons that we have mythical themes that address such similar issues and universal themes is because we are all human. Essentially, we all have the same fundamental problems. Even though we may come from different parts of the world or even have different views, religions or cultures, we are all still humans that are trying to figure out where we came from, what we are here for and many other things like storms, fire, and other aspects of our life and culture.

There is a basic relationship between beliefs, knowledge, myths and religion. Religion is the belief in a being or set of beings that are all powerful and control certain aspects of life, while myths are stories or ancient narratives that possibly cover the same aspects that religion does, but are not as involved in our lives. Knowledge and belief walk hand in hand in their relationship. Without knowing the stories and myths, there could be no belief. All these together complete each other like a never-ending circle. You must know a myth or story to believe it, and if you believe it, you may choose to make it part of you beliefs or religion.