A Short History of Myth (2005)

This is interesting, although not exactly revelatory if you're interested in mythology and the like. I couldn't take it seriously after this section, though:

Why should a goddess have become so dominant in an aggressively male society? This may be due to an unconscious resentment of the female. The goddess of Catal Huyuk gives birth eternally, but her partner, the bull, must die. Hunters risked their lives to support their women and children. The guilt and anxiety induced by hunting, combined with frustration resulting from ritual celibacy, could have been projected onto the image of a powerful woman, who demands endless bloodshed. The hunters could see that women were the source of new life; it was they -- not the expendable males -- who ensured the continuity of the tribe. The female thus became an awe-inspiring icon of life itself -- a life that required the ceaseless sacrifice of men and animals.

...Which is not exactly the whole story, is it? Has this author heard of women dying in childbirth? I'm sure they did so plenty often in the Palaeolithic period. And the part about frustration from ritual celibacy, just, ugh. In this model she has the men voluntarily abstaining from sex and then blaming women for it. What?

Mind you, I know some men are perfectly capable of believing that, the whole idea just doesn't quite ring true for me as a model for society and religious belief.

Oh, and the idealisation of primitive belief over science is just. What? ( )

I really enjoyed this as a brief dip into one way of approaching mythology (though I did feel like it's more about approaching/appreciating religion as something that can enhance your life if you just stop worrying about those dang pesky untruthy bits). At a 159 pages, it's very short and not really much of a history, but it's a book that does present some food for thought and that's something I always appreciate. ( )

A disappointing book. The first two chapters deal with the paleolithic and neolithic periods, claiming that certain myths (those with a questing hero and an Earth Mother date back to this time. Unfortunately, Armstrong writes as if this was an established fact rather than a speculation. But this cannot be an established fact since the stories told before the invention of writing are unknowable.

Armstrong defines myth as a story about something which happened in the past and is experienced through a ritual context which makes it a present reality for those who believe in it. This runs into problems with the Abrahamic religions which stress the historicity of certain events such as the Exodus, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, and Mohammad's receipt of the Koran. I couldn't help but wonder whether she was taking the speculations and ideas of an intellectual elite as typical of the experience of the mass of people who went on performing rituals and believing in the historicity of events.

She then claims that ever since the European re-discovery of Greek philosophy in the Renaissance and the Enlightenment rational thinking (logos) and mythic thinking have been seen as opposing rather than complementary ways of thinking, to humanity's detriment even in the religious sphere.

Her final conclusion that the modern myth-makers are artists and novelists struck me as a bit too pat for a book which serves as an introduction to a series of novels based on myths. ( )

This isn't about actual myths per se but a look at the role of myth in society from prehistoric times to today. I do think that it was very readable and describes the changing nature of myth since prehistoric times. Including how the use of myth, as part of religion, helped people deal with life and how the split between religion and society has led to problems so that artists and writers are filling the gap left by the loss of mythology in our daily lives. But because it is so short there is no real depth to her discussion of the topic. ( )

This book was a quick, interesting read and it succeeded in sparking my interest in reading other comparative religion/mythology texts. While Armstrong is able to describe nuances in a multitude of beliefs, she tends to simplistically depict the recent past and present. I wondered a bit about some of the things she stated as fact and many of the references were secondary sources.

The dominant types of beliefs and reasons for the beliefs as well as their purpose are described for each of the ages – the Paleolithic, Neolithic, early civilizations, the Axial age, the post-Axial age and the great Western transformation. In the Paleolithic myths, the focus is on how they relate to hunting. The Sky God is found in a variety of religions and there are specific prohibitions and rituals related to hunting. A number of religions also depicted people as very close to the gods, with a lost paradise just out of sight. The Neolithic was an age for the gods of agriculture, with myths relating to violence, sexual fertility and renewal. The myths of the early civilizations portrayed the city as a divine place with the gods farther away than ever. In the Axial age, the major Western religions were developed and part of the struggle was defining themselves relative to the earlier beliefs. The main religions were developed further in the post-Axial age. Armstrong defines the great Western transformation from 1500 to the present and the focus is on the switch to logical, pragmatic thinking and the loss of the culture of belief.

By definition, this book had to simplify an enormous amount of material. Still, the author was able to incorporate a number of nuanced views of the beliefs in the earlier periods. I did wonder how much of this was her interpretation vs. based on evidence. Many of the sources seemed to be secondary. I can’t fault her for being somewhat more clearcut on cause and effect, before and after because there’s not enough time to go through all the evidence. For example, the author will say something like traumatic event X led to person Y reinterpreting this myth and writing Z. And saying something such as the myth is no longer relevant so people looked for something else is obviously not going to be as simple as that but those types of examples didn’t bother me too much.

It did bother me that she provided an overly simplified view of the present skepticism. There were a couple sentences that irritated me – one saying we had lost our appreciation for imaginative thinking and the other implying that the purpose of all religions today is to “get something” from the gods. I would have let this go if the last section hadn’t been what I considered overly reductive. For example, she says that we no longer have any mythic heroes to look up to as an example and cites “mythologized” figures such as Elvis and Princess Diana who can interest but not inspire. Would she say the same with other people such as MLK Jr, Gandhi or Mother Theresa – people who have also been heavily mythologized, but for their good deeds (with faults brushed away)? She also says the scientist/inventor is the new hero but that doesn’t always seem to be the case – political/ national figures still figure largely, as well artists and writers, and I don’t know where she’d put philosophers – many grapple with finding meaning in life, something she said is currently lacking, but the ones that were cited were usually quoted as anti-religious or individualistic.

Armstrong repeatedly mentions how in earlier periods ritual was very important and the myths were not taken literally. However, she discusses in the last section the death of myths and only briefly brings up the fact that some groups now believe that everything must be literally true instead of symbolic. Since this contradicts her many previous assertions, it was odd that she did not go into this more in depth. She also mentions destructive modern myths but that is also glossed over. Literary analysis that she provides with a mythical slant is interesting, but sometimes the criteria seems to be rigid. Probably most of my complaints are due to the fact that this age is ongoing while the others can be looked back on and summarized and that the modern era is the most familiar.

In the final pages, Armstrong answers the questions she poses – how will we live with meaning, learn compassion and find examples to follow? – with the reply that literature can fill the void of myth. Not going to disagree with that. ( )