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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
The relations between Christianity and mythical thought can hardly be presented in a few pages. For the fact is that their relations raise several quite separate problems. First of all, there is the equivocal use of the term “myth.” The earliest Christian theologians took the word in the sense that had become current some centuries earlier in the Greco-Roman world, i.e., “fable, fiction, lie.” They therefore refused to see a “mythical” figure in Jesus and a “myth” in the Messianic drama. From the second century on, Christian theologians had to defend the historicity of Jesus against the Docetists and the Gnostics as well as against the pagan philosophers. We shall presently see the arguments they employed to support their thesis and the difficulties they had to meet.
1 For what follows, see Robert M. Grant, The Earliest Lives of Jesus (New York, 1961), pp. 10 ff.
2 Grant, op. cit., p. 15. On Theon, see ibid., pp. 39 ff. Cf. also The Letter and the Spirit (London, 1957), pp. 120 ff., and Jean Pépin, Mythe et Allégorie. Les origines grecques et les contestations judéo-chrétiennes (Paris, 1958).
3 R. M. Grant, The Earliest Lives, p. 21.
4 Origen, De principiis 4, 2, 9, cited by Grant, op. cit., p. 65.
5 Grant, op. cit., p. 66.
6 Contra Celsum, I, 42, cited by Grant, p. 71.
7 Contra Celsum, II, 56-59, Grant, p. 75.
8 Cf. Grant, p. 93.
9 Cf. Grant, p. 78.
10 See R. M. Grant, op. cit., pp. 115-116, and Jean Daniélou, Message évan gélique et culture hellénistique aux IIe et IIIe siècles (Paris, 1961), pp. 251 ff.
11 Commentary on John, 20, 30, cited by Grant, p. 116.
12 M. Eliade, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, pp. 30-31. See also Allan W. Watts, Myth and Ritual in Christianity (London and New York, 1953); Olivier Clément, Transfigurer le Temps (Neuchâtel-Paris, 1959).
13 Cf. Erwin Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, vols. VII-VIII: Pagan Symbols in Judaism (New York, 1958); Jean Daniélou, Les symboles chrétiens primitifs (Paris, 1961).
14 Leopold Schmidt has shown that the agricultural folklore of Central Europe contains mythological and ritual elements that had vanished from classic Greek mythology even before the times of Homer and Hesiod; cf. L. Schmidt, Gestalt heiligkeit im bäuerlichen Arbeitsmythos (Vienna, 1952), especially pp. 136 ff.
15 Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, p. 104. On the messianic claims of Frederick II, cf. E. Kantorowitz, Frederick the Second, 1194-1250 (En glish trans., London, 1931), pp. 450 ff., 511 ff.; N. Cohn, pp. 103 ff.
16 Alphonse Dupront, "Croisades et eschatologie" (in Umanesimo e esote rismo. Atti del V Convegno Internazionale di Studi Umanistici, a cura di Enrico Castelli, Padua 1960, pp. 175-198), p. 177.
17 Paul Alphandéry and Alphonse Dupront, La chrétienté et l'idée de croisade, II (Paris, 1959), p. 118.
18 Ibid., p. 119.
19 Reinier, cited by P. Alphandéry and A. Dupront, op. cit., p. 120.
20 Annales Scheftlarienses, text cited by Alphandéry-Dupront, p. 123.
21 Texts cited by Alphandéry-Dupront, p. 127.
22 On the "Tafurs," cf. also Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, pp. 45 ff.
23 P. Alphandéry and A. Dupront, op. cit., p. 145.
24 Campanella's note to verse 207 of his Ecloga, cited by A. Dupront, "Croisades et eschatologie," p. 187.
25 Critical edition by Romano Amerio (Rome, 1955), p. 72; A. Dupront, op. cit., p. 189.
26 Ernesto Bonaiuti deserves the greatest credit for having begun the revival of Gioacchinian studies with his edition of the Tractatus super quatuor Evangelia (Rome, 1930) and his book Gioacchino da Fiore (Rome, 1931). Cf. also his two important articles: "Prolegomeni alla storia di Gioacchino da Fiore" (Ricerche Religiose, IV, 1928) and "Il misticismo di Gioacchino da Fiore" (ibid., V, 1929), reprinted in the posthumous volume Saggi di Storia del Cristianesimo (Vicenza, 1957), pp. 327-382. See also Ernst Benz, "Die Kategorien der religiösen Geschichts deutung Joachims" (Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 1931, pp. 24-111) and Ecclesia Spiritualis (Stuttgart, 1934).
27 Cf. Karl Löwith, Meaning in History, p. 208.
28 Karl Löwith, op. cit., p. 210, draws attention to the fact that this last work inspired Das dritte Reich by the Russo-German author H. Moeller van der Bruck. Cf. also Jakob Taubes, Abendländische Eschatologien (Bern, 1947), who compares Hegel's philosophy of history with Gioacchino da Fiore's.
29 Cf. Eliade, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, pp. 23-38.
30 Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, pp. 25-26.
31 Cf., for example, Coulton Waugh, The Comics (New York, 1947); Stephen Becker, Comic Art in America (New York, 1960); Umberto Eco, "Il Mito di Su perman" (in Demitizzazione e Imagine, a cura di Enrico Castelli, Padua, 1962, pp. 131-148).
32 Andrew Greeley, "Myths, Symbols and Rituals in the Modern World" (The Critic, Dec. 1961, Jan. 1962, vol. XX, No. 3, pp. 18-25), p. 19.
33 Ibid., p. 24.
