MYTHOLOGY AS REVELATION

 

In past ages he allowed ail nations to go their own way; and yet he has not left you without some clue to his nature.

   Romans: 14:16

St Paul. in his missionising. did not have an easy time of things. He was laughed at, spat upon, beaten up. lashed almost to death, stoned, shipwrecked, imprisoned and finally - we assume - beheaded by the Emperor Nero.

     So his experience at Lystra must have been disconcerting. He and Barnabas healed a lame man. And the people worshipped them as gods.

      Paul, of course, responded in a typically Pauline way: tearing his robes and declaring his own mere humanity. And then his Jewish enemies arrived, stirred up the Greeks, and Paul was back with the familiar scenario of being stoned etc before his ejection from the city as a supposed corpse.

     But why did the initial situation arise? What made the difference?

     What follows is sheer speculation, but I think the answer may lay in a marshy. unpopulated area, and an ancient temple on a hill with an oak and a linden tree growing outside it: their unpruned branches touching, hose who have already identified the tale in question will forgive, 1 hope, my synopsis of the story of Baucis and Philemon.

The old couple lived on a hill: somewhat indeterminately identified as somewhere in Phrygia. One evening, two strangers approached the village: a tall bearded man. and a younger one who moved vcry lightly.  

     Despite the sacred laws of hospitality, the lateness of the hour discouraged their implementation. Rejected at one doorway after another the two travellers finally arrived at the shabby cottage of Baucis and Philemon, half way up the hillside, and the old couple took them in.

     Sensing a certain presence about their guests, they broke out the tablecloth reserved for special occasions, levelled the table with a piece of slate etc. and put out the best food they had available. The bearded guest drank deeply from the wine bowl and passed it across to the younger one, who in turn drank enough to empty it. But when he passed it across to his hosts, they found the bowl was still full.

     Perhaps they did not even need to taste. Simply scenting the fragrance of the nectar, they knew, then, that the gods had come among them.

     In terror, Baucis ran to offer them the only goose; but, escaping, it took refuge between the strangers: who forbade the sacrifice. Was it really thought the gods had need of human food? That was not the purpose of the visit.

     Zeus then took the old couple outside to show them the former village that had now become a lake; and their former cottage now transformed into a temple. Granted divine favour, their wish was to be the guardians of the new temple, and for simultaneous death.

     And as the story goes, they were turned in time into the two trees that grew in front of the temple; their branches touching.

 

     Eventually the lake subsided into marsh that remained uninhabited: to serve as a reminder and a warning. The gods had visited, and found humanity wanting. And one day, they might come back again.

And then, one day, two strangers appeared: a tall, grave, bearded man; and a smaller, excitable one who did the talking. And they performed an act of healing.

     And the word went out - for who would wish to be taken unawares a second time? - that the gods had returned. And the people worshipped them.

Many readers. 1 am sure, will have seen the Biblical echoes - maybe half a dozen - in the story. The question then arises as to what interpretation we should place upon the similarity.

      Scepticism will see it - my own view for many years - as another instance of how ancient mythologies absorbed each other's ideas: including that mythology which we once thought of as divine revelation. For the cross-fertilisation of cultures is an undoubted fact: to deny it is not faith but ignorance. It still fascinates me. for instance, as to the cultural interactions needed to transmute Homer's Polyphemus the Cyclops into the Black Giant in the Third Voyage of Sindbad.

Revelation as mythology. But it is possible, of course, to turn this the other way round. What if mythology - some of it - had, conversely, been a vehicle for divine revelation?

     In the later prophets, we have the conception that God - while speaking directly to the Jews - is also revealing himself indirectly to all the nations of the world. And what are we to make of the cryptic comment - cryptic even by the standards of Christ's utterances - in John 10, 16: "But I have other sheep that are not of this fold."?

     Perhaps, in the best of Greek mythology, God spoke: preparing the pagan mind for the coming of Christ.

And so, perhaps, with the arrival of Paul and Barnabas, the gods did indeed return; although not at all in the way that the people had been expecting.