. . . myth, in the best and most
subtle meaning of the word, refers to symbolic narratives that address cosmic
realities of chaos and order. In the ancient world, myth has to do with those
deep, foundational realities and archetypal relations between heaven and earth
that order human existence but are difficult to state directly and so are
usually invoked in symbols. . . . Any division between ‘myth’ and ‘history’ is
a modern idea that would have been foreign to ancient writers – but just such a
division used to be common in biblical studies, such that the literature of the
ANE was placed firmly in the category of myth and the Old Testament described
in contrast as history. There are,
however, so many examples from ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt of historical
events being described in mythic ways that this distinction is untenable and has
largely been abandoned. Ancient Semites simply do not think of myth and history
in dichotomous ways. Furthermore, there are enough connections between the Old
Testament and the literature of the surrounding cultures that it is reasonable
to assume that biblical authors would not have made a strong disjunction
between what we might dismiss as ‘mythic’ and what is real – ‘mythic’ here
referring to cosmic action on God’s part to establish order and beat back chaos
and darkness, uncleanness and death.
All of this is to say that
scholarly literature on myth uses the word in a very different sense from its
meaning in colloquial English. . . . To register these nuances about the term ‘myth’
is in no way to reduce the Bible to one more human religious production from
the ANE or to imply it is no different from ancient pagan myths or idolatrous
texts. In fact, study of the literature of the ANE reveals as many differences
between it and the Old Testament as it does similarities. For example, although
YHWH thunders in the heavens (Ps. 18:13) and makes the storm clouds his chariot
(Ps. 104:3) just as Baal does, he also far transcends Baa’s limitations, even
defeating death (Isa. 25:6-9) – something Baal never accomplished. (Eric
Ortlund, Piercing Leviathan: God’s Defeat of Evil in the Book of Job [New
Studies in Biblical Theology 56; Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2021], 7-8)
