Discuss Sproul's "Introduction," specifically the way she presents creation stories and the concept of "myth."  From this academic perspective, what is "myth" and "mythic thought"?  What are some of its characteristics?  What questions do myths address?  How does this relate to the way you may have used or heard the word "myth" used in common speech?

     I'm going to be honest in opening my discussion of Barbara Sproul's “Introduction” to Primal Myths- I found it just a bit tedious and over-long. That's not to say that she doesn't share some really strong insights, because she does. And I'm willing to forgive her excess of zeal, since an introduction, especially for an anthologist, is their one chance to be a little self-indulgent. But that's the first discussion point I'll raise: did anyone else find these thirty pages a difficult read? I likened it to finding a small assortment of very useful needles... in a fairly large haystack.

     To Sproul's credit, she has researched and analyzed her subject to great depth, and there is no doubt that creation stories are an integral part of human existence and that they shape our lives profoundly to the present day. The days of the week themselves are named after mythical entities, as are some of our months, and most every object in the solar system and beyond. Wars have been waged for millennia, are happening now, and will continue in the future- all because different groups of humans disagree on who/what the creator is and how we're supposed to interact with “it/him/her”.

     I think one of her best statements regarding creation stories is her summation near the end (p. 29) in which she states that “They encourage people to understand themselves, physically, mentally, and spiritually, in the context of the cyclic flow of being and not-being”.[1] We all need a reason to live, and to find some way that we fit into the grand scheme. We realize, especially as we age, how fleeting our time is, and how impossible it is to accomplish and learn all we would hope to. Why such a short life? Why all the seemingly needless injustices and tragedies and diseases inflicted upon some, but not others? These and similar universal questions about the human condition gave rise to the “gods”. You can turn a verse in Genesis on its head, inverting a few nouns, and it becomes perhaps even more accurate than the original: “So man created God in his own image, in the image of man created he God...” [2]

     From the academic perspective, “myth” and “mythic thought” become a very fertile source of studying humanity across a wide range of disciplines- history, anthropology, sociology, linguistics, and many others. Myths arise from our most basic questions, so what could be more telling about a particular culture than the answers they come up with through mythic thought? The Mayans of ancient South America worshipped maize. How fitting- it was their most important crop, and they literally lived and died based on its success from year to year. And when scholars consider all the various world myths as a whole, they can delineate all the patterns, trends, commonalities, and differences among them.

     One thing is certain for me personally: I can tell very early on that Sproul's anthology and this course are going to broaden the way I think about myth, as opposed to how I and most others would use it in ordinary speech. This is going to go a lot deeper than the smattering of Greek and Roman myths we remember from grade school.

[1] Sproul, Barbara C. ed. Primal Myths; Creation Myths Around the World. New York: Harper Collins.1979. Print.

[2] Genesis 1:27. King James Version. (for the original).