One of Clyde's latest hummingbird paintings.

You can see this one and several others

at Toma Sol Cafe at 301 West Washington Street

Mission Hills/Hillcrest

Nobody doubts the value of Bible stories and poetry as literature.  Some stories and poetry of the Old Testament can’t be dated precisely, but like all ancient literature there are clues that help with the dating. The oldest stories were written around a thousand years before the beginning of what is now referred to as the common era (BCE). For comparison, we know that the story poems attributed to a Greek poet named Homer were composed around 800 BCE and finally written down around 450 BCE; so the Old Testament Bible stories and the Greek myths were composed in the same part of the world at about the same time, and were passed along orally for a long time before they were written. 

The themes of both sets of stories are remarkably similar .  First, both traditions begin with stories which explain how the world began. Both contain well defined explanations for the creation of all things including humans.  The Greeks stories are built around the activities of a panoply of gods and demigods who interact with mortals.  The Judeo-Christian stories introduce one all-powerful good god and some lesser not-quite-god angels with one eternal “fallen” personality who is the explanation for all the evil in the created world. One huge difference is that the Greek stories are considered by just about everybody to be myths.  There is no embarrassment or risk in declaring Greek  stories to be myths.  Even Greek stories that have verifiable connections to historical people and places can be safely relegated to the literary classification of myth. After the Roman literary world adopted the Greek stories and gave many of the characters Latinate names, the stories in Latin were declared to belong in the mythology category. Not so with the Judeo-Christian stories.  Even the most preposterous of those stories are considered by fundamentalist Christians to have literally happened just the way they are described in “holy” scripture. 

Considering their traditional stories to be myths has always been unacceptable to the majority of practicing Jews, Christians, and Muslims.  Fundamentalist traditions have developed in all three groups; and to suggest that a story, any part of a story, is myth in either of these three traditions is enough to get a person shunned, excommunicated or even killed.  Recently when the Prophet Mohammad was portrayed in a cheap, clumsily written and unconvincingly produced film as being an ordinary man with pedestrian flaws, fundamentalist Islamist groups in several countries exploded into uncontrolled rage. People were killed in the riots, including the American ambassador in Libya. Christians and Jews around the world were quick to condemn the violent outbursts. There is obvious hypocrisy in the responses of some Christian and Jewish groups.Fundamentalists Christians and fundamentalist Jews have been known to foment into vigilante mobs when someone in their group becomes hysterical and begins screaming that their holy traditions or holy prophets or holy god has been defamed.  

It’s interesting that Santa Claus and Tinker Bell and anybody else’s religious icons are fair game for mythologizing, but it’s not O.K. to suggest that any of the stories, however fantastical, of “our” group could possibly be myths and therefore open to ridicule or comical skepticism.  

America is a country where it is possible to make fun of any religion, even the religion of one’s family and community, without having the action declared to be out of legal bounds.  Bill Maher can turn anybody’s religious beliefs and piety into a comedy routine on stage or on his TV program, and he won’t get into legal trouble. He may outrage fundamentalists in all religions, and he may even make nominal Christians uncomfortable, but he is allowed under the law to say whatever he wants to say as long as what he says isn’t declared by the courts to be hate speech that incites others to violent action.  Freedom of speech is a very good thing. We are a nation of laws.  Our system of laws is a good one.  Today I celebrate the integrity of our nation and especially the integrity and wisdom of our President.  I reread again today his address to the General Assembly of the United Nations yesterday.  He is a good man and a good leader. He obviously has my support and my vote.