Why Are All Cultures Rooted in Myth?
Both our individual and collective origins are inherently mythic in nature, since they emerge from the Divine Nothingness
Recall, if you will, your first memory.
Is it sharp or hazy? Does it stand alone, like an image suspended in midair, or do you recall what led to it? Are you certain it happened as you remember, or has some of its features been eroded by the winds of time?
Chances are, you chose the latter option for each of these questions. Our past is shrouded in mist. Our earliest memories tend to be vague and scattered, like an archipelago of mountain peaks protruding from an ocean of clouds. And the further back we go, the thicker that mist becomes.
This applies not only to our individual memories but also to our collective recollections. Well-documented societies date back only a precious few millennia, and only much later do they become (somewhat) reliable. Everything that took place before that is shrouded in prehistoric myths and legends, which are always, inevitably, a mixture of the realistic and the fantastic, the human and the exotic non-human.
It’s as if our feet are forever planted beneath a blanket of fog, and we can never see the ground they’re standing on.
There’s a profound reason for this, which goes beyond the nature of the pre-developed brain or the lack of scientific thinking in primitive societies. It is that both as individuals and as a species, we are rooted in what can be called the Divine Nothingness, or ayin in Hebrew. This term is used to refer both to the unknowable nature of God, and to the feeling of losing our sense of sense of self—of becoming nothing, so to speak—as we draw closer to Him.
The transition from nothing to something is, on the one hand, instantaneous—a creatio ex nihilo coming into being. But on the other hand, some gradation is inevitable. And so, we end up with a gradually appearing picture of our past, like a figure slowly approaching us from within a fog.
The Torah addresses this fact in its first 11 chapters, which make up its first two portions, Bereshit and Noach. These chapters describe the first two millennia of the world, and they very deliberately speak in the language of myth and folklore. It’s almost as if they’re saying: “Yes, yes, the Bible is all about countering the pagan world of myth and idolatry—but when speaking about our primordial origins, it’s kind of inevitable to resort to that kind of genre, isn’t it?”
The Torah’s usage of mythological-like imagery is therefore not a bug but a feature. It is the Torah’s way of addressing the aspect of human history and the human psyche that is best reflected by this kind of stories.
The Jewish sages had a description for the characteristic quality of early period of human civilization. They called it the “two thousand years of tohu.” The Hebrew word tohu is well-known for appearing in the second verse of the Torah to describe the state of primordial disorder that existed at the beginning of time and is usually translated as “chaos.” However, it connotes a far more subtle notion than that—a sense of wonder and even astonishment, as of something too immense to be fully grasped.
The idea that not only the first moments of time were tohu-like, but the first two millennia, suggests that our prehistory isn’t just hazy because it wasn’t well-documented or has been forgotten, but because it is inherently so. Our past isn’t just shrouded in myth—it is mythic, and best described using the profound, mind-bending imagery of mythology.
The uniqueness of the Torah’s creation stories is that they are not ordinary myths that emerge from the minds of nascent cultures as they struggle to make sense of the world. Rather, they are embedded within a book of revelation whose main purpose is to shepherd humanity out of the mythical-magical mindset, to help it transcend it and connect to the unseen, transcendent Creator of everything. They are therefore anti-mythical myths—stories that use the dream-like language of myth to convey eternal, coherent truths.
In a way, the Torah’s creation stories are like children’s stories for adults. Like children’s stories, they use vivid, imaginative language that captures the wonder of a child’s perspective. But whereas ordinary children’s stories reflect a child’s simplistic outlook on life and are eventually abandoned for more mature and nuanced forms of literature, the Torah’s creation stories are meant to be relearned every year and at every stage of life. Their purpose is to elevate us, wherever we may be, to a more mature mental state. While outwardly pulling us backward to a pre-rational, childish state, they are really transporting us forward to an advanced, super-rational consciousness.
So, perhaps it is not our feet that are planted in fog, but our heads—our highest selves—that rise above the clouds. The fog below is but a reflection of the mystical mist above, and exploring what lies beneath is a means of opening our eyes and gazing, firsthand and for the first time, at the wondrous vistas of spirituality that our rational, mature mind shuns, but our soul thirsts to explore.
These ideas only scratch the surface of the Torah’s profound approach to myth and origins. To explore them further, join my upcoming course, GENESIS: THE HEART OF CREATION, where we will delve deeper into these transformative concepts.
