Mythology vs Religion

History is full of legends, folklore, fables, and myths. Each of these is unique. So, what is mythology? Myths are stories of the gods outside of the human world that took place in the remote past. Most of the time, these stories that place in a world very different than the one we live in. Myths explain the concerns and ideas of a society. There is a very vast variety of myths - every culture has their own collection.

Alan Taylor [Google Plus]

Religion is sometimes considered as part of mythology, but it depends on who you ask. Most of the time "myth" is used to describe stories; myths are symbolic. Religion is also symbolic. For example in prehistory, such as Classical Greece, "mythology" was "religion."

The relationship between religion and myth depends on what definition of "myth" one uses. By Robert Graves's definition, a religion's traditional stories are "myths" if and only if one does not belong to the religion in question. By Segal's definition, all religious stories are myths—but simply because nearly all stories are myths. By the folklorists' definition, all myths are religious (or "sacred") stories, but not all religious stories are myths: religious stories that involve the creation of the world (e.g., the stories in Genesis) are myths; however, religious stories that don't explain how things came to be in their present form (e.g., hagiographies of famous saints) are not myths.

Over the course of the next three weeks we are going to take a look at Old World myths, New World myths, and World Religions, in order to compare and understand how complex these different beliefs are. Stay tuned for next Monday!

About the Author

I'm Melanie, the founder of BermudaQuest and an archaeology undergraduate at the University of New Mexico. I love writing about ancient and modern cultures. My goal is to make information about our origins available to everyone [in simple English!]