MYTH. The philosophical conception of a myth being only possible to an advanced reflective age, we are not surprised to find that no word cor responding to myth' occurs in the O. T., and that iii.Vor is therefore not to be found in the LXX. Even in the Apocrypha the word occurs but once fpillOor dicatpor, Eccles. xx. 19, an unseasonable tale,' A. V.), and that in a general sense ; while, in one other passage (Bar. iii. 23), uvO6Xcyoc, authors of fables' (A. V.), has a somewhat doubtful meaning. This, however, is not the case in the N. T., where the word occurs five times, and always in a severely disparaging sense, and in every instance is rendered fables' in our ver sion. Thus Timothy is warned against 'fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions rather than godly edifying' (I Tim. i. 4) ; and against profane and old wives' fables' (307)Nour Kai -ypauSeis u60ovs, Id. iv. 7). These ' fables' are opposed to the truth,' and Titus is forbidden to give heed 'Iovaattcou ,cui0oLs. Lastly, in 2 Pet: i. 16, they are characterised as aecroOLai.zvot, cun ningly devised,' and are contrasted with the sober testimony of eyewitnesses* (cf. verNaap.evol u6Oot, Diod. Sic. i. 93). It is obvious, therefore, that in the N. T. a myth is used in its latest sense to express a story invented as the vehicle for some ethical or theological doctrine, which, in fact, has been called in later times an ethopinia or philoso pheme. Yet the condemnation is special and not general, and cannot point with dissatisfaction to myths, which, like those of Plato, are the splen didly imaginative embodiment of some subjective truth, and which claim no credence' for them selves, but are only meant to be regarded as the vehicles of spiritual instruction. That there is nothing in such myths' to deserve reprobation, nay more, that they are a wise form of teaching, is clear from the direct quotation of mythical stories by St. Jude (ver. 9, 14), and from the use of strictly analogous modes of conveying truth (alle gory, fable, parable, etc.), in other parts of the Bible, as in the writings of all the wisest of man kind. It must then have been the doctrines in volved, and not the mythical' delivery of them, which woke the indignation of the apostles ; and if as Tertu]]ian thought (adv. Valent., iii.), and as is now generally believed, the myths' alluded to were the gnostic:: mythology of the .Eons,' of which the seeds may have been beginning to develope themselves when the pastoral epistles were written, we can easily understand how they would appear to bear the stamp of philosophy and vain de ceit.'
No satisfactory definition of the word myth has ever been given, partly because of the manifold varieties of myths, and partly because the word has been used in several distinct senses. In Homer it is equivalent to X6-yos (l1., xviii. 253), and thius remarks, that in later times it came to mean X6-yos (If. a, p. 29), to which definition Suidas adds, that it was X6-yos tfrev66s, eucoviNv dAnOeica. Plutarch, less accurately, confuses it with plausible fiction (X6-yos ifrevHs ?ottaln and in the Etymologicum Magnum it is made, in its technical sense, to mean a veiled or enig matical narration (40os anualvez Ito . . TOP ae X670P . . sat rlv 6.7rX(.7.a X6.yoy).
Neither the etymology nor the history of the word help us much. It is derived from avec.), doceo, or utau, claudo, and Archbishop Trench thinks that it must therefore have originally meant the word shut up in the mind, Or muttered with the lips (Syron. of the N. T., 2d series, p. 174), though he admits that there is no trace of this in actual use ; and as, at first, /400or merely means word,' we should derive it from an onomatopoeia • f the simplest consonantal utterance (m). It is not until Pindar's time (01. i. 47 ; Nenz. vii. 34; vi. 1) that it is used of that which is mentally con ceived, rather than historically true ;' and in Attic prose it assumes its normal later sense of any legend or tradition of the prehistoric times. If, however, we analyze the modern use of the word, we shall find that these historical myths, or ampli fied legends of the remote past. generally mingled with the marvellous, do not properly represent our notion of myths any more than the well-understood phitosophemes to which we previously alluded. We must learn, too, to distinguish between the myths and the rationalistic explanations thrust into them by the critical self-consciousness of a later age. If we would understand the true nature, for instance, of the Greek myths, we must discard from them the timidly rationalistic suggestions of Hekatxus, the severely common-sense views of Pakephatus, and the unsympathisingly sceptical rashness of Euemerus, no less than the profound moral intentions which have so often been trans ferred to them by the speculative genius of a Bacon or a Coleridge.