One of the reasons for the blurring of the lines between myth and story is that our generation believes itself to not need myth at all. Modernity has tried very hard to demythologise us completely and perhaps has to a large extent succeeded. Myth is equated with superstition on the one hand, and with fantasy on the other, leaving no space at all for myth to meaningfully continue to occupy our imagination.

While New Myth may be an oxymoron, if one wishes to continue to communicate via myth or even to see our existence in part through mythic eyes, one has to start pretty much from scratch.

In the discussion on Genesis one of the greatest challenges is to again be able to recover the mythic meaning of these texts. Modern exegesis has done us the disservice of leaving us with ‘just’ stories while that essential link between our undatable and uncontextualisable roots has been excised. We are now much more inclined to ascribe our actions and psychological states to our monkey roots than to take seriously the idea that we were created to be God’s gardeners and that we failed and fell to become our present potential but miserable selves.

How again can biblical myth take its rightful place as one of the foundations of our identity and worldview? We can clearly see that Genesis was a living mythic story for the authors of the NT, yet such is considered a part of primitive naivety and certainly not thought of as any sort of viable option for our present oh-so-sophisticatedly scientific selves.

Live to serve : Serve to live