The Gospels: Myth or Parable?

by Joseph Stoutzenberger

When I first began teaching in the 1970’s, writings on myth by people like Joseph Campbell and Mircea Eliade were popular. I had thought of myths as falsehoods, popular made-up stories taken to be true but that closer analysis proved to be false. Copernicus and Galileo dispelled the myth that the sun revolved around the earth. Nazism perpetrated a disastrous myth that there was a noble Aryan race superior to all others. I began to see myths everywhere. Part of the American myth was that America was always the good guy who only wanted to help suffering people everywhere and make the world a better place. The Vietnam War called that myth into question and shook up the nation. Could poet Robert Browning have been wrong, mirroring a popular myth, when he wrote, “God’s in his heaven/All’s right with the world”? 

Campbell looked at culture-shaping stories from many different cultures and found similarities among them as well as intriguing differences. The Babylonian creation myth described a battle between twin forces of good and evil. Good triumphs because Marduk, the savior son of this warring couple, kills his evil mother. It was thought-provoking to point out similarities with and differences between the Jewish creation stories and their Babylonian counterpart. It was commonplace in the seventies to compare and contrast the Christian “myth” with other myths, even though many Christians cringed at the thought of labeling the Christian story a myth. A seminary professor friend of mine suggested I avoid the use of the word myth applied to Christianity altogether for fear that it would muddy the waters for believers.

I didn’t follow his advice. I found that the word opened up fascinating avenues leading to a better understanding of Christianity. After all, the bible is filled with stories; and the gospels relate the Jesus story told through the eyes of four inspired writers. Stories have meaning, and the best stories have profound meaning. I connected the word myth with mystery, and biblical stories helped unravel the mystery of God, human beings, and reality itself. You can deny or dismiss the Jesus myth, but if you do so it is important to know what it means. The bible itself contains stories offering contrasting myths. Is God exclusively the God of the Jews, as expressed in many Genesis stories; or does God love all people who reject evildoing, such as found in the story of the prophet Jonah. Even New Testament stories are at times baffling. When Jesus told Peter to put away his sword when soldiers came to arrest him, was he rejecting all forms of violence? The Book of Revelation tells a different story.

One insight about the concept myth that I found helpful came from scripture scholar John Dominic Crossan. His 1975 book The Dark Interval: Towards a Theology of Story contrasts different types of stories. The two types that interested me most were myth versus parable stories. Myths support commonly held perspectives on reality; parables subvert those perspectives. Apply that distinction to the stories that Jesus told, and you find that Jesus was very fond of telling parables. Most of his stories and even many of his sayings went against standard beliefs of the people of his time, and they continue to baffle us today if we take them seriously. What sensible employer pays workers the same wages whether they worked nine hours, five hours, or two? What is Jesus getting at with that story? When Jesus told an audience of Jews in Jerusalem about one of their own being beaten up by robbers and left to die by the side of the road, surely they could relate. But when he then said that a Jewish priest and expert in the law passed by and didn’t help but a Samaritan did, it must have left them dumb-founded. What is this man getting at, painting righteous members of our society in such a negative light and equating hated Samaritans as being “good”? I could go on with examples of Jesus stories that are parabolic and not mythic. Parables make us question our presuppositions. Jesus was good at that.
The greatest takeaway I had from Crossan’s analysis of different types of stories is that the Jesus story itself is parable! There’s a story about the mother of Caesar Augustus being impregnated by the god Apollo while she slept. Augustus, who amassed such power and ruled the mighty Roman Empire for decades, was rightfully called the Son of God by his subjects. Who could believe that the son of an unmarried peasant woman in out-of-the-way Nazareth deserved the same title? Someone executed as a criminal by crucifixion is not what Jews of the time were expecting from their Messiah. Shouldn’t the Savior of the world have had a higher profile than spending three years preaching mostly to the poor people around the Sea of Galilee? The story of Jesus makes no sense unless it is understood as parable. The one who told parables is parable himself. Commonly held beliefs about power, righteousness, and who are the beloved of God are overturned in his stories and in the story of his life, death, and resurrection itself.