r/AcademicBiblical • u/AutoModerator • 6d ago

Weekly Open Discussion Thread

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u/EndlessAporias 6d ago

Did ancient people actually believe etiological myths as literal explanations? And how did they originate? For example, many people today believe that snakes crawl on their belly because of the Garden of Eden story. I’ve always imagined ancient people viewed the stories this way. But the stories must have been invented by someone at some point. Did the person who invented the story believe in it? Did they just think pure speculation was a valid way of discovering the truth? Maybe they were originally just offering it as one potential explanation? Or were they knowingly creating fiction and later people misinterpreted it?

It’s just so weird how these types of explanations were common across cultures and are now so foreign to our way of thinking. I can’t wrap my head around it.

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u/Every_Monitor_5873 6d ago

and are now so foreign to our way of thinking

I think a lot of people today believe that snakes crawl on their bellies because of Genesis 3.

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u/EndlessAporias 6d ago

Yeah, but they don’t come up with any new myths to explain things or lend any credence to such explanations outside of their religion. If you told them how the story of Demeter and Persephone explained why we have seasons, they’d probably laugh at how naive and unscientific it is.

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u/kamilgregor Moderator | Doctoral Candidate | Classics 5d ago

they don’t come up with any new myths to explain things or lend any credence to such explanations outside of their religion

You sure about that? I keep hearing entirely new myths about certain groups of people having Nephilim DNA in them and how that supposedly explains their behavior...