YMB #60 The Truth about Myth: A Conversation with Angelina Stanford

This is your morning basket, where we help you Truth, goodness, and beauty to your homeschool day. Hi everyone. And welcome to episode 60 of the, your morning basket podcast. I’m Pam Barnhill, your host, and I am so happy that you are joining me here today while I am so excited to be ending this season on a high note, we have back with us today,

Angelina Stanford. Now, if you remember, we had Angelina on episode 41 of the podcast where we talked about fairytales. She’s come back today to talk to us all about mythology, all the mythology of various cultures. Honestly, what even a myth is. This was something that totally made me rethink of how I think about myths part of our conversation today.

So Angelina is back to talk to us about what myths are, why we should be reading them with our kids and what place do they have for those of us who are Christian, it was a fascinating conversation. I think you’re really going to enjoy it as always Angelina’s enthusiasm for her topic, just spills over and makes it so interesting. We’ll get on with it right after this word from our sponsor.<inaudible> This episode of the,

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In addition to homeschooling her own three children, Angelina has spent more than 20 years teaching in Christian classical education. She has a deep love for myths and fairytales, and she joins us today to chat about finding a place for mythology in morning time. Angelina, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much. I’m excited to be here. Well, we are excited to have you back because I have to say,

we have gotten the best feedback about the last episode you did with us on fairytales. And honestly it turned out to be like my favorite episode of the podcast ever. So you’re welcome. That was a lot of fun for me. I’m so excited to think that people got excited about fairytales. That really makes me happy. Well, you know, it’s funny.

I was just on Facebook yesterday. Believe it or not. And somebody made a comment about fairytales and they said, what’s your take on fairytales? You know, do you read them in your homeschool? And someone I know said, this is my take on fairytales. And she linked to the entire body. So I’m like, we’re making a difference is wonderful.

That’s great. That is, that is very exciting to me. That is very exciting to write well, so much fun. Well, let’s talk, we’re going to dive into mythology today and I have a feeling that this is going to be another great conversation. So start by telling us what is a myth and then what makes myths different from other types of stories like fairytales or folk tales are legends.

Okay. Wow. Okay. So a myth, a myth is a type of story and it is a genre. And so as a genre, it does not have an implication of being true or not true, which is an important distinction. I always try to make with my students because we’ve sort of in the modern kind of slang usage. When we say something’s a myth,

we mean that it is not true. That runs into problems. Then when you read CS Lewis, say something like Christianity is a myth, right? Everybody starts thinking, Oh, he just said, it’s not true, but no, he’s a literature scholar. And what he’s saying is that Christianity is the sh the, the teachings of Christianity are in the genre of myth.

And they are because myths cover things like the creation of the world story, how people come into existence, how it is that we find ourselves in the state that we find ourselves. So in Greek mythology, you have all mythology, you have various creation stories, but in Greek mythology, they would explain how we find in a state of suffering, for example,

with the myth of Pandora’s box that so suffering and darkness and evil was unleashed in the world. And this is how it came to about us through this story. Christians have their own myth again, using this in terms of just genre in the, in the story of the fall, in the garden of Eden, right? That’s our story of how it is that we find ourselves in a state of exile from God and suffering and exile from other men.

And so myth, is it? Yeah, it’s a type of story. The Bible is filled with lots of different types of stories. You have poetry, you have books of history. I think the book of Esther is a straight up fairy tale. So again, in John rhe. So yeah, so, so a myth is just that kind of story.

It, it, it encompasses a question of how, how we got here and how we find ourselves in the state. We find ourselves. So a myth is a story that’s trying to make an explanation for things, right. And so, I mean, technically The first myths were the stories of the gods. So you get did the whole Pantheon and Christianity’s version of that.

Of course, again, in Genesis, God making the world, and God doesn’t have a creation story, but there, but Jesus does right. The incarnation. So, yeah, so the very first myths would have been the stories of the gods. And then from there, the stories of the creation of men Pandora’s box, Prometheus’s giving fire to mankind,

that, that kind of thing. Okay. So that’s interesting. And I had never thought about it like that. So I’m going to have to chew on that and ponder that for a little while. So what is it that really draws you to mythologies? Why do you enjoy it? Okay, well, first I realize I didn’t answer the second part of your question.

What makes the different about fairytale? So that they’re actually, so you’ll see a lot of similarities between folktales and fairytales and myths. A lot of them, a lot of myths are the basis for various fairytales. So the Cupid and psyche myth, for example, is the basis both for beauty and the beast and Cinderella. So you’ll see lots of, you’ll see lots of similarities,

lots of the same types of archetypes, lots of the same types of characters, lots of the same types of story structure and pattern the answer to what is the difference is that a myth, all of the myths fit together into telling one unified story and one unified universe. So you’ll see characters from different myths appearing in other stories and their overlap. And they’ll come back.

That doesn’t happen for fairytales, fairytales and folktales are completely separate. And so, you know, Hansel and Gretel are not going to go into the woods and run into little red riding hood, right? That doesn’t happen in fairy tales. They’re all separate individual stories that do not seek to come together to create a coherent universe, but myths do. And so myths are also in that sense,

sacred and fairytales and folktales are not. Okay. Explain that To me in that sense. Myths are sacred. Go ahead. Well, okay. So, so myths would be, I guess, I guess what I mean to say is that in, in addition, myths are sacred and folktales are not sacred. So myths would be something that would be treated as a different type of story.

If that makes sense. How are you defining sacred in this sense? Because when I think of sacred, I think of like, you know, the tabernacle at church or something like that. Well, the, it is the myths were made intentionally to have religious significance in each of the codes. Okay. So even though there may be, we may confine the gospel in fairytales as we talked about.

Oh yes, absolutely. Yes. They weren’t necessarily written to overtly Do that. Whereas myths were Right now, it gets to be complicated because we don’t really know the origins of all of these myths and, you know, they, they, around for a long time before Virgil or obet or HESI OD writes them down. But the I, but again,

the idea is that they would have come out of some sort of religious context. Okay. Okay. I think I got it now. So they come out. So it’s stories, a cohesive story. They’re trying to tell this kind of cohesive story of the, A religion is basically what it boils down to. Right. Right. With lots of fairytale,

folktale elements now legend a legend is a story that has its roots in something real that happened. But then it sort of takes on this fairy tale and mythological quality. So King Arthur is a legend and King Arthur. There’s all kinds of scholarship being done to try to locate who was, who was the real King Arthur. But the stories about him are not purporting to be history right there they’re mythological and their fairytales and the kinds of adventures he goes on to have this fairytale quality.

So it’s, it has a basis in an actual historical person, but the story itself does not purport to be history, grows larger than Life. So kind of like Robin hood as well. Yes. Robin hood and King Arthur, you all of that kind of stuff. Okay. So Now let’s get back to, what do you love about mythology? So I think I told the story last time about fairytales was,

were the first stories I ever fell in love with at three years old, I was given my first copy of 1,001 nights. And that was my favorite book all through my childhood. But when I was in junior high, I discovered in my school library, this and I have looked all over the internet for this. Like, if somebody knows what I’m describing,

myth situation, I, this is the great mystery of my life, right? W what was this three volumes set in my school library? These oversized books, absolutely gorgeous illustrations. I was drawn to them immediately. One was a volume of Greek and Roman mythology. The other was Norse mythology, and the third was Asian mythology, just gorgeous books. And I read them over and over and over,

just completely drawn to them. Very intensely. More so the Greek and Roman myths rather than the North token and Lewis were very initially drawn to the North Smiths. Not so much me. I was definitely more on the Hellenistic end of things. But, but the myths, so what drew me to mythology was the same sorts of things that drew me to fairytales.

It was in reading myths that I was, I remember distinctly thinking to myself and just really not even sure if I was allowed to say that, but really thinking, this sounds like Jesus, this sounds like the gospel. I can see the same story being told in these myths. And I just kind of filed it away and kept it to myself in the seventh grade.

But that began a long sort of obsession of reading these stories and finding the gospel pattern there. And later when I began to take a scholarly approach to it and really set about researching, and I discovered that there was a long history of Christians doing exactly what I do, which is fine, the gospel elements in the myths. And I was quite fascinated by this.

So, so if we go all the way back to the very first Christians, they had to reckon with, what do we do with pagan literature and pagan literature was mythology. That that’s what there was, right? So you have philosophy and you have the myths, you have HESI audio at home, or you have Virgil, you have COVID, what do we do with that?

And they start wrestling with that and they can see quite plainly what everyone can see, which is that there are a lot of similarities between the gospel story. And what’s in the myths, a lot of stories, you know, you go on social media, especially around Christmas, and you’ll see these, these memes or whatever of people saying, well, Christianity is not true because look,

I can show all these parallels to all these other myths, right? You’re you’re, you’re incarnated. God is everywhere. You’re, you’re resurrecting, and God is everywhere. Your, your mysterious Virgin birth is everywhere. And they’ll just point to on the say, see, it’s just one of many minutes. So Justin martyr wrote a series of essays, which he gave well,

defenses of Christianity, apologies, which he sent to the emperor. And he said, this was the case he made. You don’t need to persecute Christianity because we’re not that different from you. In fact, what we believe your own myths tell too. And so he starts tracking in these apologies, the similarities, the Virgin birth, like I said, and just really kind of picking it out and the any end,

he goes on to say that. So he, so he, he, he takes him along right. And says, we don’t believe stuff that that’s that different from what, what you believe. And then he kind of turns the argument and says, but here’s the thing. We don’t believe it because it’s what you believe. We believe it because it’s true.

And that’s why you’re ending up with the same stories that we’re telling. And he talked about there being seeds of truth. So he lays out this very sophisticated argument that the truth of the gospel is the truth. That’s imprinted on human beings, heart by virtue of being made in the image of God. Right? So like, so, so this is just the story of reality and human beings know it on some level.

And he said, well, so it’s the argument he makes is that he thinks the demons twisted up the stories, distorted them on purpose and broke them into pieces if you will. And so that they could trick people into not believing that they’re true. Right? So, so basically Justin mortar anticipates all of these modern means saying, see, your Christ is not special.

He’s Oh, Cyrus, he’s this guy. He’s that guy, Justin martyr anticipates that argument and says, that’s what Satan wants you to believe. Satan is trying to get you to see the similarities and to think, Oh, therefore, it’s not true, but I’m telling you, the reason that there’s similarities is because it is true. So he makes this case and Christians have picked up that idea.

I mean, you can trace a straight line from Justin martyr all the way to CS Lewis and Tolkien who make the same arguments. So Lewis has an essay called myth when myths became fact, and that’s where he makes the statement that Christian Christianity is a myth, but it’s true myth it’s that Jesus Christ is myth. That became fact it’s that it’s a story,

but it’s also reality. And, and he goes on to say that we should not be disturbed when we see similarities between mythology and Christianity, that that should affirm us. So the early Christians then viewed this mythological Heritage, this literary Heritage, if you will, and, and saw it as an important part of the heritage of Christianity. So they didn’t have this big dividing line of that’s the classical pagan world.

And we’re now the Christian world for them. This was the world God created, man is made in the image of God. All of us know some part of the truth. So the phrase Justin martyr uses was seeds of truth. They’re seeds of truth that have been sprinkled everywhere. And when we put it together, we can see that all stories tell the gospel.

So building on. So, so, you know, the early churches preserved this stuff, you know, if you read Thomas, Cahill’s how the Irish saved civilization. He shows how the reason we have these books to this day is because Christian monks preserved them with their lives. When the Viking hordes came in, monks died to preserve the classical pagan literary heritage.

That blows my mind. As I like to tell my students, I love Homer. I’m not sure I would die for him. This is amazing to me. And then in the East, you had the Eastern monks too. So, you know, when the Roman empire split on the Latin literary tradition went to the West and the Greek literary tradition went to the,

to the East so that the West had audit and Virgil and the East had had a Homer and Aristotle and Plato. And so same thing when the Muslim invaders poured into Constantinople, the monks grabbed those manuscripts and ran for their lives. And in fact, that’s what caused the Renaissance. When you follow the whole history of the world, you know, often you’re told things like,

so Christianity comes and throws the world into this horrible dark ages and no one knows anything. And then one day we rediscover the greatness of Greece and Rome. And we rebuild in the Renaissance, which literally means rebirth. The problem with that theory is where did that stuff come from? Right? It’s not like they were just digging in their back yard, like,

well, what’s this, we found that you’ll know it was, it was never lost. It was in monastery, it was being carefully preserved. And then when in 1493, when, when the Muslim hordes, when the Ottoman Turks invaded Constantinople, you know, during that whole buildup, the monks are fleeing West and they’re bringing with them Aristotle, Plato,

and Homer. And that brings about the Renaissance that brings out. So Christians have always preserved these because they saw it as a valuable part of the Christian heritage. So then on top of that, and this to me is just absolutely mind blowing early Christian. So that’s what I talking about late Roman empire, early middle ages, late middle ages. They were just fascinated with finding the parallels between the gospel and all these different myths.

And they would write extraordinarily detailed commentaries on each of these myths showing where they saw the gospel, breaking it down. This means that just like God did for the fairytales, right? So this is Jesus. If this means this and here’s the death and rebirth and, and just breaking it down. Oh, I mean, just all these famous medieval philosophers,

Bowie theist, for example, it, it was to the point where if you, if you had a collection of Ovid, okay, if you had the metamorphosis, that would be one tiny part of the manuscript you would get. And the other huge part would have been all the medieval commentaries showing you the gospel in, in obet, right? I always joke with my class,

I want to go into the local Christian bookstore and say, excuse me, can you point me to your Christian commentaries on mythology section, please? You know, like we don’t, we don’t have that anymore, but this was an essential part of the Christian life. And it is from that heritage of Christians interacting with mythology, looking for those gospel parallels,

looking for the ways in which those stories shed light about the reality of the gospel. That is where that is where Western civilization is born out of all of those kinds of conversations, medieval literature, which is highly allegorical, highly metaphorical begins to build on that heritage. And, and, and you can just really see a straight line there. So, so for them,

the myths were always the soil of which, you know, civilization was going to spring. That was the, that was the heritage. And they absolutely saw it as an essential part of the Christian life. They saw that these stories and these pagan authors were pointing to Christ, even when they did know it. So for example, this is why you end up with,

so I’ll give you an example of what I’m talking about with the medieval literature being built on that. A lot of people are puzzled by why Dante’s divine comedy has Virgil as the guide, right? Right. Why does a Christian need a pagan to take him through the underworld on this spiritual journey and tell him how to interpret? Because that’s what Virgil is doing.

Virgil’s taking Dante the character through the Inferno, through purgatory and helping to explain to him what it is he sees Dante doesn’t understand it. Virgil’s constantly saying no, no, you’re misinterpreting that this is what this is. And he’s teaching Dante along the way. So why I know a lot of people are puzzled by that. Why on earth does Christian Dante need pagan Virgil to show him the way?

Well, that’s because you have a long history of the early Christians calling for a jewel, a pre-Christian Saint. And they yeah. Believed for, for many reasons they needed to be in one. But so his, his poetry, which was very prophetic, especially the fourth Ecolog which the early Christians, if you, if you read it, it is a long prophecy of the savior of the world.

And it’s written right before Christ comes. And the early Christians believed that Virgil was unbeknownst to himself, prophesizing the birth of Christ. So they saw that, you know, he was tapping in and a reality and truth that he didn’t even know that he didn’t even know. I have the fullness of, so Dante takes Virgil. Then Dante the author, I know it’s confusing.

Cause he wrote himself into the story. So Dante, the poet takes that idea, right? So he has the idea that Virgil has been pointing us to Christ. And he has Virgil take Dante the character through the Inferno and through the purgatory. So as Dante, the character goes on his own spiritual journey. It is Virgil the best of the pagans who is guiding him.

And then Dante does this very interesting thing. He does not let Virgil get into paradise, right? Virgil can literally get Dante right up to the gate of heaven, but he cannot get him in. And that was a very Christian idea of the middle ages that, that the pre-Christian saints were being used by God to point to Christ, even when they didn’t know,

but it’s not saving knowledge. It’s not enough, right? The church Christianity, that’s the fullness. That’s the thing where you take all these seeds of truth. You plant them. And now they blossom into the fullness. That’s what people like Dante were doing. And Milton and Spencer, they were deliberately building on that tradition and saying, we’re going to give you the fullness of what Virgil can give you.

Right? And this idea that the pagans can take us right up to the door, that they are pointing the way can’t get it. Sin. You see this echoed in medieval architecture. So if you look at the cathedral again, this is something that puzzles us, right? If you go to these cathedrals, there’s the cathedral led sharp that has this.

And then the outside of the cathedral are statues of Aristotle, Socrates, Homer Plato. And you’re standing outside the cathedral and you’re saying, what is going on? Why outside of a church? Do we have statues of the pagans? Well, it’s the same idea, right? They’re outside the wall. They get you right up to the door. You go inside.

It’s the statues of the old Testament saints, right? Because that’s the fullness of the picture. That’s, that’s what you need to get inside the gate. But that God had been using all of mankind to tell, you know, even the rocks cry out the scriptures tell us, right. There is nothing outside of God’s purview. He, so they,

the seeds of truth are everywhere. And men have been saying these in various ways because they can’t help. But say, if you say something true, it’s going to be a reflection of true reality, which is the gospel. And so in the church architecture, you see this, there are monasteries around the world where the outside wall again has paintings of the pagans.

And then inside it’s the saints of the faith. All of those are putting together the same idea that the best of the pagans were pointing the way to Christ. And now that Christ has come, we have the fullness of that picture. And that helps us to understand why the monks were preserving that, right? Because they see it as a straight line.

And, and, and they see the pagan heritage as it’s really the Christian heritage. It’s our heritage. It’s just evidence that God has been working in the world this whole time to prepare us for Christ. Right? How Lewis says it, you know, the, the Greeks were, were asking the questions that could only be answered in Christ. And I love that.

I think that’s absolutely true. So they they’re giving us this picture, unbeknownst to themselves in distorted forums, if just a martyr is right, then the demons were deliberately trying to distort those stories and twist them up and make them unrecognizable. But it’s still recognizable, right? Like, because Satan can only do so much, right. He can’t really obliterate the image of God on creation.

He can try, but he can’t. And so when you put it all together, yeah. That’s, that’s how the early church interacted with it. That’s the way I interact with it. It’s just a very, very exciting thing to me to think that every story ever told at every time a human being has opened their mouth to tell a story, they have told the gospel because they can’t not.

Okay. So we’ve talked a lot about Greek mythology and you mentioned North’s mythologies earlier, when you were talking about your three volumes, you were talking about Asian mythology. So do we see this same thing in Asian mythologies As well? You do, you do now? I don’t know as much about Asian mythology, but when I teach classes on this a lot,

this is one of the things that I absolutely love about teaching homeschoolers. And if I can, if I can get a shout out to all the moms out there doing morning time, it’s a dream for me to go in and teach these classes because these kids have read everything. They have read everything. And so when I start laying out these story patterns,

and so let’s say I take Greek myths and I take them through Orpheus and I show them some stuff. Sure enough, there’ll be five kids in the class saying, Oh, there’s a Chinese myth. That’s saying the same thing. And here’s a Japanese one and here’s this North Smith. And they’ll just, they’ll just throw the titles at me. So I,

you know, yes, the answer is, yes, you see this in all myths across the word, just like you see it in fairytales, across the board in all cultures. Okay. So let’s Back up a little bit, cause we’ve talked a lot about, and we were going to get to this, like, you know, why should we be reading these things?

Especially if we’re Christians. I think you’ve, you’ve, pre-answered my question. Great. And that, why did the Greeks tell Greek myths? Because they weren’t telling them to get across these Christian truths. Right. Right. And why did they tell them well, so, you know, this goes back to when I was talking about, at the beginning of what is the purpose of a myth.

They told these stories because they were trying to make sense of reality. Or they were trying to answer the question, how do we find ourselves here? How do we find ourselves in this state of the world where there’s suffering and evil? You know, they were asking the same questions that human beings asked today. Why am I here? What is the purpose of life?

Why does evil exist? These are, these are the same questions that we ponder, right? And so what you find with the Greeks and, and this is still true about modern life is that you had philosophers who are wrestling with that question. And you also had the poets who are wrestling with that question. And when you’re talking about ancient literature and you use the term poet,

you’re using it differently than you would use it in a modern discussion because all, you know, myths and epics, all of it was written in poetry. So when you read about the ancient debate between the philosophers and the poets, that’s what they’re talking about. And if you ever do any research on this and Justin Marta will use the term, the poets and the poetry,

but that’s what he’s talking about. He’s talking about myths. That’s not the word. They didn’t use that word back then. So the Greeks did not call them the myths. It was just the poetry. Right. And they were the poets. So, so you have the philosophers and the poets, but they’re both doing the same thing, just like we have philosophers today.

And then we have artists today where they’re all coming at the same question. What, what is a meaningful life? Why am I here? Why is there evil in the world? Why is there suffering? What’s what is the good life? What is it that we’re trying to do? So, so yeah, they were trying to answer those questions. And in answering those questions,

the closer that they got to answering them correctly, the closer that they got to the gospel. So would the Greeks have been telling these poems to their children now that I don’t know. I don’t, I don’t know. Probably it’s probably a similar thing with fairytales where know stories were not necessarily told specifically to children as a different genre. I mean, we know that the epics,

which again, were our mythological, you had your traveling Bard. And, and one of the things I told my students in my anxious class this year, it was that Homer was Netflix. Homer was the Netflix of his day. And it was true, you know? So the Bard comes into town and, and this is the entertainment. Everybody’s all excited.

And they sit there and they binge watched 24 books of Helion and 24 books of the Odyssey, right? This is, this is the entertainment. And so I imagine it would have had a mixed age audience, just like anything else, but the myths are, are very much a part of who they are and the way that they understand reality. Now,

the Greeks have a very complicated relationship with their mythological gods. And, but, but that is very understandable and to be expected because they were wrestling with a lot of questions that could only be reconciled in Christ. Right? So, so what you see in the discussions of the Greek. So for example, in the Iliad, right, there’s so much tension between what is the will of God,

where does the man’s free will come into this? What is, what is the fate? There’s all this, there’s all this confusion and, and wrestling among the characters, right? To Zeus hate me. Has he brought this horrible thing onto me? Because he hates me. I thought I was a good servant of God. Why am I being punished and just full respond to not me.

It was destiny. It’s fate. I am just here to execute fate. I don’t get a say in all of this. And a lot of times the, the wrestling and the mental gymnastics that they’re doing to try to reconcile fate and free will and God’s Providence and the will of God. I mean, these are things that are only able to be reconciled in the Trinity.

They’re only able to be reconciled reconciled when Christ comes. You know, we, we Christians, one of the reasons that we struggle even to, to understand what Greek mythology is all about. And when the stories are trying to say is because we’re so Christian in the way that we view reality. And what I mean by that is these, these conundrums have already been reconciled for us in Christ,

right? None of us see destiny as something that’s opposed to God’s will like, none of us are sitting here thinking, well, you know, God really wanted to save me, but he couldn’t because it was my destiny not to be saved, but there’s no split in the mind of God that way. Right. But for the Greeks, they’re trying to reconcile all of that.

What is it, how does it, how does it reconcile? So, so they’re struggling with a lot of things. I’m not suggesting that you find perfectly articulated Christian answers. What I’m suggesting is that you find the struggle, the questions that they are asking and in their poetry and the stories though, they come very, very close to the gospel and you see all the same sorts of things you see in fairytales that are talked about,

you know, for example. So let’s take just, just the kind of typical missiological hero is going to be a demigod. He’s going to be a half God, half man. Somebody like Orpheus or Theseus, a Perseus, and he probably will have a mysterious birth. And he’s also going to be the son of a King. All right. So almost all of these stories then are about an half God,

half man of a mysterious birth. Who’s also the son of a King. And he has to go on some kind of quest, which is usually some kind of metaphorical conquering of death or slaying a dragon and rescuing people. There’s always some version of that. Now that is fascinating to me, right? The Greeks had some understanding that there is a distance between man and God.

There is a gap that has to be bridged, right? And it can only be bridged by some hero who is both a man and a God. And so that is the hero that they give us right now. It’s not a picture of the incarnation because Jesus is not half God, half man. He’s fully God and fully man, right? The fourth medical council tells us that.

But the reason why the early Christians had to have that counsel is because you have this long history of Demigodz, right? And so people are saying, well, Jesus must also be half God, half man. And so they wrestled with that and said, no, he’s fully God and fully man. And so then you see them that Jesus is the fullness of what the Greeks were wrestling with,

but they did have the sense that the bridge between man and God is too great. Someone has to stand in the gap. Someone who, who, both, who can bring together, both the divine and the human that’s extraordinary. That’s extraordinary that they understood that on some level because we see it over and over now, after Christ comes, you do not see that character anymore.

That character disappears from literature. You have an entirely different kind of hero after Christ. And that’s the every man hero. Now, the heroes are ordinary people. If they are above normal people in some way, it is not because of a divine birth, but because of their great virtue. So their bravery, their courage, their kindness to children and women,

that, that they protect those who are weaker than them. In other words, the code of chivalry. So the story changes then from the stories of great men who are above us, great men of destiny who have to come and rescue us. This makes sense, right? If you think about it, that the pagan world, all of their stories are about,

we can’t rescue us. We need someone above us, someone who can bring together the divine and the human that’s, the guy that’s going to have to rescue us. Right? So all of the stories are pushing toward that. And then after Christ comes no more there’s, there’s no more of that kind of story. Why? Because it’s been reconciled. Jesus has come.

That’s no longer the need that human beings are expressing. It’s the need that’s been fulfilled. Now the stories are about the every man. So, so whether it’s a medieval romance, whether it’s a King Arthur story, whether it’s a fairy tale, you, you are supposed to relate to this hero. You can, you can, you can invest yourself in his quest,

in his journey. These are things that I can accomplish too, right? None of us are going to be Orpheus. We’re not going to be Theseus by definition. The hero of an Epic is someone that we can not fully understand or relate to by definition, because he’s above us. He’s a man of destiny who is above us. Everything in the story is to incise that in Greek drama,

the actors would be physically bigger. They would, there would be on these stilts. They had the huge oversize masks. The reason for that is to emphasize, this is not an ordinary man. This is a man of destiny, right? He’s a greater than us. So the stories are all about that need again, after Christ needs fulfilled, storytelling changes.

Now it’s about the every man it’s about how would you add That was like a bonus. Fascinating that I’ve never thought about that before. So Yeah, that is really, really neat that the, just the story itself was completely changed by the incarnation and wow. That’s, that’s my feeling. Wow. I mean, when I, that stories, that’s my feeling all the time.

It was just, wow. Wow. You know, when at the, at the end of the day, if somebody asks me, why am I a Christian? My answer isn’t this is my genuine answer because of the stories. I know that Christianity is true because every story I have ever read has told me, Christianity is true. And you know,

it gives me the chills. It blows me away. I don’t even know what to do about it, but, well, I was, I was good To get, to get you to give me an apologetic for including myths, but no other stories in morning time. And I think you did it right there. This is why, you know, all of these stories are so powerful Afford it because,

you know, we don’t have to pound it into our heads. We just simply are pounded into our children’s heads. We just simply tell, tell these stories and they’re, they’re going to get it from these stories that whether they know they’re getting it or not exactly, they’re going to pick it up. You know, all of these truths that are there,

because if God can speak to the Greeks, you know, he can certainly speak to our homeschooled kids. Even the rocks will cry out. God God’s story will be told, right? The voice that proclaims the truth of Christ is going to be told that cannot be silenced. And, and it’s there. If we know what to look for. And so we shouldn’t be afraid of what we encounter in a myth.

It’s like Justin martyr said like Satan tried to distort these stories. He tried to use them to lead us astray. He failed. And Justin martyr used the myths to make the argument of you can stop persecuting Christians, right? So it’s, we don’t have to worry that teaching mythology to our children is going to confuse them or lead them astray. It’s not,

it’s really not. And that isn’t to say that there might not be five minutes where they’re a little confused and ask the question. I mean, long-term, they’re not going to suffer from confusion, but that is part of what you’re doing. When you have children, as they are, they they’re, they’re learning how to categorize all these things, right.

You’re giving them a whole world and they’re learning to categorize them. And, and we’re tempted to want to go in there and do it for them. Right. But that is not, that’s not what they need. They have to learn how to make those distinctions themselves and that’s takes time. And sometimes they might put things in the wrong category, but just give them,

you give them time. And it’s much, much better for them as human beings, as children of God, to get to the point where they can figure some of these things up on themselves. I’m not suggesting you just send them on their way. I’m just saying we don’t have to micromanage every connection that they’re going to make. Right. You have to know that was one of Cindy Rollins.

The most convicting things she ever personally said to me was, you know, stop explaining them the Bible stories. I mean, I always have, I used to have in my morning time, what I called the Monday morning sermon, and this is my poor children. They just patiently sat there. I could get going on some sermons, but you just,

you just have to, you just have to leave it alone and they will, you know, do what they need. They will get from the story, what they need to get from the story. But if you’d like, I can give you an example of something that I’m talking about with the myths, just really, really quick. My favorite myth is the myth of Orpheus.

And you read a scene and this is an, and so if you’re looking for those fairytale elements that we talked about last time, those, those, because, okay, so fairy tales, mythology, and Bible stories are the building blocks of every story of every story ever written. And so you’ll see a lot of the same sorts of things. So the story of Orpheus is a story of,

again, a half God, half man, son of the Prince, son of the King. So he’s a Prince. He gets married and right after the wedding, his bride is attacked by a snake on the heel and she dies and you’ve just got starts off or you’re laughing. It starts off with such a clear picture of the garden of Eden, right?

That, that Christ has a law Christ lost the bride, right? These are the, these are the metaphors that scripture itself uses, right? Christ is the bridegroom. We are the bride. Well, what happened in the garden of Eden? You know, we got separated from our groom. Didn’t we, the Christ lost the bride to the snake in the garden and we died,

right? So the gospel story is about how Christ comes to rescue his bride. This is, this is the language scripture uses itself. So we shouldn’t be surprised that there’s so many weddings and brides and bridegrooms, and bridegrooms trying to overcome obstacles to ref rescue the bride and marry her because of this is, this is the gospel story. This is the story that God himself has given us to explain how it is.

We find ourselves exiled from Christ and in need of salvation, right? So Christ comes and, and he, he dies. And through his death descends into Haiti’s defeats death, rescues, his people comes back up and marries them. So with Greek mythology and the story of Orpheus, same thing, Orpheus loses his bride. He’s so overcome with grief by her,

her death that he decides he will go into Haiti’s and rescue her. Okay. Hugh gospel set up all over the place, right? He’s going to descend into Haiti’s to rescue his bride, just like Christ. So he goes down there to get her. He has a conversation with the God Haiti’s and convinces him, persuades him to let her go. And he says,

okay. And then he does what we see in tons of myths and tons of fairytales, one command, and one consequence, just like we would get in the Genesis story. God gave one command. And one consequence. We see this all the time. I tell my students, if a story stops and gives you one command and one consequence, this is a guarantee that someone’s going to break it.

And the consequences is going to happen because that’s the whole setup of the story. So Orpheus gets one command. One consequence, don’t look back. If you look back, you’ll lose her. So you got a little lot’s wife action going there as well. So he takes her, he gets all the way up to the top, right before he exits Hades.

He turns around just to see her being ripped away. He failed to rescue the bride and he wanders around the rest of his life. Cursed. It comes to a horrific end. Now you can imagine the medieval commentaries that were all in this. I mean, just everything from looking at it as you know, Christ and the church to the individual life of the soul.

And th the, the, the, the ways in which we’re looking back and clean to our past, and that’s an obstacle to our salvation. But my favorite commentary is the one that Plato himself wrote get ready for this. This is my, I get the chills moment. Okay? So I’m going to build it up for you. Cause this, this is the money shot.

Plato wrote a commentary about why Orpheus failed to rescue his Bri. Cause that’s what it is. It’s a failed redemption story. All the elements of the gospel are there, except in our story. Jesus successfully rescues his bride from Hades and in Orpheus his story, he fails. There’s a lot of implications. We could draw right there about pagan man, right?

That he can’t save himself. He’s close, but not quite. So Plato writes a commentary in which he says, the reason that Orpheus failed to rescue his bride is that he tried to rescue her without being willing to die. That the only way to rescue her from death was to die himself. He said he sought to enter Haiti’s alive. That blows my mind.

That Plato understood that the only way to defeat death is to die. The only way to rescue the bride is to die. This helps us to understand why the early Christians looked at these guys and were like, pre-Christian saints Christians before Christ. I mean, there it is. Plato is saying our savior has to die. It’s amazing. Absolutely. Okay.

But Plato kind of warns us against myths a little bit. He thinks they can be a bit dangerous. You talked to that for just a second. Oh, I’m drawing a blank on at Bianca. And I’ve had quite a few conversations about this. I think that that is being taken out of in the Republican. I, I, from what I understand that that is,

that is being taken out of context and Plato is referencing something very specific, a specific abuse of literature and not the poets in general, because there’s so many places that he, he references it in a very positive way. Okay. Okay. Well, and he had a lot of things to say about child-rearing too. I can’t remember if that was now mind you I’ve read about Plato and the Republic.

I have not read Plato and the Republic. No, but I know he had a lot of things to say about child-rearing that are a little iffy, but I wonder if that was where he was. I wonder if it had to do with myths, we may have to look this up myths and young people. I don’t know, again, I’m not sure on the whole debate against the philosophers versus the poets.

I’ve always been on the side of the poets. So I’ve read more than them. And I have over the philosopher is talking to people who are into the philosophers and seeing where we can, where we can reconcile it. But no, I wouldn’t know these things off the top of my head, but just, it makes a V and as long as we’re going to talk about Plato,

I’ll throw this in here. Justin martyr makes the case. Sir, Walter Raleigh makes this case quite a few people make the case that they believed that Plato was, if not a disciple of Moses, definitely aware of the teachings of Moses and extremely influenced them. And that Plato is basically repackaging. A lot of Moses’s stuff under another name, Justin martyr says most likely just out of fear of not,

not outing himself as a follower of Moses. So there’s, there’s lots of interesting scholarship in that direction, you know? Yeah. I mean, again, if you, if you just look at a map, you know, Greece is right there on the Mediterranean and so is Israel and it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s unfathomable than an educated man in Plato’s day would not know what was happening on the other side of the Mediterranean.

I, you know, you always think about those two, not communities, cultures being separate and, you know, the Romans come in and, and things like that. But yeah, there’s nothing to say that maybe they, So, all right. And so just like, so Homer was writing at the same time as Isaiah and Isaiah’s prophecy about Christ coming back as a beggar,

you know, that’s all in the Odyssey Odysseus, the return of the King comes back in disguise as a beggar and is abused, humiliated, and almost killed. Okay. So yeah, It did we, maybe we should start thinking about how these people might’ve had contact with each other. Exactly. Yeah. That’s interesting. That is really interesting. All right.

Coming up on our time, but I want to touch on a couple more things. I think you’ve made a wonderful For the stories except for one little thing. All right, let me have it. Okay. So, you know, the, the good versus evil, the right versus wrong, the adultery, the violence, the grittiness, there’s a lot of that in mythology.

And you know, it doesn’t the, the lines Between good and bad, just seem really Blurry that, you know, more so than in fairytales and other stories. So, you know, we don’t really want our kids to emulate things like cunning and a quest for power. So speak to that for me. And is there an age where you would kind of start reading myth and,

And what do you think which leads to another question I’m throwing a bunch of them at you? What do you think about kind of The whitewashed mythology? You know, you get like delayer is a Greek mythology for children and things like that. Is that valid? Okay. That there’s a, that’s a lot of questions, so no, no, no,

it’s good. I’m trying to wrap my brain here. I mean, my, my first thought, I guess, is that myths, like fairytales were not initially for children. Right? You get the same argument with the there’s a lot. There can be a lot of violence in fairytales and, and about those sorts of things, you just have to use your discretion.

I I’m, you know, I don’t, I wouldn’t recommend somebody to read the Iliad out loud to their five and six year old. I mean, they’re not going to enjoy it, and it’s also intensely violent. So, but, but it’s, but it’s not, if I can make my little rule appeal for the elite, it’s not gratuitous violence.

And I, I happen to think that the Iliad is a deeply anti-war novel and that, you know, when Homer is, you know, the violence of Homer is, is kind of like, you know, Steven Spielberg’s opening scene of saving private Ryan, right. It’s intended to, to shock you into the, just the horror of war. Right.

But you don’t show that to your four year old. So obviously there’s an age appropriateness of when you think they can understand these things. So obviously parents have to use their discretion. So I do think that something like declares is a, is very good for when, when they’re younger that you, you can, you can hit them with the, with the main gods,

the main stories, and you don’t necessarily have to give them, you know, the F the full array. And, and again, you’re, you know, you’re going to be looking for seeds of truth. It’s not going to be a full picture. And so apparent. We’ll just have to use their discretion there. But I would think something like the layers you’re,

you’re, you’re pretty set. You mean you’d be pretty safe with something like that. This the same can be said for any story. The same can also be said for the Bible. And the Bible has a lot of intense scenes that are not necessarily child appropriate, and you have to use your discretion on those kinds of things as well. So that’s why we start with a Bible storybook as opposed to,

right. Exactly. And you’re, you know, and you, and you, you give them the main stories before you start digging into the, the weird ones where we could spend forever debating what on earth that meant, and why didn’t God say it was bad, because there’s a lot of stories where God does not in the Bible pronounce a judgment. He just tells the story of something weird and we’re left trying to figure out what it means.

So I, I wouldn’t say that that’s necessarily a criticism of mythology and a reason not to read mythology because that’s true of every type of story that there’s age appropriateness. And there’s what your goal is. And, you know, sure. So things like violence and adultery and all of that, I mean, it, it, it comes with the territory of teaching anything.

I mean, I remember I was headmistress of a classical school for a time, and I remember the second grade teacher coming to tell me that they had, she had read the story of rehabs or her second grade class. And the little boy had raised his hand and said, what’s a prostitute. And she answered, it’s a woman who goes on dates for money.

And he said, Oh, my, my mom does that. My dad buys her presence and they go out. So she came to tell me, I should probably call that woman and let her know that her child was probably going to get in the car that afternoon and ask her if she was a prostitute. So there’s danger, kind of a story that that’s,

that’s my point. So you have to use discretion because these ancient stories are they’re gritty and they’re not, they’re not children’s stories. They’re the stories of adults living in a very time. Okay. So we have to be, we have to use discretion, but we shouldn’t use fear. And I think that’s what it comes down to right there, right?

Yes. No, that’s a very good way to put that. I like that. Okay. Good. Well, Angelina, thank you so much for joining us here today to talk to us about myths as always. It is absolutely a fascinating conversation. And I just want to throw in a plug at my daughter, Olivia is taken Angelina’s middle school. It’s the good books course this year,

and is really enjoying it and learning so much. So I know this comes out in December and Angelina, won’t start talking about her next course until April, but do look for that. And where can we find out more information about your classes and your other offerings? You can follow me at my website, Angelina, stanford.com and sign up for the mailing list.

I’ll probably list my courses for next year in February, and you can find out what I’ve got going on there. All right. That sounds great. Well, thanks so much. Thanks a lot. This was a lot of fun. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about the things I love. Always, always. And there you have it. Now,

if you would like links to any of the books and resources that Angelina and I talked about today, you can find them on the show notes for this episode of the podcast. Those are@pambarnhill.com forward slash Y M B 60. Also on the show notes are some instructions there for you to help you give a rating or review of the podcast on iTunes, the ratings and reviews that you leave on iTunes,

help get the word out about the podcast to new listeners. So we really appreciate it when you take the time to do that. This is the last episode of the podcast. Before we go on hiatus for the winter season, we’ll be back late in January, starting up a brand new episode. We’re so excited about what we have planned for next year,

and we hope that you join us then until then keep seeking truth, goodness, and beauty in your homeschool day.