(1) BIBLICAL

 

Or as I like to call it – Babylon and the Beast (as I’ve seen them featured in art Christian website, which only succeeded in making these two Biblical supervillains look awesome – with the Beast resembling a tyrannosaurus rex).

This is it. This is the big one – genesis and apocalypse, alpha and omega, allelujah and amen!

Of course, Biblical mythology is helped into top spot in that for many people it is not just mythology but religion, in contrast to classical mythology or other ‘pagan’ mythologies it largely replaced. Although as one historian quipped, from a historical point of view, Christianity is a Greek hero cult devoted to a Jewish messiah.

However, I read the Bible as mythology rather than religion – or as poetry rather than history. That is, as literature for its literary quality. Or in other words, like virtually everyone reads classical mythology or any other mythology shorn of religious belief. And as mythology, it has an enduring resonance – of symbolic narratives that ring true at an emotional level or with the power of story, characters that resonate with us as flawed human protagonists (and that’s including God, who is all too human in his characterization) and language that in its best passages has an enduring lyrical or poetic quality.

And when you look at the mythology under the religious hood, that’s when things become much more interesting with layers of subtext, sex and violence as well as hints or insinuations of competing mythologies

Born again in Babylon and torn apart in Jerusalem…

 

SACRED SPACE & CHTHONIC BLUES

 

Similarly to classical mythology, Biblical mythology outranks other mythologies with the enduring iconic nature of its mythic geography or sacred space.

Again, I say geography because, like classical mythology, the mythic geography or sacred space of Biblical mythology tended to be actual locations in historical geography, particularly within the ancient Middle East, albeit transformed with a numinous nature – with perhaps the most prominent being the opposing “poles” (for good and evil respectively) of Jerusalem and Babylon.

Although some locations are more mythic than others – with again perhaps the most prominent representing opposing “poles”, this time at the beginning and end of the world, Eden and Armageddon, albeit the latter is often conflated with the apocalypse in which it appears.

As for chthonic blues, there’s the enduring iconic nature of Biblical mythology’s underworld, Hell (as well as Limbo and Purgatory) – or indeed its afterlife in general when you add Heaven, such that Biblical mythology outranks all other mythologies for afterlife and underworld.

 

APOCALYPSE HOW

 

The most definitive and iconic apocalypse in mythology, again outranking other mythologies, not surprisingly since it is the source of the very name for apocalypse.

 

EQUAL RITES

 

Biblical mythology is something of a paradox when it comes the equal rites of its female figures – it obviously can’t rank too high given its masculine monotheism, even with the Trinity (unless you throw in Mary as well), but perhaps more surprisingly, it doesn’t rank as low as one might expect.

Firstly, it has a prolific number of female figures, albeit not explicitly divine or semi-divine but which nevertheless remain among the most famous or iconic female figures in mythology. In that, it might be compared to Arthurian legend, only more so in their number and iconic status.

Secondly, like Arthurian legend or classical mythology, there are hints or at least revisionist interpretations of divine female figures or even goddesses – or at least the divine feminine nature of God – to be found in the Bible and its female characters.

 

DIVINE COMEDY

 

As for equal rites, Biblical mythology is something of a paradox when it comes to its divine comedy and trickster figures.

You don’t tend to associate the Bible with comedy (or tricksters) – well you do when it comes to Dante’s Divine Comedy from which I borrow the name of my divine comedy ranking – and yet it ranks surprisingly highly for both. Much of that is intentional, although arguably even more of its comedy is black comedy or unintentional to its writers.

What is neither black nor unintentional is the Gospels in the New Testament are ultimately comedy.

No, seriously – I’ve seen it argued in a dictionary of Christian theology or thought (that sadly I now can’t recall for its exact title or details of publication) that the Gospels (and New Testament in general) are ultimately comedic in nature, essentially along the lines of its eucatastrophe or happy ending in triumph over tragedy.

Taking that a bit further to less serious interpretations, I’ve always been struck by the similarity in style between parables and jokes. And whatever else you might say (or believe) about him, you can’t deny that Jesus had a gift for a snappy one-liner, particularly to hecklers – even when those hecklers include the Devil himself.

 

TWILIGHT OF THE GODS

 

What can I say? For sheer persistence as well as scale for endurance not only of cultural influence but active religious belief, Biblical mythology outranks all others in my top ten – indeed, probably all of them combined in terms of scale, particularly if you add in Islam as one arguably should.

 

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD-TIER – WHAT ELSE?)