Myths in Quran

The language of Myth
The term “اساطیر” the plural form of “اسطوره” (Myth) 9 times was used in Quran. “Myth” in Arabic means “some unreal occurrence that was previously written”. The term myth in Persian is commonly used and means “vague, untrue and unreal sayings, fables, unreal fables which are not orderly”. An accusation by Islam opponents, infidels and disbelievers of Quran was that Quran is a collection of ancient stories and God defends the prophet and his book against them as: “إِذَا تُتْلَى‏ عَلَيْهِ آيَاتُنَا قَالَ أَسَاطِيرُ الْأَوَّلِينَ” , “when our verses are recited before him, they say they are some myths of the predecessors”.
Thereby the writers working on Quran language have frequently answered those doubts.
Views on myth and its relation with Quran
Authors and ideologist have introduced different definitions of myth, and they often assessed the relation between the religion, myth and Quran both positively and negatively:
1. Unreal Statements, but useful
Dr. Sajedi negating the presence of myth in Quran, defines myth as: “an approach to the language of religion, is the mythical approach, this approach sees religious components mythical which are not real or true at all. However it is possible that myth be of use to men, therefore they should not be considered the same as real historical stories and occurrences”.
Possibly by usefulness of the myth, the moral and social messages are meant which are present in some ancient myths such as Shahnameh myths.
2. Absurd Imaginary Stories
Dr. Saeedi Rushan negating the presence of myth in Quran writes:
“The language has another type of stories which has no useful content, religious, moral or social message. The foundation of this category is sole imagination and its use is only amusement”.
Then Dr. Saeedi mentions exampls of Shahnameh, Khodayname and Ruzegare Ma fictions, therefore “the soul of the language has chosen influencing and motivating the audience; and it is the functional aspect of the language which has chosen this type to express its meaning”.
According to this approach, Shahnameh’s myths have no moral or social messages, though it is no so.
3. Myths the same as Symbols
Dr. Shakir believes mythiclal language is symbolic language.
In accordance with myth definition and due to what discussed in the section of “symbolic language” as symbol is the code in Arabic and token in Persian. It has three types (Quran segmented letter, the Batney and Sufis’ connotative language and general, specific and most specific symbolic language) which they were mostly inconsistent with Quran.
Accordingly, myth and symbol can’t be regarded the same, since a myth is an imaginary fable but a symbol, code, or token can be a real issue that has been mystically expressed, and in the symbolic section it was not claimed by the writers that Quran stories are imaginary and untrue.
4. Myth a type of allegory
Aliasqar Hekmat devides allegory into a) short allegory (proverb) and b) long allegory, then he introduces examples for long allegory including maxim, cryptic allegory, religious allegory and myth and writes:
“Whenever the fable is obtained from the language of animals, plants, stones and etc. when the occurrence of the story is impossible, in Arabic it is called allegory and in French it is Fable, and when the story is mystic, and philosophical meanings can be obtained from it, it is called cryptic allegory or “Allegorie” in French, and when the story talks of men and it is possible to occur, it is called religious allegory and in French Parabole, while the story talks of predecessors’’ myths and previous genders nonsensical news, it is called myth and the same in French, finally when the ancient myths compose the mass’s believes, they are called folklore”.
It should be mentioned that, as it was discussed before, allegory forks into types of proverb and simile. And simile is not basically a lie since there are evidences for a simile and the audience understands that the aim is to close the rational issue to the palpable one. It means likening the “tenor” to “ground” expresses a fact that is hidden from the audience. Therefore the myth is not an imaginary superstional story.
5. Western religious myths
Myth is a term that can be found in all the European languages. This term was derived from a Greek term which was used in Homer works meaning “speech”. Then it was used with the meaning fable. “Myth is a story with a specific feature’ it is a narration in which Gods play one or more important parts” Another story defines myth as “ a story which tells mystic relations between the man and God”, the definition was criticized”.
According to what there was in the common language till the 19th century, myth applies to whatever that is not real, including the history of the world described by Zulus, and Hesiod Gods pedigree. In accordance with the early Christianity view, what was inconsistent with Old Testament and Bible; was regarded as myth and it could not be true or real. Amongst early and ancient societies, the myth was absolute reality because it was a super-human inspiration and it was regarded as real and holy. The behavior/treatment of the mythical God or hero was an example for the man in the ancient society. Therefore for the ancient man was the only holy/authentic source of inspiration and reality.
Gradually the theory that myth retells impossible issues faded, myth was regarded as thinking method different from our current method, however it was emphasized that a myth should not be regarded as a wrong path beforehand. Gradually this view changed and it was attempted through introducing myth as the most important mass thinking method, to develop a new ground for general history of thinking. Nowadays, a myth is not regarded solely as a product of primitive unaware man but it is regarded as “a method to be present in the world”. Accordingly it is said that myth is a required issue having a pivotal role in societies, a role that was present in traditional societies, however contemporary ones lack it and this shortage caused them to become sick. Jung in the book “New Man”, searching for John attempts to say that the contemporary and modern world for the deep/wide gap with Christianity is facing a crisis and he efforts to find a new way to meet his spiritual needs from new sources in order to resuscitate his creative energies.
About the relation between the myth and religious components, some European scholars, including contemporary English philosopher, Richard Prithe (1900-1990), believe that religious components are useful myths.
He sees all religious some useful myths that believing in the results in man’s perfection. Each religion is “a long story” which proposes a specific way of living. The difference between moral and religious expressions is only in the fact that religious ones offer moral claims more attractively relying on allegories, allusions and stories.
According to Brithe Wit, religions have psychological influences on their audiences; as such their non-logicality and non-instructiveness don’t cause some people who understand the said features to lose psychological influences of religions. An example for what said is that after Bible and the Old Testament, no book could the influence of Pilgrimage’s Progress on the man. No one has read the book unless he has absolutely changed, though all know that the said book’s stories are unreal.
Other European scholars such as “Ernest Cassirer” and “Winston King” believe religious statements are mythical therefore regard them impractical, unreasonable and symbolic.
Analysis: Mythicism in the western culture is based on some presuppositions about factiousness and unreality of Bible and other religious books (as seen in Richard With wit”. Therefor this view about Quran faces different problems and was criticized by ideologist who researched about Quran:
First, “in mythical language approaches, belief in mythical parables by some religions were generalized to all religions”.
Second, those theories which introduce the mythical language as the language of religion, mix knowing the religion through religion’s main sources and knowing it through practice and believers’ beliefs.
Third, what has caused the previous theorists to have a mythical consideration of religion, are complexities and ambiguities in issues such as God’s presence and his characteristics, therefore such obscurities lead into the growth of art and embodiment of such beliefs in artworks such as sculpturing, painting, altars and building temples and so on. However the complexity is not an enough reason for judging the mythical judgment.
Fourth, King states: religion’s method is the method of myth and it is irrational. The response to king’s claim is that whether religion’s content are accepted based on myth method, his claim is true, as for the ancient religions pointed to by King, however if some contents of the religions are based on rationalism and wisdom, there is no room for myth and it is the case of Islam.
Fifth, myth does not talk of reality as consistent with has really happened. Myth inside itself has the meaning of inconsistency as Cassirer puts it: for myth language the standard is not truth, instructiveness and reality but the sole benchmark for myth language is the volume of emotional works. Therefore the language of religion is not considered a symbolic one. Such a conclusion is not true about Quran.
Myth language considers Quran stories as unreal, and this is not acceptable about Quran.
Sixth, Quran offers some recommendations/orders about ontology, anthropology and morality. Orders the said topic can be found in the works of Plato, Aristotle and ancient Greek philosophers who lived 100 years before Islam. As the recommendations in the ancient Greek philosophers are not regarded as mythical meanings, Quran orders should not be considered ethical the same.
Seventh, Quran explicitly reject the mythicism of its contents.
6. Mythicism of Quran Stories
Muhammad Ahamad Khalf Allah divided Quran verses into three groups of historical, allegorical and mythical and offers examples for each:
According to him, a historical story is the story that historical characters including prophets form its pivot. He states that the aim of Quran is not to express facts through historical stories. His reason for the mentioned view is the presence of literary/art techniques in verses, their specific effects on the audience emotions and feeling and the differences among verses in telling some of stories. For example through reference to the literary techniques in Musa story and due to the change of Musa’s stick into a dragon, he refers to Quran different references to the dragon via different terms such as “حیه” and “ثعبان” and “جان”, then he adds: here it can be concluded the element through which the story is in different manners said is the emotional factor and influencing the emotions of the audience and it means that Quran is to provide literary pictures of stories and not a historically educational picture to inform its audience of facts. Providing different examples of similar stories in Quran, he concludes that the literary and emotional aim of Quran historical stories has caused that their telling in Quran be along with ellipsis, modification and replacements.
The second type of Quran stories in accordance with Khalf Allah, are allegorical stories. These category’s stories are imaginary/imaginary ones which are to express or clarify author/story teller’s main meaning, therefore there is no need for these stories to included talk of real happenings. By this point, non-instructiveness of these stories will be realized. Then Khalf Allah mentions examples of Quran allegorical stories including the story of Davood’s judgment about the hostile man (Sad surah, verses 21-25), the story of Habib, the capenter (Ya Sin surah, verses 13-30) and the story of heavenly provender descent (Maideh surah, verses 111-115).
Though he categorizes Quran stories into three categories of historical, allegorical and mythical, he doesn’t limit his mythical approach to the third category. He generalizes the third group to the first and second one. Even he considers the first category mixed with myth, as he says the historical category is consistent with mythical ideas.