Hey, Alex!
While we’re on the subject of myths and storytelling, I wanted to talk to you about something you probably already know and think about which is that cultures preserve good stories. Not just entertaining stories, but good ones. Allow me to explain.
Before people could write things down, before first drafts and final copies, storytellers perpetuated stories through tradition and near constant retelling. In Jewish tradition, we know that every generation had to memorize the Torah (which is the first 5 books of the Bible) word for word at a very early age. They memorized the origin of man, the genealogies from the first man through Noah, down to Abraham and from there all the way to their present generation. (Kinda crazy if you consider that some people don’t even know their great grandparents today). They memorized the stories of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, every story told in the Old Testament was basically passed down through oral tradition. That’s how we have these old stories now.
Some stories are recorded on tablets (which was expensive and time consuming, I’m sure) while others you can find on papyrus or parchment (which was also expensive and time consuming). These stories, therefore, had to be of high quality before a mark was put on the page.
Beyond that original act of turning oral tradition into a written work, some documents had such a wide popularity or a strong importance that you saw them written down in two similar but nuanced ways, being copied and sent to faraway lands, or translated into other languages. All of these and each of these processes have a way of refining the old stories and adding new depths to its richness. Some scholars even take these different copies of texts and analyze them side by side (this is called Redaction Criticism). Tolkien used this method in his adoption of The Lay of Sigurd and Gudrun.
All this is to say that the best stories are the ones that have lasted for centuries. Not only that, but I would argue that in order to be a truly great story, it has to stand out not only among stories from its own time, but also against stories even now! Everyone remembers the significance of Casablanca, Gone With The Wind, Star Wars, Lord of The Rings, and the like, but to compare these works with Shakespeare’s Hamlet or Dante’s Inferno is to compare grape juice with old wine. Yeah, it’s great for kids, but adults could afford a wider variety.
This is not to put modern works to shame; I am just as excited to see Captain America throw Thor’s hammer as I am excited to discover new old stories. The richness, however, comes from seeing what generations past were communicating to each other and how those same ideas interact or even collide in today’s modern era. The difficulty is that modern filmmaking does not lend itself to creating great stories, nor do modern books have the same impact as myth.
Mythology had meaning; it connected people around a central narrative and it passed moral teachings from generation to generation: Narcissus taught children the danger of self-love, Ichyrus taught the danger of pride, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight taught the value of integrity and warned against envy, The Lay of Sigurd and Gudrun taught the value of courage and strength, etc. These stories and these values represent hundreds if not thousands of years of moral integrity. Not only that, but they remain just as relevant to our times today as they would in any other time in the past.
What do you think? Am I off my nut? Is storytelling getting better or worse as time goes on? Let me know what you think in the comments section below.
Alex, we’ll talk on Tuesday!
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