When teaching Religion, Myth and Legend as Literature should it be labeled as Fiction?

Great Debates
1

Continuing the discussion from They are trying it again- Ten Commandments:

Rather than Hijack the above thread, I wanted to reply to @DrDeth in a separate thread where we can argue a more general question than the specific. For context, in the above thread, Texas was attempting to require pieces of the Christian Bible to be taught as literature in public schools. I gave my (admittedly dark and snarky) opinion that IF it were to be allowed, I would want to require a disclaimer that it be specifically labeled as a work of fiction, as a clap-back at the probable motivations of the School Board requiring it.

@DrDeth makes the following counterargument:

Which isn’t uncommon, but it also isn’t one I agree with (this is no shame to DD, just a disagreement). Yes, we make sub categories like myth, legends and fables when we describe such things, or otherwise set aside current or former religious works as a special category on it’s own. And yes, for things like the Odyssey (specific to the original thread) and some Greek Myths there may well be a tiny nugget of historical places, events, and individuals, but I firmly consider them fiction, and consider the Hebrew and Christian bible largely the same.

As such, in the context of the above effort to teach the Bible, Greek Myths, or anything similar as literature then I feel that the label “fiction” is more accurate. No, Literature doesn’t have to be fictional, but I think students at public school benefit from the more accurate label, and if parents want to teach otherwise at home, then it’s fine.

NOTE (!) - this is structured as a great debate, specifically if the label “fiction” is a more accurate description for purposes of teaching specific sections of the bible, rather than the text from a holistic perspective. It is NOT a discussion of the pragmatics of getting legislation passed despite opposition (or support) of the federal government or local school boards.

Misread thread titles
They are trying it again- Ten Commandments
2

Scene: 2,000 years in the future;
Spiderman is a work of Literature, some parts are actual history. It is not fiction, but some parts are Myth and other parts are legend- and the older the “book” the more likely it is Myth or legend.
Peace be upon the Great prophet StanLee!

3

I feel that the term “fiction” is so amorphous that it’s not useful pedagogy. Instead, a literature class should use more specific terms: folklore, history, legend, myth, fable, proverb, etc, etc. For example, see the sidebar on the Wikipedia page for literature.

Literature

Oral literature

Major written forms

Long prose fiction

Medium prose fiction

Short prose fiction

Prose genres

Fiction

Non-fiction

Poetry genres

Narrative

Lyric

Dramatic genres

History

Media

Lists and outlines

Theory and criticism

The Bible is not a unitary work. It has multiple styles and genres, and there’s no reason samples of it can’t be used to illustrate various types of literature. It also has the advantage of being in the public domain, which helps keep costs down. Likewise, there’s no reason it must be used; there’s plenty of other sources to study.

It’d be useful for more Christians to learn about the Bible as literature, instead of the political manifesto that right-wing churches often treat it as. And on the other hand, it’d be useful for every student to learn about the types of literature that exist, to better able to understand the literary foundations of our cultures. There’s more to written works than fiction and non-fiction, and trying to shoehorn every work into those binary categories completely misses the diversity of human writing.

4

But it isn’t fiction, and religious people would be quite justified in being offended by calling it such. They might also be offended by “myth”, but that’s the more accurate term. I suppose something like “religious text” would be the most accurate and objective term.

5

I’d call it myth for consistency, just like the myths of the Greeks or Romans or anyone else. Calling the Bible fiction unlike the rest is just as much making a special exception for it as calling it fact (if a less destructive one). If anything it would backfire, by being such an obvious example of bias.

I mean imagine if somebody were to talk about “Religious accounts we will cover include Greek myths, Biblical myths, Norse fiction, Chinese myths, Japanese myths, and Babylonian myths”. It’s obvious something odd is going on.

As for it counting as “history” however, no. Lots of religious stories and works of fiction contain bits of history mixed in; that doesn’t make a story about vampires fighting werewolves in World War II “history”.

6

Cribbing from Twain,
To say a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, burning bushes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories is not fiction strains the very concept of what non-fiction means.

7

I would prefer a statement something like this: “We are discussing these materials as literature only, and are not considering here whether they are in any sense historically true or factual.”

It’s not that I want to cater to the feelings of religionists, I just think the study of literature works better when historical accuracy is taken off the table up front. For me, this applies to all literature. I don’t care if the military buttons and decorations were correct in War and Peace, or if they didn’t really have smart phones in 1995.

8

I don’t think “fiction” is quite the right word. “Fiction” implies that the author was knowingly writing about something that didn’t happen, for an audience who is equally aware that the story never happened. The Bible, and most other mythological stories, is not quite that.

Certainly, it’s “fictional” in the sense that “fictional” is the opposite of “factual,” but I don’t think that’s the most useful definition of the term. There’s nuances there that are being ignored.

9

One of the reasons I prefer the term “fiction” in the setting though, is because it’s being taught at public schools - generally students aged 6-18 in the USA, where I’d expect the majority of literature being taught around age 10-18 (huge variation). For the average student (another huge proviso) they don’t have a huge grasp on nuance, and unless a distinction is made, there’s an assumption that what they are being taught it “real” for whatever that means.

A not dissimilar point was (and I’m sure this may have changed) is the teaching of what/how “Thanksgiving” happened, and it wasn’t until AP History where I got any training on how to evaluate pseudo-history as justification (mostly focused on the era of “Yellow Journalism” and the Spanish American War).

So especially on the younger side of the ages I mentioned, the nuance between the various sub-categories I mentioned back in the OP isn’t applicable IMHO. In college? Sure, and heck, I took classes on the Bible as Literature as a freshman, but for public schools and younger and often incurious students?

10

I think to seriously study a religious text as history or literature demands that we NOT take it seriously on its own terms, but start from the assumption that it was written by humans for reasons of their own, and then look at what the text can tell us about those humans.

For an intelligent adult, it shouldn’t be too much to ask that they be able to take that perspective for the sake of the academic exercise, even if they personally believe it to be of infallible Divine authorship. I’m not sure it’s a reasonable expectation for children, though.

11

I agree with Miller. I think “fiction” is fundamentally wrong.

I think you underestimate children. They see lots of stories that aren’t literally true. Many of them (like fables and legends and myths) serve important purposes. Whereas at least some fiction exists purely to be entertaining. (Or worse, to teach children to read. Blech.)

I’d be okay calling the Bible any of fable, legend, or myth. In fact, i think some parts are one, some another, and i suspect the palace intrigue in the Bible, where David sends his captain to be killed in war so David can sleep with the guy’s wife, is probably as close to history as anything written back then was to modern history. Which is to say, not super close. Herodotus told some whoppers. And included some really bizarre details about burial customs that archeologists think might actually have been true.

I’d also be okay calling it a “religious text that is important to the faith of some of our students”. But i think “fiction” is as misleading as “history”. It’s a different thing.

12

Well, libraries file it in the nonfiction section (along with folk and fairy tales, poetry, and literature. Shakespeare’s plays are classified as 822.3, Greek Myths, I believe, are 292. Of course much of the fiction section could be filed under 811 if it’s by an American Author. As for the religion books, they are describing what people did, or sometimes still do, believe.

13

Yeah, don’t label it “fiction” nor “nonfiction”. Put religious works in their own category. And if you must put it in some other category, put different parts of the Bible in different categories. At least some books of the Bible, for instance, really were intended as histories: Heavily embellished and biased histories, of course, but then, so are most books in that category. And the Song of Solomon belongs in the category of “love poetry”: It’s exactly as factually true that Solomon had a sweetheart with tits like two young fawns (and what’s that idiom supposed to mean, anyway?) as it is that Shakespeare had one who walked in beauty like the night.

“Greek and Roman myth” is a more complicated question. For some of the classical myth-writers, it was actually fiction, in the same way that Marvel and DC write stories about classical gods. Ovid, for instance, described his work as “I prate of ancient poets’ monstrous lies”. But others took it more seriously, or took some of the stories seriously but not others.

14

That’s Byron.

15

As a general, generic issue, religious mythology is its own category and encompasses everything from the Torah to the Edda to the Rig Veda to L. Ron Hubbard. Any or all such written material should be approached similarly. Underlying this premise is that the teaching is not being done in a classroom devoted to that religion, one that assumes its truth in whatever way the religion defines that as.

Fiction does premise that the text is not “truth.” Some might argue that no texts contain capital T truth, but lines must be drawn or no discussion has any value. Religious mythology seldom is recent enough to have had founding writers admit their motives. Many people have claimed that Hubbard flat out told them that his motive was to make money, e.g., but how can we ever know his inner mind?

Most mythologies therefore have no known intentions, other than the dissemination of a meaningful “truth” that governs the world as they want to present it and have their followers agree and obey. This “truth” is wildly different from - some say contradictory to - the notion of scientific or historical “truth,” even though many believers vehemently dispute this.

Can any of this nuance be presented in a secular classroom? Undoubtedly, yes, given an able teacher giving clear guidelines to pupils capable of understanding nuance. Can the Bible in particular be studied as literature? Yes, again, as long as “literature” is not understood to be limited to fiction as it is defined today, another nuance in a world in which literature and fiction are often considered synonymous. Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon have long been taught as literature, two sections which clearly are not describing historical or scientific truths.

Can any of this nuance be presented in a Texas classroom? Theoretically, yes. In our current world, no.

16

Oh, right, Shakespeare’s beloved was the one whose eyes were nothing like the sun. I’m getting my Dark Ladies mixed up.

Still, all three of them are the same genre.

17

I think the issue is that actually teaching the Bible (or any other religious work) is that it’s not a trivial, cut and dry separation. Which of course you see in the Jewish separations of the various parts. And yet at the same time you need a good working knowledge of the writings in it to understand large parts of Western art and culture.

So, Genesis and Exodus/Deuteronomy. Definitely fiction, yet so much is pulled just from those three books. Judges, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, etc? Probably at least some real history in there, though at least some of it probably got written in the “when the legend becomes fact print the legend” mode. Daniel? Half fiction and half history hidden in apocalypse (in the original Greek meaning). The Gospels and Acts? Well, those are the only Christian writings that purport to be history. The historical Jesus has been a long subject of debate after all.

I think the real problem that we often see is that so many people can’t do nuance. The idea of an academic study threatens their beliefs, which are really quite poor in foundation, like a house built on sand. And the people that push “teaching the Bible” don’t want to do so in an academic way but in a very simplistic “God said it, I believe it” way. It’s one of the reasons I keep politely saying no to coworkers that invite me to their Bible study. Knowing what I know of them and where they go to church, we definitely wouldn’t get along. Problems of being a lapsed Lutheran when they all go to one of the big local non-denominational churches.

18

Since not everyone has clicked the back-link, I’ll list the cite for the article spawning the update to the prior thread and this thread:

(there’s a link to a NYT article that may have more detailed info, but I’m not a subscriber)

And, to clear up my prior comment, apparently this is going to be started in middle school, so that gives the students a slightly better chance at being adult enough to process.

Beginning in middle school, Texas students could be forced to read stories from the Bible including Jonah and the Whale, David and Goliath, and Lamentations 3 in addition to passages such as The Definition of Love from the New Testament, according to the list reported by the New York Times.

I mean, yes, there are very smart, and also very dumbor otherwise unprepared students when it comes to middle school. So it’s still a non-zero risk, but yes, as many describe, it’s also not required to be a binary fact/fiction. Still, if taught as Literature, rather than social or civic, I still believe that “fiction” is the more accurate description, especially in a society where people of this age are involved in “The Slenderman Stabbing”.

Yes, mental illness is the main factor in the example above, but listing stories where people are directly punished by God for failure to obey (Jonah and the whale being specifically listed) without some clear indication it’s non-factual (avoiding the term fiction since it seems to be a sticking point) is very much a poor idea. Again, I only brought up the Slenderman killings as an example of a situation where a “greater being” must be appeased and impressionable youth, it is not meant to be anything like an apples-to-apples comparison!

Again, IMHO, YMMV, no one is required to agree with me.

19

Some parts are actually history. Some parts are myth. Some parts are legend. So, describing the whole as “fiction” seems incorrect. After all, in libraries, they put the Greek and Norse myths into a sections for myths and legends, not in fiction.

Shakespeare has plenty of magic-

and most of that, but Libraries put it in under Literature. Not fiction.

The Bible and the Koran and other books are categorized as “religion” of course.

20

Oops, hit post too soon