Billions of people around the world are missing one vital piece of information that prevents them from making sense of the world: Hebrew mythology is as bogus as the mythology of every other tribe. Mythology is simply traditional lies and stories. Only idiots take it literally. Idiots and Jews, Christians and Muslims.

Why do hundreds of millions of European dismiss all their own tribal mythology as something old, primitive and superstitious and at the same time grasp onto the mythology of an alien tribe? They sometimes go as far as saying that the Hebrew mythology recorded in the Scriptures is literally inerrant and the Word of God. Does this go somewhere towards explaining the ridiculous European attitude to the Jews? We don’t nowadays really believe that the tribal shaman, witch doctor and druid had real power and really dealt directly with spirits and gods. We don’t have any problems with pagan idols and symbols, runes or charms. We know all that stuff is pure bullshit. But somehow it isn’t quite as simple to cope with the superstitions and myths of the Jews, because European culture has hijacked their god and stolen their myths. No Christian can simply dismiss the Jews as superstitious heathens who are ignorant of the true nature of God the Father, the Holy Spirit and his written works. Jews are an embarrassment. Jews cannot be dismissed as ignorant savages. Jews are not just ignorant in the sense of not knowing the “truth”, they are positively ignoring it, denying it, directly insulting it. It’s hardly surprising that many European Christians have decided that the simple solution to this “problem” is to remove the embarrassment at source.

Literalism is the cause of the problem here. The belief that one particular piece of written material is literally the Word of God, directly inspired by the one true god (note: not “the One True God”, god spelt with a capital letter is the name of a particular god, I was not addressing that particular non-existent deity, just the generic concept of exclusive deity)

If the truth is absolute and it is written down it can only be changed by twisting its meaning through linguistic tricks, whereas an oral tradition can simply be retold in a new improved version. An oral mythology can improve over time like a joke, a written mythology needs to be interpretted, glossed (literally the process of writing a glossary to explain “what it really means”) or repealed by a New Testament.

A classic example of a gloss being put on a text is the Christian idea that the serpent in the Garden of Eden was Satan. This is nonsense. The idea of a nearly-equal but bad deity hadn't occurred to the Hebrew people until a few of them came across it while in exile in Babylon, in Genesis the serpent is a serpent. If he wasn't a serpent God punishing serpents would have been particularly unjust, even for a god who can drown the whole planet to punish a few sinners.

In an oral tradition there is no definitive version, it can be retold without the anachronistic bits and new elements can be introduced to the mix. Oral traditions can develop which are able to adapt and stay fresh while still holding the spirit of the past and maintaining continuity. An example of how traditional forms can adopt to a changing world is the British tradition of pantomime, traditional stories told in a traditional form with traditional characters but full of topicality. Pantomime tells old fashioned timeless stories with old fashioned timeless characters but doesn’t pass on outdated morality or prejudice that may have existed in earlier scripts. If the story is timeless but the script is regularly written anew the story can tell both “timeless truths” and have topical relevance. A written tradition cannot do this. Of course I could just as easily have used the unwritten British constitution rather than pantomime as an example of the benefits of not having holy writ. Although if you’ve ever seen the House of Lords and a British pantomime you may have difficulty in spotting the difference, too many silly costumes, dames and men in tights either way for my taste.

A written testament makes a religion strong but inflexible. The religions of the book are strong like cast iron. Iron may be a good material for indestructible chariots but it isn’t the best building material for churches.

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