Issues Surrounding The Term "mythology"
In its broadest academic sense, the word simply means a traditional story. However, many scholars restrict the term "myth" to sacred stories. Folklorists often go further, defining myths as "tales believed as true, usually sacred, set in the distant past or other worlds or parts of the world, and with extra-human, inhuman, or heroic characters".
If "myth", defined by folklorists, are stories both sacred and "believed as true", then the most clear-cut examples of Islamic mythology come from Islamic scripture. However, note that the term "mythology" does not encompass all scriptures. Because a myth is a traditional story, non-narrative scriptures (e.g., proverbs, theological writings) are not themselves "myths".
Note also that the term "myth" may not encompass all stories in Islamic scripture, depending on how strictly one defines the word "myth". One's use of the word "myth" is largely a matter of one's academic discipline. For scholars in religious studies, myths are stories whose main characters are gods or demigods: this definition would actually exclude sacred stories that don't feature God as the centre of attention. Some folklorists restrict the word "myth" to stories that describe the creation of the world and of natural phenomena. By this definition, the Judeo-Christian-Islamic creation story would form a part of Islamic mythology, while the Islamic story of Marium (Mary) giving birth to Isa (Jesus) would not.
In the culture of the ancient Mediterranean world in the context of which early Islam and its legend arose, there often did not exist the separation that exists for many societies in the modern period between fields of history and mythology, or the attempt to discern between objective truth and spiritual truths.
Read more about this topic: Islamic Mythology
Famous quotes containing the words issues, surrounding, term and/or mythology:
“The hard truth is that what may be acceptable in elite culture may not be acceptable in mass culture, that tastes which pose only innocent ethical issues as the property of a minority become corrupting when they become more established. Taste is context, and the context has changed.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“Thus when I come to shape here at this table between my hands the story of my life and set it before you as a complete thing, I have to recall things gone far, gone deep, sunk into this life or that and become part of it; dreams, too, things surrounding me, and the inmates, those old half-articulate ghosts who keep up their hauntings by day and night ... shadows of people one might have been; unborn selves.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“We term sleep a death ... by which we may be literally said to die daily; in fine, so like death, I dare not trust it without my prayers.”
—Thomas Browne (1605–1682)
“In the United States there’s a Puritan ethic and a mythology of success. He who is successful is good. In Latin countries, in Catholic countries, a successful person is a sinner.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)