Meaning

(theology) The scholarly opinion that the gospels are mythological expansions of historical data..

Definitions by Sense

1. (theology) The scholarly opinion that the gospels are mythological expansions of historical data.
2. The habitual practice of attributing everything to mythological causes; superstition, the opposite of rationalism, or of realism.
3. The creative potential for the creation of mythology; the faculty of mythopoeia.
4. The view that a certain figure or event is unhistorical or mythical, chiefly in the context of pseudo-scholarship.

Example Sentences

1845: "Truly, if the caput mortuum of Christianity which mythicism leaves us, be all that is true of our religion, our feelings would tempt us to forgive the Evangelists who have so beautifully deceived, rather than the critics who so coldly disenchant us." (The Christian examiner, vol. 39, p. 160)

1911 "The Californias were an inaccessible and mysterious Occident, invested in the imagination of most mankind with almost Babylonian mythicism." (R. G. Badger, Don Sagasto's daughter)

1971 "Individual works are all potential myths, but it is their collective adoption that actualises - if such should be the case - their 'mythicism'." (Levi-Strauss)

1998 "the playful animal familiars of the heroine [in Disney's Pocahontas] are real animals, because this is real mythicism, not pure imagination." (Ziauddin Sardar, Postmodernism and the other: the new imperialism of Western culture, p. 89)

Word Forms

• mythicisms

Related Words

When Should You Use Mythicism?

Use mythicism when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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