A contemporary scholar of Chinese
philosophy wrote, “myths often contain an element of historical truth, and what
passes for historical truth often has mythical elements.”[1]
By implication, not everything that seems to be historically valid in a
religious story is, for it is fair-game in that genre to assuage and even
invent “historical” events to make theological points. Lest it be thought that
histories are written objectively, it should not be forgotten that historical
accounts are written by human beings, and thus are subject to our limitations,
including bias. Nevertheless, religious stories, or myth, and historical
accounts are different genres of writing, and have very different purposes and criteria.
To conflate the two genres, or, moreover, any other domain with that of
religion, is to deny the uniqueness of religion (as well as that of other, even
related domains). Religion and ethics, for instance, are two, admittedly very
closely related, domains of human experience.
The full essay is at "Confucius Applied to the Ethics of Religious Knowledge."
1. Bryan W. Van Norden, Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy (Indianapolis: Hackett Pub., 2011), p. 2.
