The fundamental difference between human beings and the animals is the former's ability to contemplate on death, and thus imbue creation with meaning. In pre-modern societies, cultures translated their anxiety over death into a construct we may call God, religion or "Myth". Cyril Toumanoff defines Myth, with a capital M, as follows: By Myth is meant an all-inclusive world view, a total ideology, and one rooted in the depths of the human psyche, which may obtain in a given society. Like an iceberg, Myth consists of both the unconscious basis and, above the level of consciousness or articulation, ideology and social institutions which repose upon it. It is both the archetypal assumptions of the group unconscious about Man, Society, Divinity, Cosmos and their articulation in mythology, ritual, theology, political theory (The Social Myth: Introduction to Byzantinism. Rome, 1984 p. 9-10).[1]
Toumanoff's definition of Myth is succinct, and well describes that of ancient societies, such as the pagan Roman empire of Late Antiquity. Myth was directed to society as a whole, and not to individuals. The Greek word μῦθος itself connotes parlance, speaking, and therefore must presuppose an audience. Thus it can only really be spoken about in terms of a "Social" Myth. Can we speak, then, of a continuity of this Social Myth in the Christian Roman empire, and if so how did it manifest itself in East and West over the centuries?
[1]Note the phrase “cultures translated their anxiety over death into a construct we may call God, religion or ‘Myth’”. This phrase corresponds (no matter if this was not the intention of the author) with Marxist and Freudian concepts, where religion is an invention to make us feel better. Faith has deeper roots than these. To the degree that it is real, a degree that is revealed in the quality of the culture built on it, faith is always based on some sort of divine revelation. Toumanoff’s, Turner’s and others’ preference for the word Myth instead of Faith, is not always (or only) the use of a technical term in order for some functions of Faith in the society to be described, but it presupposes the devaluation of Faith into a purely human construct – valuable for some, alienating for others, yet just human.
