"Evolution of Mythology"- Over the ages
This is purely my perspective and I feel its judgmental enough.
While I was reading the Bible the other day, the verse John 9:11..He replied, “The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see.”...I stopped a while and just gave it a thought. I always read them as novels, all the mythology books I've ever read.
We all believe that mythology is something really happened sometime. Atleast, part of them were believed to be true even today, in every religion. But, all the sources we have are only those scriptures which are considered to be holy. Thus, we can safely assume there are authors of these scriptures.
Now, coming to the current days, we have famous novels written by some good authors and if the story is good enough, there can be a movie based on the same book within few days. The goal is to make the story reach to maximum audience, irrespective of the modes they choose.
Thousands of years ago, a few great minded people wrote some scriptures, novels and they spread them to others. They were very great in writing stories that they have influenced people with their great stories which make people worship characters in those as Gods. Hats off to them. May be, if Sir Arthur Canyon Doyle was present at their times, we'd worship Sherlock Holmes as a God.
As there was no way to create copies of the same scriptures, everyone might not had the chance to read. Then, there were few people who are good at arts. They pictured these novels in a very effective way in order to take it to more people.
They made sculptures, diagrams, buildings, etc. to depict the story in it's best way. They spread the arts to several places and made people hear these stories. They must have enjoyed these stories.
What they didn't foresee was next generation. They preserved those scriptures, sculptures, arts and buildings for their life and left footprints of their story to the next generation. Now, there was a generation who were interested in all these arts and scriptures but had no clue how they came from. Then they coined a term for unknown source called God.
Later generations interpreted in a way different manner. They believed that the good characters in the story are Gods and bad ones are Evils. I think this generation is the most intelligent generation who understood (or made!) the story in a very well defined manner from the remainings of the previous generations. Hats off for these!
Also, no one knows how the good and bad were classified. There might be bad done by the Gods and good done by the Evils but all they classified were based on few activities exclusively and only they knew which activities to be chosen.
In later generations, people ripped off other than good of Gods and bad of Evils. Thus, they have a very short story which make the characters in the story Gods and Evils. Also, they have a collection of events which showed the Gods and Evils as greater than normal human beings.
Finally, we believe there is God and Evil. There were some Myths. And there were beliefs, superstitions, etc. which make the world a diversified people who hate each other just because of their different Gods.
So, we are actually having religions based on our favourite novels (even may be written by same author!). People who liked The Bible are Christians, Quran are Muslims, Bhagavad Gita are Hindus, etc.
Aaah, had there been William Shakespeare's novels, Leo Tolstoy's writings, Mark Twain's books, etc.. we'd have had religions for Hamlet, Julius Ceaser, Anna Karinena, Tom Sawyer,etc. as our Gods and we'd have had praised a love story as a great story and deduce good and evil of that story. May be, we'd have had an entirely different set of Gods. Or may be such similar stories of those thousand years ago were modified into current stories with contribution of each generation.
And thus, we have mythology. Which were very old novels, written by some great influential authors. Call them Gods or whatever, hats off to them!!
