According to Dictionary.com, a myth is “a traditional or legendary story, usually concerning some being or hero or event, with or without a determinable basis of fact or a natural explanation, especially one that is concerned with deities or demigods and explains some practice, rite, or phenomenon of nature.”
Ancient myths endure and contemporary ones spring up because they are stories that reveal something about us and or resonate with our experience, usually lifting us to a higher level of awareness of what we can be, urging us on to higher, nobler things. That is why Christ taught in parables, because the medium of a story engages both the head and the heart.
A challenge exists that all such accounts with the appearance of myth must therefore be categorized as such with the inherent assumption that it is merely a story with little if any historical veracity, though culturally and morally valuable. Joseph Campbell is one of the most well-known advocates of this idea. He maintained that the similarities among the various mythologies spanning the many cultures of the world, both in form and substance, were indicative of a common human condition that inspired similar narratives.
