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This page is designed for the answering of questions you might have about Hinduism or Christianity, or the relationship between these two world views.  View Translations in Telugu.

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Q: What is the difference between mythology and the accounts in the bible? Is it that mythology creates a story and the Bible is simply telling what happened no exagerration - just plain events?
A: You have identified an important difference between Christianity and other world views. The Bible insists that the accounts within it are historical and real. Other world views that include myths do believe that the accounts are real, but when it comes to actually having to account for the historical events, hey would not feel obligated to make this connection. The Bible does and specifically states that the events are historical.

Here are two passages that make this clear:
Luke 1:1-4 1 Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled[a] among us, 2 just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. 3 With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.
2 Peter 1:16
For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.

The events of the earlier scriptures are referred to as though they were actual events—not merely a reference to ideas or a philosophy. Adam and Eve are referred to not as mythical people about whom stories were told, but as real people with genealogies and events that have affected the entire population of mankind.

Mythology is the explaining of a truth through a story or account. Some have confused the Bible with mythology because it contains miracles. However, the nature of the miracles of the Bible tend to take a different tenor than mythology. Mythology runs with ideas that are so fantastical that they are not mere miracles—but alterations of the very fabric of the world we live in. For example, Krishna has relations with 16,100 women all in the same night to consummate his nuptials with them as his wives. Krishna is said to solve this problem by taking multiple forms and appearing to each wife (16,100 bodies) each in their own home to consummate their marriage. One could do some interesting calculations about what it would take to consummate 16,100 marriages in one night!
Another example of the contrast between mythology and the Bible would be the presentations of unusual births. In the Bible, Mary, the mother of Jesus conceives from the Holy Spirit. It is a miraculous birth in that a human male was not involved in the conception of the child Jesus. In one of the accounts of Hinduism, the man Siradhvaja had a daughter who sprang up out of the ground as he was plowing the field; this baby became his daughter Sita (Vishnu Purana, Book IV, chapter 5). Suki, a woman in the Vishnu Purana gave birth to various birds: parrots, owls, and crows (Vishnu Purana, Book I Chapter 21). Another woman, Pramlocha bore a child through the pores of her skin (Ibid. Book 1, chapter XV). The biblical miracles take as understood the history and nature of the world as we know it with events that go beyond our experience and our ability to explain them. Mythology takes this another step and has events that not only cannot be explained but are beyond the usual nature of the fabric of what we know to be reality. Mary bears a son—without a human father. Pramlocka bears a child without a father and through the pores of her skin. This strain the very fabric of the world as we know it to a much more serious degree. Suki gives birth, not to a child with something unexplainable happening, but she gives birth to birds which is contrary to the very fabric of the world we live in.
The Bible records God acting within the history of the world that is created—the same world and fabric that we know today. Some of what He does we cannot explain, but it still is the same world we live in. Mythology casts a different world than the one we know. Mythology is not written as a record of history, it is written to cast ideas and to explain things in the world with beyond-this-world accounts. The placing on the head of Parvati’s son the head of an elephant after he has been decapitated by Siva, is not a historical account. We can understand the idea presented. This is mythology, not a miracle in history. The existence of a dragon kingdom under the sea (the Lotus Sutra) is not a historical account. Mythology still holds there is truth in the accounts, it just does not link this truth to specific history of the world we know.
The resurrection of Christ from the dead is clearly stated in the Bible to be a historical event. It is not merely recorded as a story. The accounts are given. The followers of Christ are presented as those who did not and would not believe he had risen from the dead. They were convinced only by the actual appearances of Jesus—that is the account of the Bible. In addition to this, the Bible explicitly states that this event was a real historical event and that if this was not a historical event, then the faith of all is vain. 1 Corinthians 15:14-17 says: 14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15 More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.

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