Some students (and a prof) got me thinking about mythology today. Specifically we ended up discussing media portrayals of the Greek mythos. This wound around to the story of Hercules in particular but the portrayals through literature of these canonical stories in a modern light. We talked about the ‘Rock’ version of Hercules and the 12 labours, and it got me to thinking about the strange modern confusion of Heracles and Hercules. It reminded me of how much the Romans borrowed from the Greeks in the creation of a pantheon. Moreover, that reminded me of how much Christianity borrowed from the Egyptian mythos in the creation of Jesus.
Everybody borrows and shifts and changes. I suppose the most modern version of that is the work of the Mormon church. I find it interesting that once something is coopted the new entity finds purity and truth in their version but politely defines the older iterations as myth. This is a common symptom of the new and of youth in general. I’m still blown away by how many students fail to recognize British English as the original form of the language we adopted (unofficially) as the American (meaning U.S.) language.
We all borrow and shift and change and remake. We ought to pay respect to where it all came from.