How are religions different than mythologies?

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Only difference I can find is that there are people who “believe” in religions but almost everyone knows mythologies are just stories. So why don’t religions have the same treatment? They’re essentially the same thing, stories about people who may or may not have existed.

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Myths are the stories that are *part* of a religion. But a religion also includes things like rituals, rules, underlying philosophical studies (such as theology), social structures, etc. Let’s take Catholicism as an example. The Bible as understood by Catholics contains the Old Testament and the Old Testament, and all the stories and rules within. But those rules don’t cover every single thing there is to know about Catholicism. You won’t find a section in the bible about how to conduct a Mass, or what vows to use at a wedding, or any mention of bishops or cardinals or the pope. You won’t find the Nicene creed or how to say a Hail Mary. You won’t find most of those things in other Catholic myths, such as hagiographies (stories about the lives and deeds of saints.) But all those things are as much a part of Catholic belief and practice as the stories about Jesus or the prophets.

It’s the same with other religions too. In some the myths aren’t actually important to the belief. Let’s take Greek paganism as an example here. Suppose you’re a commoner living in Athens 3000 years ago. It’s much less important to your life that Athena showed Odysseus tricks to help him get home, or punished Medusa by turning her into a gorgon, than the fact that she’s the patron of your city and that every year there are festivals and sacrifices in her name, and in Zeus’s and Poseidon’s and all the rest. It’s less important that Hera hates Hercules’s guts than it is that if you get married, it’ll be with the help of one of Hera’s priests.

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