Bits from stuff just posted elsewhere - thought it relevant here. Some extra comments added (again, purple stuff within quoteblocks are mine).
<i>On 'myth' and how they use it:</i>
http://sarasvati95.googlepages.com/aryanmythology.pdf
<b>Aryan Mythology as Science and Ideology</b> by Stefan Arvidsson
From section "HISTORY OF RELIGION: AN ANTI-LIBERAL RIPOSTE"
(Mueller wanted philology to be the science that lead to religion: p. 7-10)
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The science of religion that Mueller dreamt of never materialized. Instead, <b>the discipline called history of religions was created with the aim to study all religions excluding Christianity</b>. This division of labor between academic subjects gave rise to two diverse concepts (Christianity shares some concepts with its "Semitic" cousins, Judaism and Islam): Christian theology/pagan cosmology, Christian liturgy/pagan rituals, Christian angels/pagan spirits, Christian religion/pagan mythology. <b>Even today the concepts of myth and mythology - the focus of this article - are seldom used when it comes to Christian or "Semitic" (Abrahamic) stories: the man who was swallowed by a giant fish or the carpenter's son who could walk on water are not "myths".7 The collections of myths that today are sold in large editions follow the same model, as do scientific surveys of the world's mythologies.8</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->If christianity hadn't copied its OT content from Judaism, you can be sure they'd have dismissed Judaism as myth too. (And as a consequence islamism would have been only too easily tossed aside.) But they can't do that to Judaism because christianism is so inextricably linked to it.
From section "THE INTERPRETATION OF MYTH"
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->In the world of Christian scholars non-biblical, "pagan" (i.e., mainly Greek and Roman) myths were used as educational and artistic aids (de Vries:18-32). With the help of the allegoric and euhemeristic modes of interpretation taken over from antiquity, the religious content of these myths could be disregarded, thus preventing the myths from forming a truly religious, "heathen" alternative. Aside from the allegorical and euhemeristic ways of interpretation <b>the church also developed what could be called a <i>hermeneutic of mission</i>. This mode of interpretation unveiled the pagan myths as mere plagiarism of the Holy Writ or, even more crudely, as the work of the devil. In contrast to the earlier, classical modes of interpretation the hermeneutic of mission efficiently excludes the possibility of finding anything rational in the mythologies.</b>
(Christianity does the same today to every non-christoislamic religion. Hence psecular Indians with their christo-conditioned mindsets blindly accept the historicity of a jeebus and his 'resurrection' from death as a fact, whilst immediately assuming Dharmic or other countries' religious characters and recorded/handed-down traditions are all myths.)
<b>In fact, four modes of hermeneutics have continued into our own day, although in a modified form: myths are speculation about nature (the nature-allegoric school of the nineteenth century), myths are disciplinary or moral stories (the sociological approach), myths are distorted history (historicism), myths are lies (Marxism).</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->The above shows that marxism, historicism, the sociological approach and the nature-allegoric school are all following on only from the christian approach to denouncing Greek traditions.
So when the marxists in India do the same, they are merely employing the christian methods they have learnt by-heart: methods that denounce only non-christoislamic religions as 'myths' while shielding christianism from any and all examination. Psecularism, in other words.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Myth</b>, however, was for the first time thought of as a life-affirming genre in the romantic vogue in fashion around the beginning of the nineteenth century and contradicted the everyday sense of the word (which it retains despite protests from today's spiritual camps) as a <b>false story</b>.
<b>The word "myth" (mythos) became a synonym of "lie" already in its etymological country of birth, the Greece of antiquity</b> (see Graf; Lincoln 1996; Vernant: 203-260).<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->So when they use the word 'myth' for our stuff, we ought to know that they're calling it a lie. When we accept their use of it for our stuff, we must know that we are assenting to them calling our stuff lies. And if <i>we</i> ever unthinkingly call our stuff myth ("Indian mythology"), it means we are accepting that our stuff is lies.
I've made lots of mistakes using the word - I've actually said "Greek mythology" before now... It pays to understand the language they use and what their words actually mean, instead of me continuing to believe these things mean what I think they mean and then using them wrongly...
<i>On 'myth' and how they use it:</i>
http://sarasvati95.googlepages.com/aryanmythology.pdf
<b>Aryan Mythology as Science and Ideology</b> by Stefan Arvidsson
From section "HISTORY OF RELIGION: AN ANTI-LIBERAL RIPOSTE"
(Mueller wanted philology to be the science that lead to religion: p. 7-10)
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The science of religion that Mueller dreamt of never materialized. Instead, <b>the discipline called history of religions was created with the aim to study all religions excluding Christianity</b>. This division of labor between academic subjects gave rise to two diverse concepts (Christianity shares some concepts with its "Semitic" cousins, Judaism and Islam): Christian theology/pagan cosmology, Christian liturgy/pagan rituals, Christian angels/pagan spirits, Christian religion/pagan mythology. <b>Even today the concepts of myth and mythology - the focus of this article - are seldom used when it comes to Christian or "Semitic" (Abrahamic) stories: the man who was swallowed by a giant fish or the carpenter's son who could walk on water are not "myths".7 The collections of myths that today are sold in large editions follow the same model, as do scientific surveys of the world's mythologies.8</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->If christianity hadn't copied its OT content from Judaism, you can be sure they'd have dismissed Judaism as myth too. (And as a consequence islamism would have been only too easily tossed aside.) But they can't do that to Judaism because christianism is so inextricably linked to it.
From section "THE INTERPRETATION OF MYTH"
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->In the world of Christian scholars non-biblical, "pagan" (i.e., mainly Greek and Roman) myths were used as educational and artistic aids (de Vries:18-32). With the help of the allegoric and euhemeristic modes of interpretation taken over from antiquity, the religious content of these myths could be disregarded, thus preventing the myths from forming a truly religious, "heathen" alternative. Aside from the allegorical and euhemeristic ways of interpretation <b>the church also developed what could be called a <i>hermeneutic of mission</i>. This mode of interpretation unveiled the pagan myths as mere plagiarism of the Holy Writ or, even more crudely, as the work of the devil. In contrast to the earlier, classical modes of interpretation the hermeneutic of mission efficiently excludes the possibility of finding anything rational in the mythologies.</b>
(Christianity does the same today to every non-christoislamic religion. Hence psecular Indians with their christo-conditioned mindsets blindly accept the historicity of a jeebus and his 'resurrection' from death as a fact, whilst immediately assuming Dharmic or other countries' religious characters and recorded/handed-down traditions are all myths.)
<b>In fact, four modes of hermeneutics have continued into our own day, although in a modified form: myths are speculation about nature (the nature-allegoric school of the nineteenth century), myths are disciplinary or moral stories (the sociological approach), myths are distorted history (historicism), myths are lies (Marxism).</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->The above shows that marxism, historicism, the sociological approach and the nature-allegoric school are all following on only from the christian approach to denouncing Greek traditions.
So when the marxists in India do the same, they are merely employing the christian methods they have learnt by-heart: methods that denounce only non-christoislamic religions as 'myths' while shielding christianism from any and all examination. Psecularism, in other words.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Myth</b>, however, was for the first time thought of as a life-affirming genre in the romantic vogue in fashion around the beginning of the nineteenth century and contradicted the everyday sense of the word (which it retains despite protests from today's spiritual camps) as a <b>false story</b>.
<b>The word "myth" (mythos) became a synonym of "lie" already in its etymological country of birth, the Greece of antiquity</b> (see Graf; Lincoln 1996; Vernant: 203-260).<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->So when they use the word 'myth' for our stuff, we ought to know that they're calling it a lie. When we accept their use of it for our stuff, we must know that we are assenting to them calling our stuff lies. And if <i>we</i> ever unthinkingly call our stuff myth ("Indian mythology"), it means we are accepting that our stuff is lies.
I've made lots of mistakes using the word - I've actually said "Greek mythology" before now... It pays to understand the language they use and what their words actually mean, instead of me continuing to believe these things mean what I think they mean and then using them wrongly...