Myth Perceptions, Joseph Campbell's Power of Deceit
Tom Snyder, Ph.D.
Copyright 1991 by Tom Snyder
Look for Dr. Snyder's new book Myth Conceptions, Joseph Campbell and
The New Age from
Baker Books (Jan. 1995) in a Christian bookstore near you!
Permission is granted for non-commercial replication of or excerpting from this material,
provided (1) that appropriate notice is included of its copyright status, as above, and
(2) that an appropriate reference to the Answers In Action name, address and phone number
be included with all replicated and excerpted material. This article first appeared as an Answer's In Action book
Introduction
Campbell Against Christianity
Campbell's Absolute Relativism
Campbell's Reductionist Fallacy
Campbell's Rejection of the Virgin Birth
Campbell and Evolution
Primitive Ethical Monotheism
Campbell's Rejection of the Bible
Suggestions For Action
Bibliography
About The Author
Joseph Campbell "didn't have an ideology or a theology," claims reporter Bill
Moyers in his 1988 The Power of Myth television series, frequently broadcast on PBS
stations across America. During the six hours of intense interviews with the late
mythologist, however, Campbell proves Moyers wrong.
The supposedly non-existent theology of Campbell permeates current American religious
discussion. Campbell has perhaps more influence on current American religious thought than
any other contemporary writer. His books fill the religion sections of major bookstore
chains; are required reading in most college and university religion, literature, and
philosophy courses; and have become handbooks of spirituality to the New Agers,
neo-pagans, Gaia environmentalists, and 1990s religious dabblers.
Joseph Campbell did indeed have an ideology and a theology. At one point in the PBS
interviews, for example, he ridicules the Judeo-Christian belief in a bodily resurrection
by calling it "a clown act, really." He then says that immortality should
instead be seen as a mystical identification with the eternal things in our present lives.
If this isn't an ideology or a theology, then what is?
Throughout the six hour-long programs, Campbell bitterly attacks the historical
theology of orthodox Christianity and its accompanying moral code. He also peddles a
pantheistic, subjective view of God and religious experience. Moyers disclaimer is simply
not true. Consider the following quotes from The Power of Myth:
What was proper fifty years ago is not proper today. The virtues of the past are the
vices of today. And many of what were thought to be the vices of the past are the
necessities of today. The moral order has to catch up with the moral necessities of actual
life in time, here and now.
I have a feeling that consciousness and energy are the same thing somehow. Where you
really see life energy, there's consciousness. Certainly the vegetable world is conscious.
You can see it in the Bible. In the beginning, God was simply the most powerful god among
many. He is just a local tribal god. We have today to learn to get back into accord with
the wisdom of nature and realize again our brotherhood with the animals and with the water
and the sea.
The transcendent is unknowable and unknown. God is transcendent, finally, of anything
like the name "God." God is beyond names and forms . . . . The mystery of life
is beyond all human conception . . . . We always think in terms of opposites. But God, the
ultimate, is beyond the pairs of opposites . . . . Eternity is beyond all categories of
thought . . . . God is a thought. God is a name. God is an idea. But its reference is to
something that transcends all thinking. The ultimate mystery of being is beyond all
categories of thought.
When you see that God is the creation, and that you are a creature, you realize that
God is within you, and in the man or woman with whom you are talking, as well.
There's a transcendent energy source . . . . That energy is the informing energy of all
things. Mythic worship is addressed to that. That old man up there has been blown away.
You've got to find the Force inside you. [Your life comes] from the ultimate energy that
is the life of the universe. And then do you say, "Well, there must be somebody
generating that energy?" Why do you have to say that? Why can't the ultimate mystery
be impersonal?"
There are two ways of thinking "I am God." If you think, "I here, in my
physical presence and in my temporal character, am God," then you are mad and have
short-circuited the experience. You are God, but not in your ego, but in your deepest
being, where you are at one with the non-dual transcendent.
These quotes show how Campbell's theology of impersonal pantheism permeates the entire
The
Power of Myth series. His theology seems to be a cross between eternal permeational
pantheism "in which a oneness like a Life Force underlies and permeates all that is
real" and changing, modal pantheism which "teaches that each individual thing
[or person] is a mode or modification of God." As such, it contains an inherent
contradiction or inconsistency which destroys its own validity.
If God is an impersonal energy force that transcends all categories of human thought,
then God transcends even that description and the concept of God becomes empty of all
meaning whatsoever. As David Clark and Norman Geisler point out in Apologetics in
the
New Age: A Christian Critique of Pantheism, applying specific attributes such as love
or power to God does not limit God if you believe those attributes are infinite. Campbell
tries to get beyond Judeo-Christian concepts of a personal God, but he sets up his own
category of impersonality at the same time that he rejects the use of such categories. It
is illogical to say that God transcends categories like personality, but then to turn
around and claim that God is an impersonal, transcendent energy source. Campbell thus
clearly contradicts himself.
If God is the ultimate mystery that lies beyond all categories of thought, then why
does Campbell sometimes use human reason to defend his pantheistic view of God? If the
transcendent is unknowable, as he says, then how does he know that it is unknowable? To
call God an infinite mystery which can't be grasped by the human mind avoids
"rational responsibility," is self-defeating, and shows that Campbell's theology
has deep logical flaws.
The Hebrew-Christian Bible teaches that God is a person who transcends the space and
time of the material universe. Viewed as such, God is separate from His Creation. He is
the divine foundation of all the rational categories which Campbell wants to reduce into
one all- encompassing concept or force. Campbell may wish to deny the universal validity
of these rational categories of the mind, but without them he defeats the rational
plausibility of his own arguments.
Personal consciousness is not the same thing as energy. Only an Intelligent Designer
with a personal, conscious, and rational mind or spirit could create a universe which
includes other personal, conscious, and rational minds.
When it suits his purposes, Campbell uses reason, science, and history to refute
religious beliefs he doesn't like, but when it comes to some of his own mystical beliefs,
his test for truth often changes and becomes purely subjective. Such a shift seems plainly
dishonest to me. Furthermore, I have yet to find one thing which Campbell says against the
Bible that can't be refuted by looking at the actual scientific, historic, and rational
evidence or by reading the text in its proper context. Despite all of his criticisms, the
biblical record stands intact. (See the bibliography at the end of this booklet for a list
of sources which defend the reliability of the Bible.)
Campbell says that anyone who believes in only one ultimate truth, or in only one way
to God, is narrow minded and wrong. But his own statements about this are themselves a
belief in only one truth. Therefore, they contradict themselves. Campbell's belief that
pluralism is an absolute truth leads him to do the same thing of which he accuses
conservative Christians.
In trying to rid the world of one dogma, then, Campbell simply invents a new one.
Although he sometimes claims to support an "open," pluralistic approach to
religion and morality, he strongly disagrees with those people who don't share his own
narrow beliefs. He berates others for being dogmatic, but he himself is often guilty of
the same thing.
Not everything Campbell says is wrong, however. He actually says some provocative
things about what makes a hero.
In the first interview with Moyers, for example, Campbell notes that one of the acts
which a hero does is to sacrifice himself for another person, a people, or an idea. We can
apply this principle to Jesus Christ, who becomes the ultimate hero because He is the
first and only person in history who sacrifices himself to redeem the whole human race
from the bondage of sin. Using Campbell's own method of interpretation, we can thus affirm
the unique, comprehensive quality of Christian theology.
Even so, Campbell's method leads him to make many false statements and unsound
arguments that many Christians and other thinking people will find offensive. This problem
seriously damages the credibility of all the things he says which may be true.
Before I became a Christian, I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation in mythology, Campbell's
field, at Northwestern University. The title of my dissertation was Sacred Encounters:
The Myth of the Hero in the Horror, Science Fiction, Fantasy Films of George Lucas and
Steven Spielberg. Although Campbell's book The Hero with a Thousand Faces was
one of the primary inspirations for my dissertation, I also used other scholars for my
research, such as religious historian Mircea Eliade, literary scholars Northrop Frye and
Vladimir Propp, anthropologists Claude Levi-Strauss and Victor W. Turner, psychologists
Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and James Hillman, and New Age philosopher Ken Wilber. Except
for Wilber, Freud, Hillman, and perhaps Levi-Strauss, the other scholars I used were, on
the whole, more sympathetic to Christianity than Joseph Campbell. In fact, if it weren't
for some of the things they said in support of Christian theology, I might still be
waiting for my salvation.
Unlike Campbell and other scholars, I don't use the word mythology to undermine the
historical truth of the Christian faith. To me the word is a convenient term to describe
the stories which any society tells its people. These stories may also have significance
for people in other cultures. They may be historical, and even scientific, or they may be
pure fantasy.
By limiting the concept of myth to the symbolic level, Campbell makes all religions,
including Christianity, purely subjective. By completely separating myth from all notions
of historical truth, Campbell stacks the deck in favor of his own theological world view.
Historian of religion Mircea Eliade doesn't believe a historian can even discuss the
historical truth of the Resurrection and the other miracles that Jesus did. Still, he
generally accepts the truth of the other events surrounding Jesus' ministry and the
beginning of the Christian church, as described by the New Testament documents. So why
does Campbell almost totally reject their historical truth? The answer is that Campbell
has an ax to grind. And that ax is aimed directly at the head of the historical Jesus.
The Power of Myth series and its accompanying book are filled with logical
fallacies, factual errors, hysterical attacks on orthodox Christianity, a blind acceptance
of Eastern mysticism, and an almost knee-jerk reaction against the Bible.
Campbell makes two critical mistakes throughout his work: he violates basic rules of
logic, and his omits factual evidence which does not fit his pet theories.
One of his main faults is his tendency to water down the differences between the major
world religions. In logic this error is sometimes called the "reductionist
fallacy" -- a difference that makes no difference is really no difference at all.
Under Campbell's crafty manipulation, polytheism, monotheism, and the occult all become
pantheistic in character. Pantheism is the belief that the whole universe and everything
in it are part of a divine, impersonal force or consciousness.
Campbell often takes religious stories and forces them to fit his pantheistic world
view. He even does this with the Bible.
For example, in The Power of Myth he compares the serpent in the Garden of Eden
with "immortal energy and consciousness engaged in the field of time, constantly
throwing off death and being born again." This pantheistic image sounds
Hinduistic.
It may be what the snake represents in Campbell's theology, but the biblical text makes no
such comparison.
During the interviews, Campbell and Moyers turn the Judeo-Christian concept of
"love thy neighbor" into a pantheistic view of morality where we are supposed to
"love thy neighbor as thyself because thy neighbor is thyself." Not only am I
and my neighbor one, but God and I are also one in Campbell's religion. Man is not made in
the image of God, according to Campbell, man is God.
It is common for Campbell to make the idea of God into a kind of pantheistic dualism
whereby God becomes an impersonal, transcendent principle with a good side and an evil
side. Although Campbell often preaches compassion for one's fellow human beings, he also
says, "Everything arises in mutual relation to everything else, so you can't blame
anybody for anything."
Campbell's morality is so fuzzy at times that he fails to make any distinction
whatsoever between the animal sacrifices of the Bible and the human sacrifices of pagan
societies. In fact, he often reports glowingly on the horrible religious practices of such
pagans. At one point, he even compares a horrible cannibal sacrifice of a young man and a
young woman in a primitive tribe from New Guinea with the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the
cross and the Eucharist! Adding insult to injury, he ignores the idea of Jesus Christ
dying for our sins and changes it into some kind of mystical at-one-ment where people and
God the Father become One.
Who are we to judge these pagan societies, says Campbell. But who is Campbell that he
should judge the religious beliefs and practices of Jews and Christians, as he so often
does?
One of the most significant factual errors Campbell makes in The Power of Myth
is his statement on page 173 that the virgin birth of Jesus Christ is really a belief
which originates from Greek mythology. J. Gresham Machen proved this idea false in 1930 in
The Virgin Birth of Christ. As Machen points out, all pagan stories about
miraculous births are not really virgin births. Either the god or gods have sex with human
beings or the human father participates in some kind of sexual union with the mother. The
virgin birth of Christ is completely different.
Critics of the virgin birth have never been able to explain the origin of this
Christian belief, says Machen. In fact, they can't even agree among themselves on any one
theory for its origin. The virgin birth of Jesus Christ is a unique event with no known
previous parallel in religious literature, unless one counts Isaiah 7:14.
Campbell sometimes personifies the image of Nature, and even the earth itself, into a
divine, conscious organism from whom everything, including man, evolves. "We are the
fruits of an intelligent earth," says Campbell. To him, paradise exists in the here
and now, and mankind already lives in a wonderful, magnificent garden. The key to enjoying
the bliss of this garden is to rise above the suffering of this world by becoming one with
the God within you.
This ecology myth excited Campbell so much that he often mentions it as the one myth
which modern society should wholeheartedly embrace. We can see echoes of this kind of
thinking in the Gaia myth that permeates some New Age and environmentalist groups.
Contrary to what Campbell preaches in The Power of Myth series, the Bible does
not teach us to loathe Nature, nor does it tell us to take all the joy out of our present
life. The Bible teaches respect for God's creation. It shows us how to put the love and
joy of God into a fallen world full of evil and sinful people.
In his previous writings, Campbell uses theories of evolution to make all kinds of
unfounded claims about the history of religion, but in The Power of Myth book
Campbell notes that "until you have writing, you don't know what people were
thinking." This contradicts what he said in his other books, where he constantly
tells the reader what early man thought and believed before writing was invented. The earliest example of any possible kind of religion is Neanderthal Man in Europe (35-85,000 years ago). It is here that some scientists claim to have found evidence of animal sacrifices alongside human burial locations. As Campbell says in the Moyers interviews, such burials may indicate that ancient people believed in an "invisible" spiritual world which supports the "visible" material world. Since the theory of evolution plays a major role in much of Campbell's work, let's take a look at what the evidence really does show about the history of mankind.
According to the 1989 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica and other secular sources,
Neanderthal Man, who may have been a special race of Homo Sapiens, lived approximately
35-85,000 years ago during an intense period of Ice Ages.
These dates refute Campbell's position in his earlier works, where he placed the
Neanderthal period all the way back to 200,000 years ago. Campbell, to my knowledge, never
admitted this gross error or even mentioned the new dates for the Neanderthals. Like many
evolutionists before him, Campbell wrongly tried to make Neanderthal Man a separate
species of human being who "evolved" into modern man, or Homo Sapiens Sapiens.
In his earlier works, Campbell also makes all sorts of claims for the religious culture
of Homo Erectus, a "hominid" species who supposedly lived before Homo Sapiens.
The above quotes about writing in The Power of Myth book, however, seem to indicate
he eventually stopped believing this nonsense.
There really is no evidence of any religious activity among Homo Erectus or any of the
other hominid species prior to Homo Erectus. In fact, according to Britannica, experts now
believe that some of these hominids are more related to apes than they are to Homo
Sapiens. Homo Erectus actually has unique features that neither apes nor humans share.
Britannica even states (18:955-956) that there is very little, if any, evidence of
evolution from Homo Erectus to Homo Sapiens.
If you lean toward the view that the six days of creation in Genesis one cannot be
interpreted to mean six twenty-four hour days, as several conservative scholars do, then
all of this evidence seems to match the biblical account. Most secular scholars now
believe that Homo Sapiens entered the world between 150-250,000 years ago, but the first
examples of modern man (Homo Sapiens Sapiens) don't appear until 30-40,000 years ago.
It is possible that the dates for Neanderthal Man have been inflated erroneously by
secular scientists, but it may also be possible that the Flood in Genesis occurred before
the Neanderthal period, followed by the Ice Ages already mentioned. The facial structure
of Neanderthal Man is very similar to that of the Eskimo, whose facial bones have been
formed due to the tough diet endured in the frozen north. This fact has led many
scientists to consider Neanderthals a special race of Homo Sapiens.
Even if we accept this possibility, however, Britannica says that "little can be
confidently inferred about Neanderthal beliefs and rituals." Some Christians in fact
believe it is more likely that Neanderthal Man was a pre-Adamic race unrelated to human
beings, and that Adam was not created until 12-30,000 years ago. And indeed, modern
anthropologists don't record the concrete existence of any religious artifacts until those
dates.
Most anthropologists date the earliest known religious artifacts 8-24,000 years ago.
According to C. Simon, the oldest known religious shrine dates about 14,000 years ago.
"Evidence of religious ritual" in cave paintings, decorated objects, and
apparent burial offerings older than this date "has been difficult to justify,"
adds Simon. Once again, secular sources refute Campbell's fanciful theories.
Recent studies demonstrate that some species of apes can make tools, show affection,
are capable of cannibalism, can talk to humans in sign language and even lie to them, and
can use a camera, but evidence of such intelligence does not prove humanity, much less any
true spiritual or moral capacity. As conservative scholar Gleason L. Archer notes,
"There may have been advanced and intelligent hominids who lived and died before
Adam, but they were not created in the image of God . . . . there is no archeological
evidence of a true human soul having animated their bodies."
Using the idea of evolution, Campbell claims that ethical monotheism is a late
development in man's history. Anthropologists have long abandoned this evolutionary theory
of human religion. If anything, there is strong evidence that the first religion of early
man was a primitive type of ethical monotheism where the first primitive societies
worshipped a benevolent, celestial god similar to the God of the Bible. The earliest
examples of human writing indicate that, in several different cultures, this monotheism
degenerated into a gross polytheism where people in those cultures took the attributes of
the one true God and scattered them among an increasing array of deities and
demi-gods.
This evidence seems to confirm the description of man's religious activity in the first
few chapters of Genesis. It also seems to match what Paul says about the religions of men
in chapter one of Romans.
One of the most prominent advocates of primitive ethical monotheism was Father Wilhelm
Schmidt, whose book The Origin of Religion was published in America in the 1930s.
Ironically, Campbell mentions Father Schmidt's work in the 1959 edition of his four volume
set The Masks of God, but he never talks about Schmidt's evidence for primitive
monotheism, which contradicts Campbell's own theories. Campbell is not the only secular
scholar guilty of such convenient memory lapses when it comes to Schmidt's work.
For example, both social anthropologist Edward Evans- Pritchard in Theories of
Primitive Religion, originally published in 1965, and Charles Joseph Adams in "The
Study and Classification of Religion" in Britannica discuss the criticisms which
scholar R. Pettazoni leveled at Schmidt's work. Pettazoni claimed, among other things,
that the ethical monotheism found in primitive cultures was far different than the more
advanced ethical monotheism found in later societies. Neither Evans-Pritchard nor Adams,
however, discuss Father Schmidt's own criticisms of Pettazoni's work. Their neglect makes
me seriously question the academic objectivity and skills which they bring to Schmidt's
work.
Be that as it may, it is not really necessary for Christians or Jews to prove that the
very first religion of mankind was ethical monotheism. All we need to show is that ethical
monotheism goes back in history as far as any other known spiritual or religious idea.
This is exactly what the work of Schmidt and other proves.
Even Evans-Pritchard himself notes that most anthropologists have abandoned all
evolutionary schemes for the historical development of religion. Campbell's work must
therefore be considered completely out of the mainstream of modern anthropology at least
as far back as 1962 when Evans-Pritchard gave the lectures on which his book is based!
Throughout his work, Campbell assumes that the Bible teaches, at most, a 6,000 year old
creation and a flat earth, but he never mentions the fact that such an interpretation was
not taught by the church before Columbus. In fact, the 6,000 year date itself was not
taught until the 17th century. Even today's creation scientists who believe in the
"young earth" theory don't accept a strict 6,000 year old date for the origin of
the earth. By telling us his way is the only way to interpret the biblical text, Campbell
becomes more dogmatic about the interpretation of the Bible than all but the most extreme
Christians.
As I noted earlier, Campbell constantly attacks the historicity of the scriptures.
In Myths to Live By, he uncritically accepts the documentary hypothesis, which
rejects the Mosaic authorship of the first five books of the Bible on spurious literary
critical grounds. Yet he doesn't give one shred of evidence from the many conservative
scholars who have successfully challenged this theory. As a scholar who favors fairness
and objectivity, especially in controversial matters, I find this dishonest.
In The Power of Myth book and interviews, he calls the gospels
"contradictory," but he gives no evidence for this broad generalization. I doubt
he ever saw John W. Haley's Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible or Gleason L.
Archer's Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, much less read them. If he had, would
he have cited them? Probably not.
In Flight of the Wild Gander, Campbell emotionally lambasts the eyewitness
testimony of the Second Epistle of Peter, whose authorship by Peter is strongly questioned
by liberal scholars, but he completely ignores other evidence from the New Testament, such
as 1 Corinthians 15. The authorship and historicity of this passage is beyond question. In
it the Apostle Paul presents the Gospel of Jesus Christ's physical resurrection and
sacrificial atonement for our sins. It is an eyewitness testimony which Paul claims to
have received from the risen Jesus and from Peter and James when he visited them in
Jerusalem in A.D. 36-38 Campbell also fails to mention (in Flight of the Wild Gander and
elsewhere) the historical evidence for Luke's Gospel and the book of Acts, for Matthew,
Mark, and John, and for Paul's other writings. (See the list of "Books that Defend
Historic Christianity" in the Bibliography.)
Once again, Campbell stacks the deck in his favor and against historical Christianity.
In effect, he has censored reliable evidence which refutes his own subjective theories.
This distortion of the facts is very dangerous because it may deceive unwary readers and
viewers who might be inclined to accept Campbell's credentials, and Bill Moyers'
"integrity," at face value.
Despite all of this subterfuge, Campbell admits in The Power of Myth that "the
sayings of Jesus [recorded in the Bible] are probably pretty close to the originals,"
but then he says that "the main teaching" of Jesus is "love your
enemies." And how do we love our enemies, according to Campbell's interpretation? By
getting rid of the mote in our own eyes instead of plucking the splinter from our enemy's
eye.
Here we can see the real danger of Campbell's theology. The "main teaching"
of Jesus is not "love your enemies," although Jesus does indeed command us to do
that. No, the main teaching of Jesus is that people everywhere should repent of their sins
and believe in Him as their personal, divine savior. A simple reading of the first twenty
verses of Mark, the entire gospel of John, or the last chapter of Matthew will make this
message clear. Worse than this, however, is Campbell's statement: "No one is in a
position to disqualify his enemy's way of life." Here, Campbell takes a clear
teaching of Jesus and perverts it into an agenda for complete moral relativism.
For the sake of seeming "tolerant" and being popular, Campbell apparently
would let evil people choose whatever lifestyle they wish. In saying this, however, he is
in fact disqualifying the ethical validity of anyone who makes moral judgments about other
people. By morally judging those who morally judge, Campbell makes himself a hypocrite.
This is not the kind of "love" Jesus Christ talks about in the biblical text.
When Jesus say "love your enemies," he is not commanding us to accept or approve
the lifestyles of wicked people. And when Jesus says, "Do not judge, or you too will
be judged," recorded in Matthew 7:1, he doesn't mean that we should never make moral
judgments, but that they be based on God's word in the scriptures. He is telling us to be
careful how we judge and to realized that we too can and will be judged.
Contrary to what relativists like Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers (a theologically
liberal Christian) might think, Christians have a moral duty to expose the evil deeds
people do, including our own. Evil is judged not subjectively, but by the standards God
has revealed in scripture. We also have an obligation to give people God's solution to the
problem of evil and the bondage of sin -- Jesus Christ's message of salvation.
Joseph Campbell had a God-given right to believe what he wanted, even if that belief
was false. He also had the right to use logical fallacies, to play word games, and to
distort the facts in order to defend his belief.
Contrary to Moyers' dogmatic statement, Campbell most certainly had a theology. He
tried to enforce his own ideology and morality on other people. Joseph Campbell was, in
fact, one of the most opinionated myth scholars and lay theologians in the world. His open
hostility toward orthodox Christianity, especially the Catholic Church, not to mention his
emotional attacks on Judaism and Islam is plain to see. Unfortunately, Bill
Moyers, PBS,
and scores of literature, philosophy, and religion professors appear blind to these facts.
Instead, they continue to propagate his own prejudiced theology under the guise of
relativism and openness.
The Gospel of John warns, "This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but
men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil
hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.
But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that
what he has done has been done through God."
Come out of the darkness and into the light. Recognize Joseph Campbell for what he was,
an articular, charismatic literary critic and dedicated pantheist/mystic who spent his
life dabbling in research, writing books, and giving lecture and interviews supporting his
own moral and religious beliefs.
Recognize Jesus Christ for who and what He was: Not a clown in charge of some circus,
nor a madman in charge of an asylum, nor a fool leading his followers the way to dusty
death; but the only begotten Son of the Most High, Living God, the Son who died for our
sins and who redeems us from those sins, the God of Truth, Justice, and Love who is the
source of all goodness and who gives eternal life to all people who honestly seek Him.
Above all, let's recognize these truths by looking at the logical and factual evidence
for and against them, not by casting unfounded aspersions against those who disagree with
us, and not by making mystical declarations that tickle the ears of those untrained in the
basic rules of logic, appealing to the arbitrary feelings and capricious whims of people
with an ax to grind.
We must accurately perceive truth so that we can proceed in truth. It is only when we
see the truth correctly that we truly be able to love our neighbors as ourselves and find
the bliss that God has waiting for us.
Write your local PBS station and request they discontinue showing The Power of Myth
interviews.
Contact your local college or university that uses Campbell's books as texts. Ask the
professor, department, and administration to drop the books as texts.
Recommend objective materials on religion, Christianity, and myth to your local college
or university.
Learn more about the facts and truth of Christianity. Be ready to share with those who
have been unfairly influenced by Campbell's writings.
Check your local bookstores. Suggest responsible titles to stock along with or in place
of Campbell's books.
Check your local libraries. Suggest responsible titles to accompany or replace
Campbell's books. Donate a copy of this book.
[Note: Copies of this book may be obtained from Answer's In Action]
Commit yourself to truth. Communicate that truth to others.
- Books by Joseph Campbell:
The Flight of the Wild Gander: Explorations in the Mythological Dimension. South
Bend, IN: Regnery/Gateway, 1979.
The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973.
The Masks of God. London: Penguin Books, 1976, four volumes.
The Power of Myth. New York: Doubleday, 1988.
- Books on Mythology and Comparative Religion:
Brandewie, Ernest. Wilhelm Schmidt and the Origin of the Idea of God. Lanham,
MD: University Press of America, 1983. (An excellent resource.)
Eliade, Mircea. Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return. New York:
Harper and Row, 1959.
A History of Religious Ideas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982, three
volumes. (Although Eliade sometimes engages in subjective speculation, he gives an
excellent secular overview of this broad topic.)
Myth and Reality. New York: Harper and Row, 1975.
Rites and Symbols of Initiation: The Mysteries of Birth and Rebirth. New York:
Harper and Row, 1975. (The title may be misleading. The book is not an argument in favor
of reincarnation.)
The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. New York: Harcourt, 1959.
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. Theories of Primitive Religion. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1965.
Leach, Edmund. Claude Levi-Strauss. New York: Penguin Books, 1980.
McConnell, Frank. Storytelling and Mythmaking: Images from Film and Literature.
London: Oxford University Press, 1979.
Montgomery, John Warwick, ed. Myth, Allegory, and Gospel. Minneapolis: Bethany
House Publishers, 1975.
Schmidt, Wilhelm. The Origin of Religion. New York: Cooper Square, 1971 ed.
Slotkin, Richard. Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American
Frontier. Middletown, CN: Weslyan University Press, 1973.
Turner, Victor W. Dramas, Fields and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974. (The late Victor W. Turner is one of the
greatest anthropologists of the twentieth century. I cannot guarantee that he always, or
even mostly, spoke the truth, but if anyone deserved a six-part series on television about
myth, it was this man, certainly not Joseph Campbell.)
The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1967.
From Ritual to Theatre. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1982.
"Myth and Symbol," The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences.
David L. Sills, ed. New York: Macmillan, 1968, 10:576-582. (This is one of the shortest,
and perhaps the best, overviews of myth ever written.)
The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti- Structure. Chicago: Aldine Publishers,
1969.
Van Gennep, Arnold. The Rites of Passage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1960. (Originally written in the early 1900s, this seminal book talks about the three
stages of initiation rituals or rites of passage: separation, transition, and
incorporation. Many myth scholars use Van Gennep's theory, including Eliade, Turner, and
Campbell, but Turner seems to mention it the most.)
Wilber, Ken. No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth.
Boulder, CO: Shambhala Publications, 1979. (A Buddhist, Wilber is the myth
"scholar" closest in temperament to Joseph Campbell. His kind of thinking has
infected both the New Age and secular societies.)
- Christian Books on Evolution and Science:
Geisler, Norman L. and J. Kerby Anderson. Origin Science: A Proposal for the
Creation-Evolution Controversy. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1987.
Hummel, Charles. Creation or Evolution? Resolving the Crucial Issues. Downers
Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1989.
The Galileo Connection: Resolving Conflicts between Science and the Bible.
Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1986.
Moreland, J. P. Christianity and the Nature of Science: A Philosophical
Investigation. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1989.
Poythress, Vern S. Science and Hermeneutics: Implications of Scientific Method for
Biblical Interpretation. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing Company, 1988.
Ramm, Bernard. The Christian View of Science and Scripture. Grand Rapids:
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1954.
Ross, Hugh. The Fingerprint of God. Orange, CA: Promise Publications,
1989.
Wilder-Smith, A. E. Man's Origin, Man's Destiny: A Critical Survey of the Principles
of Evolution and Christianity. Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 1975.
The Natural Sciences Know Nothing of Evolution. Costa Mesa, CA: The Word for
Today Publishers, n.d.
The Scientific Alternative to Neo- Darwinian Evolutionary Theory. Costa Mesa:
The Word for Today Publishers, n.d.
- Books that Defend Historic Christianity:
Allis, Oswald T. The Five Books of Moses. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and
Reformed Publishing Company, 1949.
Archer, Gleason L. Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties. Grand Rapids: Zondervan
Publishing Company, 1982.
A Survey of Old Testament Introduction. Chicago: Moody Press, 1985. (Like the
book by Oswald T. Allis above, Archer's book totally devastates secular theories about how
the first books of the Bible were written. In defending the Mosaic authorship, they
undermine much of what Joseph Campbell says about the Bible.)
Bruce, F. F. The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? Downers Grove, IL:
InterVarsity Press, 1987. (This is a must book in any library.)
Clark, David K. and Norman L. Geisler. Apologetics in the New Age: A Christian
Critique of Pantheism. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1990.
Cotterell, Peter and Max Turner. Linguistics & Biblical Interpretation.
Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1989. (This is a new book, very contemporary, but one
that gives solid principles of biblical interpretation. By reading such books, both
Christians and non-Christians will begin to see why Campbell's subjective method of
interpretation is so bad.)
Custance, Arthur C. The Doorway Papers. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing
Company, 1976 (Vol. IV).
Geisler, Norman L. Christian Apologetics. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1989
edition. (This is one of the best books defending the Christian faith. The only book which
perhaps surpasses it is The Reconstruction of the Christian Revelation Claim by Stuart C.
Hackett. For ways in which to combine Geisler's view with Hackett's, contact Bob and
Gretchen Passantino, Answers In Action, P. O. Box 2067, Costa Mesa, CA 92628.)
__________________ and Winfried Corduan. Philosophy of Religion. Grand Rapids:
Baker Book House, 1988 edition.
__________________ and William E. Nix. From God to Us: How We Got Our Bible.
Chicago: Moody Press, 1974.
__________________ and William D. Watkins. Worlds Apart: A Handbook of World Views.
Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1989 edition.
Habermas, Gary. The Verdict of History: Conclusive Evidence for the Life of Jesus.
Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1988. (Highly recommended.)
Hackett, Stuart C. The Reconstruction of the Christian Revelation Claim: A
Philosophical and Critical Apologetic. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1984. (This is
the most complete defense of historic Christianity I have read. If one takes this book and
the books by Allis, Archer, Geisler, Habermas, Lewis, Machen, McDowell, Montgomery, and
Moreland listed in this section, one can answer most objections non- Christians have about
the New Testament testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ. For help in doing such a task,
contact Bob and Gretchen Passantino of Answers In Action, P.O. Box 2067, Costa Mesa, CA
92628.)
Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity. New York: Macmillan, 1952. (A classic work.)
Machen, J. Gresham. The Origin of Paul's Religion. Grand Rapids: William B.
Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1947. (Another classic work that refutes secular theories of
the alleged pagan roots of Christianity.)
The Virgin Birth of Christ. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1985.
McDowell, Josh and Bill Wilson. He Walked Among Us: Evidence for the Historical
Jesus. San Bernardino, CA: Here's Life Publishers, 1988.
Mickelsen, A. Berkeley. Interpreting the Bible. Grand Rapids: William B.
Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989. (A classic work that gives solid principles of how to
interpret, or explain the meaning of, the Bible.)
Montgomery, John Warwick. Human Rights & Human Dignity. Grand Rapids:
Zondervan Publishing Company, 1986. (Pages 131-160 give a short, but brilliant, defense of
the Christian faith.)
Where Is History Going? Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 1969.
(Another good defense.)
Moreland, J. P. Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianity. Grand
Rapids: Baker Book House, 1987. (This is a philosophical, but highly readable, argument in
favor of historic Christianity.)
Ramm, Bernard. Protestant Biblical Interpretation: A Textbook of Hermeneutics.
Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1970 (third edition).
Silva, Moises. Biblical Words and Their Meaning: An Introduction to Lexical
Semantics. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing Company, 1983. (This book has some
important things to say about biblical interpretation and how to determine the meaning of
words.)
Terry, Milton S. Biblical Hermeneutics: A Treatise on the Interpretation of the Old
and New Testaments. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing Company, 1974 printing. (This
is a classic defense of traditional methods of biblical interpretation.)
Young, Warren C. A Christian Approach to Philosophy. Grand Rapids: Baker Book
House, 1954. (Young's book is perhaps the best of its kind. It's also highly readable.)
Tom Snyder teaches writing, philosophy, aesthetics, social science, and film at
National University in Southern California. He taught aesthetics and media criticism at
Southern California College and film at Northwestern University, where he received his
Ph.D. in film studies in 1984.
Snyder worked as a journalist and public relations editor.
He did post-doctoral research in Christian Apologetics at Simon Greenleaf School of Law
and currently studies apologetics, theology, and philosophy at Christ Lutheran Church
(Missouri Synod) in Costa Mesa, California. Snyder's article on the biblical doctrine of
faith versus works was published in 1989. His latest work is a new book from Baker books
just released in January of 1995, Myth Conceptions, Joseph Campbell and the New Age.
He enjoys writing about film and politics, and has published many short articles on those
subjects in magazines, newspapers, and encyclopedias. He lives with his wife, Jan, and two
cats in Tustin, California. Tom would like to have a pet dog, but the cats decided that
wasn't a good idea.
Answers In Action
P.O. Box 2067
Costa Mesa, California 92628
(714) 646 9042
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