Demythologization

Demythologization as a hermeneutic approach to religious texts seeks to separate cosmological and historic claims from philosophical, ethical and theological teachings. Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976) introduced the term demythologization (in German: ) in this context, but the concept has earlier precedents.

In his 1677 Theologico-Political Treatise, Spinoza argues that any event in Scripture which is inconsistent with natural laws must be interpreted either as unreliable testimony or as a metaphorical or allegorical representation of a moral teaching. Because the masses are "wholly ignorant of the workings of nature", they are prone to interpret any natural event they can't explain as a miracle, and this "ridiculous way of expressing ignorance" often finds its way into Scripture. Scripture aims not at narrating things in terms of their natural causes, but rather at exciting the "popular imagination" in order to "impress the minds of the masses with devotion."

Therefore it speaks inaccurately of God and of events, seeing that its object is not to convince the reason, but to attract and lay hold of the imagination. If the Bible were to describe the destruction of an empire in the style of political historians, the masses would remain unstirred.

In order to correctly interpret scripture we must understand the opinions and judgments of the ancients and learn common "Jewish phrases and metaphors." Otherwise we will be prone to "confound actual events with symbolical and imaginary ones."

Many things are narrated in Scripture as real, and were believed to be real, which were in fact only symbolical and imaginary.

Immanuel Kant's 1793 Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone argues that the New Testament teaches a hermeneutic strategy in which "not scriptural scholarship but the pure religion of reason must be the law's interpreter."

[Jesus] claims that not the observance of outer civil or statutory churchly duties but the pure moral disposition of the heart alone can make man well-pleasing to God (Mt 5:20-48); … that injury done one’s neighbor can be repaired only through satisfaction rendered to the neighbor himself, not through acts of divine worship (Mt 5:24). Thus, he says, does he intend to do full justice to the Jewish law (Mt 5:17); whence it is obvious that not scriptural scholarship but the pure religion of reason must be the law’s interpreter, for taken according to the letter, it allowed the very opposite of all this.

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