Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. [Vol. 3.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 23)

STUDIES - Zsolt K. Virágos: The American Brand of the Myth of Apocalypse

reflective and symptomatic of any particular nation's social circumstances, its collective self-image, value-impregnated beliefs, even of a given group's conception of its own destiny. In view of the above it should come as no surprise that despite the established, historical approval and massive support that Biblical mythology has been accorded for almost two thousand years in Western civilization, dissenting voices regarding the question of the actual origins, meaning, and authority of canonical scriptural texts have not been absent. Within the American frame of reference, Thomas Paine's deistic "frontier Bible," The Age of Reason (1793—1795) was the first widely known attack on the divine origins of the major Christian document. Paine claimed, among other things, that the Biblical stories and characters are actually reworkings of Greek myths: It is curious to observe how the theory of what is called the Christian church sprung out of the tail of the heathen mythology... The deification of heroes changed into the canonization of saints. The mythologists had gods for everything; the Christian mythologists had saints for everything... The Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient mythologists

, accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue; and it yet remains to reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud. (271) Thus, Paine observes, Christian Revelation never happened. Lloyd Graham's Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1979) could be cited as a more recent study along similar lines. 'There is nothing 'holy' about the Bible," Graham states bluntly and provocatively at the beginning of his book, "nor is it 'the word of God.'

" It was not written by God-inspired saints, but by powerseeking priests... By this intellectual tyranny they sought to gain control, and they achieved it. By 400 B.C. they were the masters of ancient Israel. For so great a project they needed a theme, a framework, and this they found in the Creation lore of more knowledgeable races. This they commandeered and 118