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Simply put, how can we be so sure of the validity of some myth? Especially for me, who is searching the net, as opposed to ancient Greek libraries or asking an actual Norse priest.

I'm just curious since even with more modern subjects such as Buddhism or science. The internet can be persuasive but not always accurate.

How can we be sure of the sources? Is this why its called 'mythos' since it's basically a story?

I'm only asking since with my time I've heard many, differing tales. For instance Kronos is sometimes talked about as a planet, or the God of time, Chaos, or just simply Zeus father.

How and where do we verify a myth's validity?

yannis
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Richard Peter Targett
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1 Answers1

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Especially for me, who is searching the net, as apposed to ancient Greek libraries or asking an actual Norse priest.

That's your first problem. Get off the internet and go to a library instead. There are exceptions, but in general I have found that the internet is filled with inaccurate information. Libraries are much more likely to contain books written by experts (see below):

How can we be sure of he sources? Is this why its called 'myth'os since its basically a story?

You're essentially asking: how does the academic process work? The answer is: academic experts in anything will

  1. Cite their sources when they make claims (which makes it easy to evaluate whether their claims are accurate)
  2. Give their work to other experts, who will evaluate their work based on its accuracy (this is called peer review).
  3. Have read a huge amount of the literature related to their subject. All of the people who I would consider an academic expert have literally read hundreds of books on the subjects they teach/write about.

These three things make it much more likely for something that an academic says to be true.

You could also seek out non-academic experts, i.e. people who have been doing [thing x] for a long period of time and thus know a lot about it. This is hard to do with Greek mythology, but should be easy to do with something like Buddhism; I personally know several people who I would consider experts in Buddhism because they practice it every day.

If you are looking for accuracy/truth: seek out experts, and experts are much more likely to be found in the real world, not the internet.