Last week we began a new theme study looking at the dragon in the story of the Bible.

The Bible is not the only ancient text where dragons play a key role.

Dragons pop up all over ancient Near Eastern literature.

Dragons are like the first global meme of the ancient world.

They're a way to talk about chaos and death.

There are forces out there that want to take the life of the precious good things in my world.

And everybody knows that feeling in one way or another.

And the dragons laying myth was a common ancient Near Eastern way to talk and explore about

that on both an individual level and then on a corporate communal and cosmic level.

Now when we talk about myth, we usually think about made up stories, fiction, but the ancient

world understood myth in a much more nuanced way.

The technical sense of myth is a symbolic narrative that's exploring or expressing universal

concerns of human existence.

Usually about the origins of the cosmos, the nature of the cosmos, and they're using

these symbols to explore the human experience that everybody sense then and until now

and everybody on the planet now actually has the same experiences and feelings.

We just have different symbols and language for them.

So if the Bible uses symbolic language and talks about mythic creatures, can I trust

the Bible?

I mean, is the Bible accurate?

Are you saying that narratives in the Bible aren't true because they may employ the language

of mythology or symbolism?

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