Two Philosophy of Religion Questions and the Relation of Humanity to the Religious Ideal

Rembrandt, Balaam and the Ass, 1626

Two questions of Philosophy of Religion are how does humanity attempt to relate to a believed supernatural world and does that supernatural world relate to humanity?   One response to both of these is the existence of religious literature.  Religion as religo or the "tying together" or of the binding between the natural world and the supernatural is my approach to this.  Thus, religious literature fits this as both a human response to the supposed supernatural world and, as inspired revelation, as the supernatural response to human questions.

Because it is in human language and form, the forms take on the appearance of various cultural artifacts from the literary imagination of those individuals.  The various cultural artifacts present communication as folklore, legend, myth, records and genealogies, ritual instruction, and wisdom literature which all play a part in these connections.  

Alan Dundes wrote about this nearly 20 years ago in his book Holy Writ as Oral Writ: The Bible as Folklore, https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2732&context=auss.  Dundes used the term "folklore" since his concern is the transition from oral teaching to written document, https://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/99legacy/3-9-1999.html.

This is significant, however, as he provided a means to understand religious literature by demonstrating how both fundamentalists and biblical critics may be asking the wrong questions about the biblical literature, and I would apply that to all religious literature.  The relation to the religious ideal, or of the religious ideal to the person, becomes a journey of the reader through the story and instruction.  

I think that many religious people are mythologists, but in actuality a lucky few live out the heroic myth.