MYTHICAL WORD AND MYTH IN ANCIENT GREEK TRADITION

Abstract

The term "myth" is a category of our thinking, used to combine the attempts to explain natural phenomena, creations of oral literature, philosophical constructions and cases of linguistic processes in the mind of the subject.
Myth is a living word, myth was experienced, and this experience determined the essence of the myth for man in the period of transformation of thinking from figurative into conceptual. Man of ancient times didn't separate himself from society, both society from nature and cosmos as an embodiment of various and numerous gods.
"Myth" was used to confirm the existence of something unknown or something that couldn't be verified, but there is trust in this unknown, based on translation. "Logos" was used to denote a word generated by mind, as a word referred to some higher, metaphysical one. The word "epic" was understood as an objective metrical narrative, in which a poetic illusion, an appropriate deception, illogicality were allowed.
"Myth", "logos" and "epic" were filled with different semantic meanings.
The semantic nuances in the word "myth" appeared in periods of weakening the power of myth and lately, when myth, as a sacred word, was opposed to religion, science and philosophy. The mythical word weakened by religious dogmas and definitions, empirical data of science and the logic of philosophical constructions, which created a new attitude to the myth and its definition.
According to the Greek tradition the word "myth" was formed as a multifaceted concept with a number of semantic nuances. The word itself was less understood, while more felt, reflecting the irrational aspects of human perception of the world or some parts. The myth was determined not by the word itself, but by the attitude to the description of experiences or events conveyed by him, formed in stories, with the addition of emotions, signs and symbols, combining verbal and nonverbal means of information.