"Can the Christian proclamation today expect men and women to acknowledge the mythical world picture as true? To do so would be both pointless and impossible. It would be pointless because there is nothing specifically Christian about the mythical world picture, which is simply the world picture of a time now past which was not yet formed by scientific thinking. It would be impossible because no one can appropriate a world picture by sheer resolve, since it is already given with one’s historical situation."
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Rudolf Bultmann, New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (1984), p. 3
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Demythologization
Demythologization is a hermeneutic approach to religious texts that seeks to separate cosmological and historic claims from philosophical, ethical and theological teachings. The term demythologization (in German, Entmythologisierung) was introduced by Rudolf Bultmann.
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