Mythology functions as primitive history legitimating authority and group identity

Evidence

The term mythology as used at the present day covers a number of different things—primitive science, to explain such natural phenomena as birth and death and the rotation of the seasons; primitive religion, to answer questions about man, God, time and eter­ nity; and—our present concern—primitive history, to confirm identity, encourage loyalty, and, through legitimacy, to justify authority. The primary and most basic focus of history and religion is thus the tribe and the tribal cult. There are many surviving examples of these, expressing the historical self-image of the tribe and the religious projection of that self-image. In time the tribe develops into a people, then a state, the cult into a church or equivalent, and these in turn may subdivide into parties and factions and sects, each with its own version of history, designed to prove the rightness of its actions and the correctness of its beliefs, in contrast with other groups and cults with which it may come into contact and, usually, into conflict. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1828

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes Benedict Anderson’s imagined communities and parallels how nationalist and Orientalist historiography legitimates authority; corroborates claims in the Said cluster about history-writing as identity project.
• DEEPTHINKING: Absent