Demythologization

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Demythologization. A programme associated particularly with Rudolf Bultmann which endeavoured to penetrate and re-express the meanings of biblical myths. For Bultmann demythologization was the attempt to express the content of myth in the non-imaginative form of the analysis of existence. In his view, the account of existentialists, especially M. Heidegger, is ‘no more than a secularised, philosophical version of the New Testament view of human life’. See also HERMENEUTICS.

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