'The One True Myth,' C S Lewis

Pgs. 12 , 13 and a lot of the rest of the chapter Campbell talks about the reoccurring themes in myths throughout the world and throughout time.

Here's a quote from C S Lewis, who like Campbell loves to write about stories, myth and allegory.

"Myth," Lewis wrote, "is the isthmus which connects the peninsular world of thought with the vast continent we really belong to"—indeed, "it was through almost believing in the gods that I came to believe in God." As for other religions, on the great issue of whether deity was real or not, "the whole mass of those who had worshipped—all who had danced and sung and sacrificed and trembled and adored—were clearly right." To declare Christianity true was not to declare all other religions false. Rather, Christianity was true because it was the answer to two vital questions: "Where has religion reached its true maturity? Where, if anywhere, have the hints of all Paganism been fulfilled?"

Myths point to the one true myth. Eventually all his studies and research led Lewis to this conclusion about the myth of Jesus...

"but with this tremendous difference that it really happened.... The dying god really appears—as a historical person, living in a definite time and place." As Lewis later wrote, "By becoming fact [the dying god story] does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle." But "it is God's myth where the others are men's myths: i.e. the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call "real things." "The Christian story of the dying god, in other words, lay at the exact intersection of myth and history."

Do you get that? Like I did some research recently on Bodhisattva, which Buddhists see as the embodiment of all compassion. The more I read, the more I thought, "Sounds like Jesus to me!"
Read pgs 139 and 201 and you'll see it. An immortal one who is boundlessly compassionate, who gives up his high position to suffer.

more later...