What Is Truth?

Each year as we gather for the Readings for Holy Week services, I find that one or two verses stay with me for days and weeks after Easter.  This year it has been Pilate’s probing question during his interrogation of Jesus, “What is truth?” (John 18:38a)

Indeed, what is truth?  It is a question which is as relevant and urgent today as it was two thousand years ago.  When called to testify at a trial, one is required to swear or affirm to “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”  Is truth limited, then, to statements that are admissible in a court of law?  Hardly.  There are many things we know in our lives which cannot be proven true or false by the standards of our justice system.

Neither is truth simply the recitation of facts.  To be truthful facts must be accurate; but without context, plain facts can be deeply misleading.  As an example, consider the old Cold-War-era joke regarding a foot race between the top U.S. runner and his counterpart from the U.S.S.R.  The American won the race.  The next day the Soviet newspapers reported that their runner had come in second, and the U.S. runner had finished next to last.  The facts are accurate.  The manner of stating them is contrived to convey a false understanding of the results of the contest.

Mythology

            Edith Hamilton was featured on an episode of “The Writer’s Almanac” some time ago.  A classicist and educator, she did not begin her writing career until after her retirement from the position of Headmistress of Bryn Mawr School for Girls in 1922.  Her compendium of Greek and Roman Mythology, first published in 1942, is still in print and used widely in introductory high school and college classes.

Hearing the brief bio of Hamilton narrated by Garrison Keillor evoked fond memories.  My own copy of Hamilton’s “Mythology,” a paperback edition from the early 1950’s, is brittle and crumbling.  I won’t replace it, though, because it was a gift from my father, purchased in the Penn State campus bookstore one summer while he was working on his Master’s degree.  It was one of the first “grown-up” books that I ever owned, and I treasure it both for the gift that it was and the knowledge that it conveys.

Thinking about Hamilton led me to reflect on the concept of myth in general.  Today the word is often used to mean a common belief or story that is not true.  We can see this in such article titles as “Ten Myths about Breast Cancer” and “The Vitamin C Myth.”  A myth in this sense is something to be avoided or corrected.