Abstract

The being-true of genuine myths echoes the ab-original saying or muthos through which Being opens up a new whole or world of meaning to there-being. The being-true of authentic human myths originates in there-being's mythical attitude toward Being as the manifold One and can be examined from a fourfold perspective of: there-being's synoptic synthesis at the basis of understanding; the potentiality-for-the-possible-making-actual that characterizes its projective anticipation; the possibility to grasp truth as non-concealment in the Open that underlies truth as correspondence; the momentousness of the "now-moment" in the spannedness of time allowing for the being-new. As it is related to the saying of Being, the being-true of myth is also manifest in and through language. However, the existence of non-authentic myths indicates that the relation between Being and there-being is permeated by a negativity inherent both in there-being's finitude and in the double negativity of Being. Built on it is mythical attitude as a dynamic limit that preserves traits of the presenc-ing of Being as concealing non-concealment and of the overpowering radiance of the non-residual density of Being. Limitation is characterized as a priori expansiveness, openness, novelty and rarity, strangeness and mystery, simplicity, measure and "thereness." These features show the kind of attendance characterizing mythical attitude through which there-being can grasp and, to a certain extent, eventually render, truth as a concealing non-concealment, as we have tried to show in our interpretation of Hamlet. ;Since man relates to whatever is new primarily in a mythical attitude, this may be also the case of the truth about God in the kerygma. This would explain why one could gain a better understanding of Scriptures by interpreting the being-true of the myths of the early Christians rather than by "demythologizing" or rationalizing these accounts