"For some reason which I have not yet found anywhere explained, the popular, unenlightened practice of prosaic reification of metaphoric imagery has been the fundamental method of the most influential exegetes of the whole Judeo-Christian-Islamic mythic complex. The idea of the virgin birth, for example, is argued as a historical fact, whereas in practically every mythology of the world instances have appeared of this elementary idea. American Indian mythologies abound in virgin births. Therefore, the intended reference of the archetypal image cannot possibly have been to a supposed occurrence in the Near East in the first century B.C. The elementary idea, likewise, of the Promised Land cannot originally have referred to a part of this earth to be conquered by military might, but to a place of spiritual peace in the heart, to be discovered by contemplation. Creation myths, furthermore, which, when read in their mystical sense might bring to mind the idea of a background beyond time out of which the whole temporal world with its colorful populations has been derived, when read, instead, historically, only justify as supernaturally endowed the moral order of some local culture. In short, the social, as opposed to a mystical function of a mythology, is not to open the mind, but to enclose it: to bind a local people together in mutual support by offering images that awaken the heart to recognitions of commonality, without allowing these to escape the monadic compound."

...

"In the popular nightmare of history, where local mythic images are interpreted, not as metaphors, but as facts, there have been ferocious wars waged between the parties of such contrary manners of metaphoric representation. The Bible abounds in examples. And today (1984-85), in the formerly charming little city of Beirut, the contending zealots of three differing inflections even of the same idea of a single paternal "God" are unloading bombs on each other.
One cannot but ask: What can such tribal literalism possibly contribute but agony to such a world of intercultural, global prospects as that of our present century? It all comes of misreading metaphors, taking denotation for connotation, the messenger for the message; overloading the carrier, consequently, with sentimentalized significance and throwing both life and thought thereby off balance. To which the only generally recognized correction as yet proposed has been the no less wrongheaded one of dismissing the metaphors as lies (which indeed they are, when so construed), thus scrapping the whole dictionary of the language of the soul (this is a metaphor) by which mankind has been elevated to interests beyond procreation, economics, and "the greatest good of the greatest number."
Do I hear, coming as from somewhere that is nowhere, the frightening sound of an Olympian laugh?"

• Joseph Campbell
  "The Inner Reaches Of Outer Space"