Answer:

Mythic storytellers of ancient Greece, for example, told about ancient events like the Trojan war, and about supernatural beings like Zeus and other deities believed to dwell on remote Mount Olympus. Such storytellers and their Greek audiences certainly realized that they could not see Trojan heroes and Olympian deities. Yet they seem to have felt that stories like those of Troy and the Olympians were secretly connected to the familiar realities of warfare, and to the unseen influence of supernatural powers on their daily lives. The ancient peoples of the Middle East, likewise, told stories now recorded in the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, and Qur'an

myths are simply stories. This introductory essay explains the features common to all stories, stressing that while the storyteller's words and the images they conjure up may be fleeting, their stories are often long-lived, deeply influencing the flesh-and-blood individuals who hear them, and thus by extension also the social groups to which individuals belong. However, understanding what is distinctive about mythic storytelling (often collectively referred to as "mythology") also requires grasping what distinguishes myths from other types of stories. This essay thus begins by clarifying this distinction, as well as the relationship between different types of stories.