Religion and mythology

Significantly, none of the scholarly definitions of "myth" (see above) imply that myths are necessarily false. In a scholarly context, the word "myth" may mean "sacred story", "traditional story", or "story about gods", but it does not mean "false story". Therefore, scholars may speak of "religious mythology" without meaning to insult religion. (For instance, a scholar may call Christian and Muslim scriptures "myths" without meaning to insult Christianity and Islam.) However, this scholarly use of the word "myth" may cause confusion and offense, due to the popular use of "myth" to mean "falsehood".

Many myths, such as ritual myths, are clearly part of religion. However, unless we simply define myths as "sacred stories" (instead defining them as "traditional stories", for instance), not all myths are necessarily religious. As the classicist G. S. Kirk notes, "many myths embody a belief in the supernatural [...] but many other myths, or what seem like myths, do not".[16] As an example, Kirk cites the myth of Oedipus, which is "only superficially associated [...] with religion or the supernatural", and is therefore not a sacred story.[17] (Note that folklorists would not classify the Oedipus story as a myth, precisely because it is not a sacred story.[18])

Examples of religious myths include:

* the Hebrew creation account in Genesis
* the Mesopotamian Enuma Elish, a creation account around which the Babylonians' religious New Year festival revolved[19]
* an Australian myth describing the first sacred bora ritual[20]