Eventually Oedipus came to the gates of Thebes. Guarding the gates was a terrible monster with the body of a lion and the head and torso of a woman. She allowed no one to enter or leave the city without answering the riddle that she posed. If the traveler could not answer correctly, she would kill and devour him. As no one had yet come up with the right answer, the sphinx was well-fed, and the city of Thebes was effectively cut off from all trade and all contact with the world outside the city walls.

When Oedipus reached the gates of the city, the creature posed her riddle: What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening? Oedipus solved the riddle, answering that man crawls on all fours in infancy, walks upright on two legs in adulthood, and uses a cane as a third leg in old age. The sphinx was so frustrated that Oedipus had answered her riddle that she threw herself from the city walls, and died there on the road in front of the city that she had terrorized for so long.
This is part of the famous Oedipus myth where he ends up killing his father and marrying his mother, bringing a curse and, when all is revealed, blinding himself.

I choose this story because no one is going to feel emotionally committed to its defense. We know it is a myth.

Here are the characteristics that make it a myth:

1. It is full of miraculous or at least wondrous stuff--in this case the Sphinx.

2. It is not rational--it doesn't hang together. For example, why hadn't anyone guessed the riddle before Oedipus--the answer if patently obvious? Or why did the sphinx kill itself--all we are told is that someone successfully answering the riddle was "frustrated." Is that sensible?

3. In spite of the wondrous element, the story itself is grubby and mundane.

Now a passage from Mark Chapter 5:
1 And they came over unto the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gad'arenes.
2 And when he was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit,
3 who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no man could bind him, no, not with chains:
4 because that he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been plucked asunder by him, and the fetters broken in pieces: neither could any man tame him.
5 And always, night and day, he was in the mountains, and in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones.
6 But when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshipped him,
7 and cried with a loud voice, and said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God? I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not.
8 For he said unto him, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit.
9 And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion: for we are many.
10 And he besought him much that he would not send them away out of the country.
11 Now there was there nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine feeding.
12 And all the devils besought him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them.
13 And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine; and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea, (they were about two thousand,) and were choked in the sea.
14 ¶ And they that fed the swine fled, and told it in the city, and in the country. And they went out to see what it was that was done.
15 And they come to Jesus, and see him that was possessed with the devil, and had the legion, sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind; and they were afraid.
16 And they that saw it told them how it befell to him that was possessed with the devil, and also concerning the swine.
17 And they began to pray him to depart out of their coasts.
Here we find something with the same characteristics. The wondrous element is obvious, but it is not uplifting or inspiring, but mundane and grubby. The man is reportedly healed of a serious mental illness--by casting out demons.

Setting aside the question of what a heard of swine was doing in Palestine (the Greek authors did not know enough about Judaism to know better), the story is nonsensical. The herd of demons wants to go into a herd of swine--for what purpose? So that they can all kill themselves by jumping off a cliff?

It makes no sense. Nor does the reaction of the people to all of this--they are frightened. This is not some great healer but someone who cavorts with demons, and the prevail on him to leave--although it seems they were nice enough about it.

We have no trouble seeing the mythic nature of the Oedipus story--why can't people see the same sort of thing in the Jesus stories? Ah--people have an emotional commitment--when they have doubts their brain gets flooded with "feel bad" chemicals and they either get angry or they get fearful or they suffer guilt (usually all three). It is psychologically much easier to ignore the truth of the matter.