More then people think.
It is fashionable, and has been for some time, to think that our ancestors had nothing better to do then sit down and using a very complicated system of writing and very sub par recording mediums and make up outright lies for the very tiny percentage of people who could read to enjoy.
I tend more to believe that written records are fairly accurate and that oral history is at least as accurate on average as our current documentaries. Some things added, compressed or left out for dramas sake but mostly real.
Not a popular belief at the moment.
Good point. It is unfortunate that we don’t have written records from the Celts (my ancestors). But the bards did a good job of recording things via the spoken/sung word. And in academia, no one wants to give any credence to this. But everyone thought Troy was mythology until it was finally discovered.
Or the alternative:
Much of ‘mythology’ has as its purpose not the recording of actual deeds but the inculcation of moral virtues and using image and symbolism to communicate the wisest things that a society had figured out.
We now think of history as facts, dates, information; but the ancients didn’t view it that way; they viewed it as ‘what do we need to teach the next generation to ensure the continuance and growth of our society.
It wouldn’t really matter if the Jews wandered for 18 years or 47 years, what mattered was that in that period of time soft, polytheistic urbanized farmers turned into lean, mean, militarized, monotheistic warriors, for example; that the ones who weren’t up to the task of conquest and firm in their faith never made it out of the desert-