“I certainly accept the term “myth” as a suitable literary description of Gen. 1-3″
Great, I’m happy we agree!

“Saying that it is true “for those who have accepted it” while also rejecting explicitly or implicitly the truth that the text is conveying is simply condescending.”
I agree that sometimes researchers are
condescending to whatever it is they are studying. But the descriptive
use of the term myth need not be so.

Rather than condescension, I see the process of investigation mutually
enlightening. Outsiders who do not accept the truth claims of a
particular group’s myths can give really useful insights or a fresh
perspective into those myths. The insiders who accept these myths as
paradigmatic truth may learn something about their own myths or how
people perceive them. On the other hand, outsiders, in examining others’
myths that the outsiders do not believe as truth, can often train the
insights they’ve gained from such myths onto their own “paradigmatic
truths” (myths) and learn something about themselves. There is a
reciprocal relationship between studying others to learn about others
and studying others to learn about oneself. Isn’t that what the
Humanities and a Liberal Arts education is at least partly about? By
denying the general use of a descriptive categorical term that seems so
self-evidently applicable, you reify a certain division between your
truth (non-myth) and everyone else’s nonsense (myth). Why can’t your
myths be true for you but not for me but still be myths?

I have a class where we begin by looking at Mesopotamian myths to see
how myths function in a society and then we read Richard Hughes’
Myths America Lives By to examine our own myths and ask the same
kinds of questions we asked about Mesopotamian society. It’s very
effective to get people to think about our own political myths.

By the way, the exception you take to my analogy from the term
“theology” only proved my point. “Theology” in many circles is loaded,
as in a load of crap. Pure speculation. Baseless imaginings. So there’s
a subjective connotation that must be addressed when using the term.
Furthermore, the definition you gave indicates that polytheistic
“theology” isn’t really theology. So you’re use of the term is hegemonic
(prescriptive) and freighted with a certain ontological presupposition.
If it’s going to be cross-culturally useful, the definition will have to
be broadened. Your theology can be true to you whereas it may not be so
for me. But we might both agree that it is still theology.

I’ll let you have the last word.