For if it is true as the Greek philosopher Antisthenes (born c. 444 B.C.) has said, that "god is not like anything: hence no one can understand him by means of an image," or, as we read in
the Indian Upanishad,
It is other, indeed, than the known
And moreover, above the unknown!
then it must be conceded, as a basic principle of our natural history of the gods and heroes, that whenever a myth has been taken literally its sense has been perverted; but also, reciprocally, that whenever it as been dismissed as a mere priestly fraud or sign of inferior intelligence, truth has slipped out the other door.
Joseph Campbell, from Primitive Mythology, The Masks of God (1959)
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