sacred story
Tale of gods
A sacred story is a narrative held to be spiritually significant within a religious or cultural tradition—myths, scriptures, or accounts of divine figures and events that carry authority for believers.
The term often appears in academic or interfaith contexts as a neutral alternative to myth, which can imply falsehood: Every culture has its sacred stories.
Sacred stories shape identity, explain origins, and transmit values across generations.
- mythTraditional explanatory tale
- creation mythOrigin narrative of existence
- legendUnverified traditional tale
- parableInstructive allegorical narrative
- scriptureSacred religious writings
holy book · gospel · revelation · prophecy · burning bush · creation · genesis · divine · holy · ritual · oral · oral tradition · ancient · ancestor · temple · priest · altar · blessing
- mythmyth, mythos, creation myth, flood myth, cosmogony
- Moʻolelocreation myth, genealogy
- folklorefairy tales, fairytales, folktales, folk tales, folk tale
sacred storyfiction
Imagined narrative work
fantasy · tall tale · fabrication · fairy tale · escapist fiction
sacred storybathroom humor
dirty joke · small talk · tabloid story · penny dreadful · beach read
sacred storypopular fiction
Widely read commercial literature
pulp fiction · beach read · genre fiction · thriller · romance novel
sacred, story, sacredness, sacral, sacrament, sacramental, consecrate, consecration, desecrate