I've been studying Ancient Rome lately, and I noticed something interesting when I was learning about the myths regarding Rome's founding, namely those of the Trojan prince Aeneas and his descendants Romulus and Remus.

It seems that the ancient Romans never bothered to investigate the validity of these stories, and most of the educated people of that time probably knew they were myths. However, they were unconcerned about their validity, because they thought the sense of community and a common origin were more important than whether the stories themselves were true.

This got me thinking, and I've come to the conclusion that the same process might have occurred with the ancient Hebrews, who passed their communal myth(s) to us as Genesis and Exodus. A lot of them probably didn't really believe that God really made Eve out of Adam's rib, or whether Moses really parted the Red Sea. The reason they never questioned these stories was probably the same reason the Romans didn't question whether Romulus really founded their city: because the sense of community that was created from the Genesis myth, and the bit about them being God's chosen, was more important to them then whether any of these things really happened.

This conclusion leads me to wonder: why do so many people in the modern era place validity on an ancient story invented to preserve a sense of community that many of the ancients probably didn't even think was true? Obviously, I could have the entirely wrong idea about this, but I'd like to know what you guys think. Thank you in advance.