1. A general definition:

A myth is a sacred, paradigmatic story symbolizing a particular group's beliefs and values. It therefore expresses what it means to be a member of that group.

2. Mircea Eliade:

"Myths narrate a sacred history. They relate events that took place in a primordial time, the fabled time of the beginnings."

"Myth is always an account of creation, ... a dramatic breakthrough of the sacred."

"Every myth shows how a reality came into existence, whether it be the total reality, the cosmos, or only a fragment -- an island, a species of plant, a human institution. To tell how things came into existence is to explain them and at the same time indirectly to answer another question: Why did they come into existence? The why is always implied in the how -- for the simple reason that to tell how a thing was born is to reveal an irruption of the sacred into the world, and the sacred is the ultimate cause of all real existence." (Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane).

3. Sigmund Freud:

"It seems extremely probable that myths, for example, are the distorted vestiges of the wish-phantasies of whole nations -- the age-long dreams of young humanity." (Freud, "The Relation of the Poet to Day-Dreaming")

4. Carl Jung:

The conclusion that the myth-makers thought in much the same ways as we still think in dreams is almost self-evident... But one must certainly put a large question-mark after the assertion that myths spring from the "infantile" psychic life of the race. They are on the contrary the most mature product of that young humanity." (Jung, Symbols of Transformation)