Bultmann on demythologizing

We have been reading Bultmann, and I am sorry Ben Myers, but we have all been quite disappointed. It just seems so, well, dated. Never mind - he puts this really good question to all of us: where do you demythologize? We all do it (he says), so where do you?

In many cases we demythologize unintentionally and unreflectively by taking the mythological statements of the Bible as pictures that have long since lost their originial mythical sense. This is done most easily, naturally, with poetic writings in the Bible like the Psalms, in which the mythological language may in many cases already have been intended poetically. In our daily life, also, we use pictures that stem from mythical thinking, as when we say. for example, that our heart prompts us to do this or that - a statement that no one understands any longer in its original mythological sense, But those of us who have to interpret scripture responsibily ought to be conscious of what we are doing and to remind ourselves that honesty at this point requires us to be radical.

More radical? I am not sure: certainly, more honest and more systematic perhaps. Perhaps, too, the problem lies in calling this process 'demythologization', which implies a certain discovery of the 'real' intentions of the author - intentions that he not have been aware of himself.