Contemporization of Myths in Ahmad Shamlu’s Existentialism Ahmad Shamlu contemporizes such myths as the crucifixion of Jesus and the myth of Fereydun. In this paper, I will attempt to demonstrate the ideological and philosophical foundations based on which Shamlu contemporizes the myths. Additionally, I will attempt to show how the contemporization of myths simultaneously deviates from and contributes to Shamlu’s Marxian ideology. To specify my objectives, I have analyzed the contemporizing themes in Shamlu’s interpretation of the Fereydun Myth and his understanding of the role of Judas Iscariot in one of Shamlu’s last poems, Death of the Nazareth. I have tried to show that despite his devotion to Marxism, an ideology for which historical thinking is quintessential, Shamlu regarded Marxism as a system of perpetual values, which enabled him to evaluate the historical figures by isolating them from their specific historical context. Decontexualizing the myth of Fereydun, Shamlou applies the Marxian soteriological agendum on the myth of Fereydun, to show the extent of the distance between Ferdowsi’s values and perpetual Marxian values. I will attempt to show that although problematic, Shamlu’s Marxian critique of Ferdowsi is the first-ever encounter with Ferdowsi to de-deify the great Persian poet, enabling Ferdowsi to be read based on a modern value-system. Besides perpetual values, Shamlu deploys another tool to decontextualize the historical figures. In Death of the Nazareth, Shamlu takes a theological-existential approach to render a novel interpretation of the role of Judas. According to this novel reading, Judas’s predestined mission was to be a means to Jesus’s entrance to the realm of perpetuity. Doing so, Shamlu empties the Jesus myth from its specific context and turns it into a transhistorical existential project. This transhistoricity turns into the personal will of the poet in On the Threshold, which is entirely removed from the Marxian agendum, producing a personal understanding of death and the afterlife.