lpetrich

Here's the mythic-hero profile, courtesy of Lord Raglan, Otto Ranck, and Joseph Campbell; Alan Dundes has applied it to Jesus Christ.

In summary, JC fits the Mythic-Hero profile very well. Which only supports the view that Jesus Christ was a myth. Here's that profile:

(1) The hero's mother is a royal virgin, while
(2) his father is a king, and
(3) the father is related to the mother.
(4) The hero's conception is unusual or miraculous; hence
(5) he is reputed to be a son of a god.
(6) Evil forces attempt to kill the infant or boy hero, but
(7) he is spirited away to safety and
(8) reared by foster parents in a foreign land. Besides this,
(9) we learn no details of his childhood until
(10) he journeys to his future kingdom, where
(11) he triumphs over the reigning king and/or a giant, dragon, or wild beast, and
(12) marries a princess, often his predecessor's daughter, and
(13) becomes king himself.
(14) For a while he reigns uneventfully,
(15) promulgating laws. But
(16) he later loses favor with his subjects or with the gods and
(17) is driven from the throne and the city and
(18) meets with a mysterious death,
(19) often atop a hill.
(20) If he has children, they do not succeed him.
(21) His body is not buried, yet
(22) he has one or more holy sepulchers.

According to Raglan and Dundes,

Oedipus: 21
Theseus: 20
Moses: 20
Jesus Christ: 19
King Arthur: 19
Dionysus: 19
Romulus: 18
Hercules: 17
Bellerophon: 16
Gilgamesh: 15
Jason: 15
Robin Hood: 13

Among well-known real people, Alexander the Great has this high score: 7

I'll score Jesus Christ:

1. 0.5 - Mary is a virgin, of course, but she has no pedigree, except if one accepts the apologetic that Luke's genealogy goes through Mary - Luke traces JC to King David

2. 0.5 - Joseph, according to Matthew, is descended from King David.

3. 0.5 - implied by the Luke apologetic above.

4. 1 - Need I say more?

5. 1 - He is not only the Son of God, but the Second Person in the Christian Trinity (either God or 1/3 of God).

6. 1 - King Herod tries to kill him by killing lots of baby boys.

7. 1 - His parents flee to Egypt

8. 0 - He is raised by his "real" parents.

9. 0.5 - There's a story of his precocious learning, but that's about it.

10. 1 - He returns to Galilee.

11. 1 - He resists the Devil's temptations, such as rule of all the kingdoms of the world.

12. 0.5 - He's single in the NT, but a noncanonical Gospel pictures him and Mary Magdalene as having a close relationship, in agreement with many later speculations.

13. 1 - He becomes a famous prophet.

14. 1 - Correct.

15. 1 - His teachings may be considered laws.

16. 1 - He gets put on trial by the authorities and a lynch mob wants him dead.

17. 1 - The authorities find him guilty of blasphemy.

18. 1 - His crucifixion.

19. 1 - That's where his cross was.

20. 1 - He has no appointed successors.

21. 1 - He rose from the dead and then ascended to heaven.

22. 1 - He had resided in one before rising from the dead.

My score is 18.5, which is not much different from AD's score.

Excellent URL: <a href="http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/price_20_1.htm" target="_blank">http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/price_20_1.htm</a>

GunnerJ

When I learned the Quest of the Hero, it was taught to me not on a 20-point scale, but in eight steps:

• Miraculous Birth
• Initiation and Divine Sign
• Preparation, Medatation, and Withdrawal
• Trial and Quest
• Death and the Scapegoat
• Descent to the Underworld
• Apothesis, Atonement, and Ascension

A lot of the detail(adoptive parentage, forces trying to harm the child, famous life) of your 20-point graph are listed below each step as variable elements that don't always appear. On this 8-step system, Jesus is almost a perfect model.

[ January 06, 2002: Message edited by: Rimstalker ]</p>

Toto

As Price notes in the article you cite, this still can't answer the question if Jesus was an entirely mythic creation, or if he was a real person with a large overlay of mythic characteristics. The state of the evidence doesn't allow an answer with any degree of probability.

RyanS2

Reminds me faintly of talking to martial artists about Bodhidharma. If any of you are familiar with the Bodhidharma story, it's like the Buddhist/martial arts version of Jesus. Does everything from face a wall for nine years to making tea leaves from his eye brows. Any historical inquiry to an official origin of Bodhidharma will lead you to lots of rumors and a bunch of forged documents, but people who believe the story will say that it is mythical pennings onto a real person. Even sounds, smells, and feels like the same debate.

MortalWombat

To me this is largely a distinction without a difference. I mean, at what point do you say when a person was real or mythical? Whatever the case, it seems clear that the Jesus story as described in the New Testament is mythical.

Kosh

It's always seemed to me that one of the reasons
Xianity has enjoyed it's success is due the
subtleness, or "toning down" of the miracle
claims compared to other religions.
Not that there's anything subtle about
a dead man rising, but when you hear of somebody
standing against a wall for 9 years or producing
tea leaves from his eyebrows, things like changing
water into wine become almost welcome....

Amen-Moses

I'd give Alexander the Great at least 10.

(he was proclaimed Son of God in Egypt btw)

Amen-Moses

MortalWombat

That and the fact that under Constantine, it became the official religion of the Roman Empire, which used its, umm, let's say "influence", to persuade everyone under its jurisdiction that it would be a good idea to convert.

Nomad

Hmm... for those of you new to these boards, this appears to be a part in a series called "Lauren's Annual Repetition of Threads!"

We chugged around this bend back in February last year, with the thread <a href="http://ii-f.ws/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=6&t=000197" target="_blank">Jesus Christ: Mythic Hero?</a> (clever, no?).

In any case, any interested can view the discussion one more time. For my part, and for your amusement, I will offer again:

<a href="http://www.konformist.com/blasphemy/elvis.htm" target="_blank">Was Elvis a Solar Myth?</a>

Enjoy!

Nomad

lpetrich

That was funny!!!!!

Which is the problem with casting one's net too widely -- one can also get oodles of prophecy fulfillments.

As to the Mythic-Hero profile, it's certainly possible for a real person to have a good fit to it without doing anything miraculous, but most well-documented notable people simply do not fit it very well.

And I note that several of the more Mythic-Hero-like parts of JC's biography are miraculous parts that would never be taken seriously if they were in some religion that one does not believe in.

How is Jesus Christ being the offspring of a god and a virgin much different from Romulus and Remus being the offspring of a god and a virgin? How are Mary and the dove not much different from Leda and the swan? (thanx, QoS)

And how is King Herod vs. Jesus Christ much different from King Amulius vs. Romulus and Remus or Hera vs. Hercules or King Kamsa vs. Krishna? The Buddha is different; his father tries to spoil him instead.