Roland

Is anyone familiar with the following list from Robert Price's "Deconstructing Jesus" (p. 259)? It represents the Mythic Hero Archetype culled from Indo-European and Semitic legends. Out of 22 criteria in all, Price claims Jesus fits the following 18:

mother is "royal" virgin
father is a king
unusual conception
hero reputed to be son of god
attempt is made to kill hero
hero is spirited away
reared in a foreign country
few details of childhood
goes to future kingdom
becomes king
for a time he reigns uneventfully
he prescribes laws
later loses favor with his subjects
driven from throne and city
meets with mysterious death
often at the top of a hill
no successors to the throne
his body is not buried
nonetheless has one or more holy sepulcres

Some of them admittedly require a bit of applied imagination to make Jesus fit. I was wondering how convincing you all found this list.

Thanks

Peter Kirby

This list is straight out of Raglan's The Hero. Here is what I posted in a recent thread.

The book is available in reprint on Amazon for $9.56: The Hero

There was once an article by "Justin Martyr" about him: Raglan Reduced. (Why are the interesting articles disappearing from JPH's site? Though this is still up.)

On thing that J.M. didn't mention: Lord Raglan didn't propose that his list of characteristics would allow one to determine the likelihood that, underneath the story, there was a historical person who was the germination for it (whether there was a historical Arthur, for example). Raglan was attempting to provide a set of "family resemblances" for the Hero-type in mythology. (The idea of "family resemblances" is that none of them are necessary or sufficient conditions of inclusion in the set, but that a goodly number of them make one a recognizable member. This is a point that J.M. ignores.) This says nothing about whether any given Hero can be traced back to a historical figure; indeed, hypothetically speaking, one could have a completely factual biography of a person, and that person could fit a Hero archetype. (The real question is whether "the Hero" can be defined even loosely. J.M. helpfully provides a bibliography of attempts to do so.)

Comment now: I think it is unfortunate that almost all of the Internet discussion of Raglan's work takes place in the context of Jesus stuff, as it tends to make it an either-or verdict on the value of what he has to say. Also, naturally, since Raglan was an amateur and wrote The Hero seventy years ago, discussion on the subject has developed beyond it.

best,
Peter Kirby

Roland

Peter,

I'm sorry. I should have mentioned that Price is quoting Raglan and Otto Rank here. He does give credit where credit is due (unlike me). Actually, it would appear Price is actually quoting Alan Dundes quoting Raglan.