gstafleu

According to the Nordic poem Havamal Odin was crucified as follows:
There are three obvious parallels with Christian mythology here. First of course that the god (Odin) was crucified (cf Acts 5:30: "The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree" in order to equate crucifixion with hanging on a tree). Second that the god sacrificed himself ("given to Odin, myself to myself"). Third that he was wounded by a spear, similar to John 19:34 "But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water."

The oldest source for the Havamal seems to be from around 800CE, so we cannot establish if the myth predates the development of the Jesus story. Nevertheless the parallel between the two is interesting, especially as the crucified saviour/god in this case is not one of the usual suspects from the mysteries.

This parallel is my main point, but I do not want to withold what Arthur Drews in The Christ Myth, says about the spear thrust:
The op cit here is "Die Menschenopfer der alten Hebräer" (The Human Sacrifices of the Ancient Hebrews) by Ghillany, 1842.

Gerard Stafleu

Malachi151

There are major problems with this entire line of comparison though. I find all of this a bit like the work of Joseph Campbell, pointing out various broad similarities and then trying to do cultural psychoanalysis on it.

This stuff has nothing to do with the story of Jesus, because we can see the very clear "Old Testament" basis for these story elements.

When looking at the story of Jesus, the first place to look for understanding it is the Hebrew scriptures, mostly the OT, but also the midrash, etc.

gstafleu

Of course it is. I'm not saying one story is derived from the other. But I do find it interesting that we find such an obvious parallel in two such otherwise different myths. Do you simply write it off to total coincidence? Could be, I suppose, something like the human imagination can only imagine a limited amount of things, so we are bound to find overlaps. But even then, we find a little cluster of three overlaps here, isn't that a bit much for coincidence?

Gerard Stafleu

Malachi151

In this case yes I do write it off as either coincidence, or a later corruption of the Nordic poem. We know very well where the whole "piercing" thing comes from in the Jesus story, and can see why it is a story element.

gstafleu

Coincidence, hm, that seems a bit of a stretch, could be though. I'll sooner buy a contamination.

The piercing bit is not my primary focus here, that is the self crucifixion. I see the piercing bit as a poignant detail.

Do I take it that you'll want to see some more examples of self crucifixion, with or without piercing spears, from other mythologies before you start thinking about the universality of this theme?

Gerard Stafleu

gstafleu

Oh, and BTW, how do you see the origins of the piercing and why it is a story element?

Gerard Stafleu

The Evil One

Given how late our sources for Odin hanging on Yggdrasil are, it would not be surprising if it had been influenced by Christianity.

The interesting conclusions to be drawn form the Odin myth are:

1) If the myth evolved independently of christianity, it demonstrates that this kind of myth is just the sort of thing that humanity is prone to come up with.

2) If the myth evolved under Christian influence, it demonstrates how easy it is for important story elements to be lifted from one mythic tradition into another.

Malachi151

For one thing:

More specifically:

See:

John 19 refers to Zechariah 12, though in typical Christian fashion, the reference makes no real sense.

gstafleu

Exactly. Which, I would suggest, shows why it is useful to try and gather such common mythemes, regardless of whether they belong in class 1 or class 2.

BTW, I would like to tentatively (pending more evidence/examples) propose a class 3: a common origin for the mythemes, followed by a parallel development of the specific myths. But even without class 3, classes 1 and 2 provide sufficient incentive to look into the matter.

Should a sufficiently large class 1 (things that humanity is prone to come up with) be established, the next question re that class would then be why humanity comes up with these.

Gerard Stafleu

gstafleu

(Malachi151 points out a number of piercings)

Agreed, one can see where John got it: piercing occurs as a (bit of a) theme in the OT. You can probably guess my next question: whence this theme? If we then see a similar piercing in the Odin story, we can wonder if we should recognize a general mythological piercing theme. And, running far ahead of ourselves at this point, we can hopefully wonder if at some point we will be able to do better than saying "in typical Christian fashion, the reference makes no real sense." Maybe it does make sense, even if right now we don't know why.

Gerard Stafleu