lpetrich

I will use the criteria I'd stated in my BC&A thread "Jesus Christ: Mythic Hero". Here is my score for Mohammed, founder of Islam, using the usual biography of him:

1. 0 - Nothing special about Mohammed's mother.

2. 0 - Nothing special about Mohammed's father.

3. 0 - No common descent implied aside from a shared membership in the Quraysh tribe.

4. 0 - No sign of that.

5. 0 - No sign of that.

6. 0 - Never happened.

7. 0 - Did not happen.

8. 1 - Was raised by his grandfather when his father died.

9. 1 - Correct.

10. 0.5 - He doesn't really go very far; just to a cave in a mountain where he started receiving revelations.

11. 1 - He brings his new religion back to Mecca.

12. 0.5 - He married Khadija, a rich businesswoman.

13. 1 - He becomes a leader as well as a founder.

14. 0 - He has to flee to Medina, and later triumphantly reconquers Mecca.

15. 1 - He keeps on receiving revelations.

16. 0 - Never happens.

17. 0 - Does not really happen, unless one counts having to flee to Medina.

18. 0 - He gets sick and dies in a normal sort of fashion.

19. 0 - He dies in Medina.

20. 1 - Correct, though Shiites believe that the descendants of Ali, Mohammed's cousin and son-in-law, are Islam's legitimate leaders.

21. 0 - He was buried in Medina.

22. 1 - His tomb is still present in Medina.

Mohammed's score is 8, which is remarkably low by the standards of the others I've scored, especially Jesus Christ.

[ January 07, 2002: Message edited by: lpetrich ]</p>

IvanK

I'd expect the score for, say, Baha'i'ullah or Apollonius of Tyrea to be about the same. In these cases we are dealing with individuals who are known to have actually lived. But someone really existing doesn't increase the probability that the religious system they came up with is more true, at least not in my book.

lpetrich

I haven't been able to find much on Baha'ullah's early years, but he had had a rather eventful life (no relatively uneventful period of issuing teachings), and his death was apparently normal.

I've had equal difficulty with Apollonius of Tyana's early years. However, he had had a relatively uneventful period of issuing teachings and working miracles, including raising a little girl from the dead. And his death somewhat fits the Mythic-Hero profile; he was put on trial by Roman Emperor Severus, and he rose up to heaven, leaving his followers to dedicate temples to him.

I haven't been able to find much on Zoroaster, especially his birth or death, so I can't say much about him. And the same is true of Lao Tzu / Lao Tze / Lao Zi (three transcriptions of the name of the founder of Taoism).

And what I could find about Confucius does not indicate anything close to the Mythic-Hero profile.

So my score is:

Baha'ullah - poor fit
Apollonius of Tyana - somewhat good fit
Zoroaster - uncertain
Lao Tzu - uncertain
Confucius - poor fit

lpetrich

Slight update: I've decided that childhood-description and tomb-survival scores are only relevant if someone's infancy had been described or if someone had not been buried.

This pushes Mohammed's score down by 2 to 6. However, some later mythmakers had added the detail that Mohammed had ridden a flying horse up to heaven, which would push his score back up to 8 (unusual/mysterious death, tomb continuing to survive).