Tag: Mythology

Book Review: ‘The Riddle of Resurrection’ by Tryggven D. Mettinger.

“In this world nothing can be said to be certain,” wrote Ben Franklin, “except death and taxes.” Putting aside taxes it is undeniable that death is the final end for each and every one of us in this world. Or is it? Many people believe in ghosts and stories abound of ‘undead’ creatures such as vampires and zombies. However generally such beings are believed to have died but not yet left this world.

The Ghost of Barbara Radziwitt by Wojciech Gerson. Despite thousands of ghost stories dating back thousands of years there is no reliable evidence for anyone coming back from the dead! (Credit: Wikipedia)

At the same time the mythologies of many cultures also contain stories about heroes or demigods who have entered the underworld and returned. In Greek legends both Orpheus and Odysseus descend to Hades while alive and manage to return. Other figures in other cultures make similar journeys.

Not all versions of the Orpheus myth are serious, Jacques Offenbach turned the story into a risque operetta for which he invented the dance the Can-Can. (Credit: Twitter)

About a hundred and thirty years ago the anthropologist Sir James Frazier collected and analyzed an enormous amount of mythological material from dozens of different cultures. In 1890 he published the first edition in a series of volumes he entitled “The Golden Bough” detailing the results of his studies. I have a copy of the abridged edition, abridged at 827 pages so the entire work is enormous! Sometimes considered the foundation of the study of comparative religion, ‘The Golden Bough’ has always been a very controversial book.

Cover of the third edition, first volume of Farzier’s ‘Golden Bough’ (Credit: The List)
Frazier got his title from a painting by William Turner that shows an ancient Roman ritual Frazier used as a starting point for his investigations. (Credit: Arnold Arboretum)

Much of the controversy arose due to Frazier’s definition of a class of deities that he called ‘The Dying and Resurrecting Vegetative Gods’. The basic story for each of these gods contained a violent death of the god that led to a descent to the underworld that was then followed by a return to life for the god. This motif, Frazier maintained, was a mythologized version of the yearly cycle of agriculture with the grain being cut down at harvest, then seeds are planted, then buried from which new plants will sprout. Thus the stories explained the yearly course of the seasons and since the stories are all cyclical you can of course start anywhere in the cycle and still get back to where you started.

Actually the evidence about any of these figures is scant and contradictory. (Credit: Elpidio Valdes)

The worship of these gods featured a period of morning for the god’s death at the end of harvest time, whenever harvest time occurred in a particular culture, along with a festival of rejoicing for the god’s resurrection when the first sprouts appeared. Frazier identified quite a few gods that he thought belonged to this group including well-known deities such as Adonis, Osiris and the Norse Balder along with many lesser-known mythological figures. The earliest, and therefore the type specimen for the group was a Sumerian god called Dumuzi who is also known by the name Tammuz given to him in the Hebrew scripture.

The Shepard Dumuzi (r) was the consort of Inanna (l) the Goddess of the Moon. At the end of the story Dumuzi spends half the year in the Underworld and half in the natural world. (Credit: Pinterest)

The whole idea of ‘dying and resurrecting corn gods’ was quite controversial but Frazier went further by linking them directly to the Christian Jesus. So dangerous were Frazier’s ideas that in the years following his death a reaction set in with many scholars criticizing Frazier’s entire category. The critics were aided by the archaeological discovery of the final chapter of the Dumuzi myth at a dig in Iraq, which was translated and first published in 1951. You see the first discovered cuneiform tablets to contain the Dumuzi story were missing the conclusion and to be honest Frazier had merely constructed an ending based on his study of other myths.

When the actual ending was discovered it bore little resemblance to Frazier’s ideas and this, along with other inaccuracies in Frazier’s work led to the category of ‘dying and resurrecting corn gods’ falling into disfavour. Still there was just so much evidence in both myths and rituals that the concept refused to go away.

The Greek demigod Adonis (r) bears many resemblances to Dumuzi. He is the consort of Aphrodite (l), he dies a violent death and is brought back to life by his beloved. (Credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art and the artist Titian)

‘The Riddle of Resurrection’ by Tryggven D. Mettinger, Professor of the Hebrew bible at Lund University in Sweden, is a recent attempt to cut through all of the noise and just answer the question, is their even such a class of mythological figures as ‘dying and resurrecting gods’ that can be studied. Unlike Frazier, whose work examined scores of gods from cultures around the World, Professor Mettinger concentrates on just a few mythological figures from the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, primarily Adonis, Dumuzi-Tammuz, Osiris, along with the Semitic gods Baal and Melqart. In this way Professor Mettinger can examine the latest evidence for the myths and rituals concerning each deity. Also unlike Frazier, who at times would leap back and forth with evidence from Babylon to the Norse Eddas to ancient Sanskrit, Professor Mettinger sticks to one subject at a time making it much easier to follow his arguments.

Cover of ‘The Riddle of Resurrection’ by Tryggven Mettinger. (Credit: Amazon)

Mettinger also examines the evidence much more critically than Frazier did, at times even discussing the differing translations of critical words found in ancient texts. This makes ‘The Riddle of Resurrection’ a more technically demanding book, it is written primarily for experts in the field, but it also provides greater confidence in Professor Mettinger’s conclusions.

‘The Rape of Persephone’ by Charles Antoine Coypel. Persephone is the dying and resurrecting goddess who is carried down to the underworld by Hades and spends half the year with him the other half with her mother Ceres making plants grow! (Credit: Pictorem.com)

I do have a few criticisms of ‘The Riddle of Resurrection’, most notably the lack of a more thorough treatment of Persephone, the best known ‘dying and resurrecting goddess’. While the Greek queen of the underworld is mentioned several times in the book her myth not only deserves more examination but it could help to illuminate the latest understanding of Dumuzi’s fate. At the same time Mettinger also pretty much ignores the completely human characters in mythology who journey to the underworld and return, like Orpheus and Odysseus. In his conclusions Professor Mettinger decides that the category of ‘dying and resurrection gods’ is a valid one, one worthy of study. And if you’re interested in mythology and ancient cultures, in the way that old beliefs have evolved into our current religions then you’ll certainly find ‘The Riddle of Resurrection’ to be worth reading.  

Book Review: The Mythology of America’s Seasonal Holidays, by Arthur George.

Let’s be honest, we humans like to celebrate, we like to have a good time and we’re always looking for a reason, any reason to party. Now some of the reasons we celebrate are quite personal, it’s my birthday or it’s our wedding anniversary. Others are special for a small group of people; perhaps your bowling team just won the league championship. And of course there are the special days set aside every year for an entire population, either national or religious, to come together as a community and reaffirm the bonds that they all share. Those days are called holidays and some of them are historical in nature while others are our way of marking the changes in the seasons as we go through the year. Both kinds of holidays do have one thing in common however, we have mythologized them to the extent that sometimes it is difficult to decide where reality ends and mythmaking begins.

Let’s be honest, we humans will take any excuse to celebrate! (Credit: Pinterest)

That’s where ‘The Mythology of America’s Seasonal Holidays’ by Arthur George comes in. Starting, as our year does, with the celebrations for New Year’s Day Mr. George examines Groundhog’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Carnival or Mardi Gras, Easter, May Day, Independence Day, Halloween and Thanksgiving before finally concluding with Christmas.

Cover of ‘The Mythology of America’s Seasonal Holidays’ by Arthur George. (Credit: Target)

For each holiday in turn Mr. George follows basically the same methodology, beginning with the origins of each holiday. The ancient festivals of Greco-Roman, Celtic, Hebrew and Germanic cultures are scrutinized, as is early American history. The festivals of these cultures provide the clues as to why a particular American holiday exists in the first place along with why it is celebrated at the time of year that it is. Following the growth of each holiday from its roots to the present day Mr. George then goes on to highlight how the various rituals associated with each developed.

The Classical Romans liked to enjoy themselves and celebrated many holidays both private and public. (Credit: Nova Roma)
The ancient Gaels (Irish) celebrated the end of the year at Samhain (Sow-Ween) which today we continue to celebrate as Halloween. (Credit: Reuters)

Of course many, perhaps most of our holidays are rooted in nature. The renewal of life every spring along with the end of the growing season in the fall are obvious examples but Mr. George shows in detail how even Groundhog’s day and May Day have for thousands of years been observed in connection with the yearly cycle of the Earth. At the same time other holidays, more political in nature still tend acquire features over time that relate to the time of year in which they occur, a picnic or baseball game on the 4th of July for instance.

The Maypole has been used to celebrate the beginning of new life at spring for thousands of years. (Credit: Omilights)

While the mythology surrounding religious festivals is well recognized Mr. George also succeeds in illustrating the legends associated with our secular holidays as well. From the figure of Lady Liberty to the fact that the phrase ‘The First Thanksgiving’ was only coined some 200 years after the event it was used to describe Mr. George clearly shows how we humans like to embroider the truth around those days we consider important.

Out Lady Liberty is actually MUCH older than the USA. She has a clear relation to the Roman Goddess Libertas. (Credit: Ancient Pages)

More than that however, Mister George also delves into the psychological aspects of our holidays. In the book he also investigates the emotional benefits we humans derive from celebrating the renewal of vegetation in the spring or the shortest day of the year, December 25th. In ancient Rome, the Winter Solstice was known as the ‘Birthday of the Sun’, which of course eventually became Christmas, the birthday of the son of god.

December 25th was also the birthday of the Persian God Mithra whose worship spread throughout the Roman world in the years just before Christianity gained control. (Credit: Britannica)

I do have two very small complaints about “The Mythology of America’s Seasonal Holidays’. One is that on several occasions Mister George limits himself with only covering the highlights of how a particular holiday developed. The reader often gets a distinct feeling that he could say a lot more if he wanted. At the same time the narrow focus on American holidays is quite arbitrary, comparisons to modern holidays in other countries are completely absent. I think that both problems stem from Mr. George’s desire to prevent the size of the book from getting too large, which books on mythology often do.

People in other parts of the World like to celebrate just as much as Americans. Mr. George could have spent a bit of time discussing those holidays. (Credit: Afro Tourism)

Nevertheless ‘The Mythology of America’s Seasonal Holidays’ is both an interesting and enjoyable book. If you want a better understanding of how much of our national culture began and grew, Mr. George’s book belongs in your library.