I don't think it is meaningful to talk of any specific category of "dying and rising gods", but that is not the same as me thinking there are no gods who died and returned (I could list a few myself, though my clearest examples would be, certain versions of, Dionysus and Inanna). I actually recently had a good conversation with Derreck Bennett on this. I just don't think the category of dying and rising gods is actually that useful, and if anything, I think it ends up being somewhat misleading and is rooted in Christian centralization tendencies (Timothy Larsen, The Slain God [Oxford UP, 2014] is an excellent volume on the origins of the category, and I would contend it is still used in a very similar fashion that centers Christianized language and terminology and leads to reductive analyses).ABuddhist wrote: ↑Mon Mar 14, 2022 6:30 amDo you still assert that it is impossible to talk about dying-and-rising gods - that is, gods who are killed, descend to the underworld, and are restored to life?Chris Hansen wrote: ↑Sun Mar 13, 2022 8:48 pm While I don't agree with Carrier on Paul and a few other things, his theories are not gibberish nor are they "delusions."
I *do* think that making comparisons between Jesus and other deities is good and useful. I personally think that the Gospel of Mark models Jesus' resurrection based on Greco-Roman models of apotheosis and translation events (and I think that Romulus is probably a good comparative figure to use actually). I just don't think the category is useful. I just don't think the category is useful. I tend to agree with Frankfurter's review of Mettinger's book (https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2002/2002.09.07/)
Again, making the comparisons is not a problem for me. I just think that the "dying and rising god" category/ideal type is just not useful. I don't think it is meaningful to generally of "dying and rising gods", but to speak a broader range of categories of apotheosis, resurrection, translation, bilocation, etc. (all of which can still be compared and used).By the end of the monograph, the category emerges as a rather simplistic generalization for a very wide array of gods and a very murky range of rituals. What does it mean, for example, for these gods to “die”? They might descend for a time to the underworld, disappear from agricultural or seasonal experience, or frame ritual traditions of mourning — in no case identical to “death” as experienced on a regular human (or even royal) scale. Likewise, a god’s “resurrection” means vegetative, agricultural, or seasonal emergence, a divine image’s “appearance” by procession at a particular temple, or the frame for ritual traditions of celebration — not the kind of revivification imagined in the biblical tradition (e.g., Ezekiel 37, Daniel 12, 2 Baruch 50-51). J. Z. Smith once recommended that the comparison of religions involves ultimately the “rectification” of the categories by which one compares phenomena — those essential lenses or contexts into which we experimentally set our data. In this case, Mettinger’s methodological precision and attention to textual detail reveal the “dying/rising god” classification to be, in fact, a non-classification — a Christian theological holdover, like “sacrament” or “faith,” from a time when all comparison was meant to legitimize or delegitimize dogma.