Just curious. I can find plenty of gods that die, or die and are resurrected (often multiple times for temporary periods). From skimming there even seem to be gods who die for a certain purpose (i.e. agriculture gods who die to fertilize the Earth and are reborn periodically to facilitate this), but I’m having trouble finding one who is killed for “me” or martyred in some way. The god doesn’t necessarily have to die for “sins” but should die for man, or the continuation/betterment of people in a direct way.
A couple ground rules:
It has to be legitimately worshiped or acknowledged in some way (I say acknowledged so as not to exclude more “philosophical” religions like Buddhism where there aren’t worshiped gods so much as exalted mentors). No fiction (you know what I mean), like Aslan… or Optimus Prime.
No attacks on religion please. I’d really rather this stay in GQ. You can, of course, debate whether a character in question actually “martyred” him/herself, but that’s it.
I’d prefer that we keep with deities/exalted figures who faced a deal of adversity leading to their death. While I’m sure Gautama Buddha suffered in absolving himself of his goods (even after he gave up the whole self-mortification thing), and while the end result showed people the way to enlightenment, I want someone who had a situation that was less of a choice, or at the very least wasn’t an entirely personal matter.
They should at least be somewhat important in the religion they’re part of. They don’t have to be the central deity, or even one of the major ones, but they shouldn’t be “that one dude who gets one candle lit for him during the ceremony celebrating all the deities, but almost nobody pays attention otherwise.”
It can be before or after Christianity. Obviously the less directly influenced by the story of Jesus the better, but I’m not too picky on the time period or place of origin.
Wiki sez that the Aztec deity Xipe Toltec flayed himself to provide food for humanity, like a ripening seed shedding its husk. That was a deliberate choice on his part, though.
Kama, the Indian god of love and desire, was burned to ashes by the deity Shiva when he tried to make Shiva fall in love because it was foretold that Shiva’s son would save the world from the Asuras or demons. AFAIK, according to the legends Kama didn’t see that coming, so there’s an instance of a deity dying involuntarily (although of course he has some kind of post-obliteration existence anyway, being a god and all). Of course, dying to save all the beings in the universe isn’t quite the same as dying for humanity alone, but close enough.
Prometheus didn’t die, but he is suffering eternal torment. Zeus bound him to a rock for eternity, while an eagle eats his liver (and it grows back) every day, because Prometheus championed humanity and gave us fire.
Interesting question. But the answer broadens when you consider Jesus not to be god, but to be a sacrifice made by a god. He is Isaac (or rather, the lamb), not Abraham. The whole Jesus-son-of-god came later, and the trinity Jesus AS God, at least three hundred years later.
So, you might try and look for gods who made a sacrifice on behalf of mankind, if you can’t find any more martyred gods.
While we’re at it, the Mayans believed that they were created in the first place from cornmeal and the blood of the gods, so there you have an example of the gods shedding their own blood (though nonlethally) for humanity before we even existed.
Prometheus is the one I was going to say too. He sacrificed far more than Jesus, and gave more to humanity too. No he didn’t die, but what he got was worse than dying. I love the Prometheus story because it involves sombody defying the gods to help humanity, and paying a huge price for it. Much more thankless than the Christ myth.
And Jesus was in Heaven the same afternoon he was crucified. Prometheus had to suffer for thousands of years before he was freed. Plus, he didn’t know he would ever be freed. Jesus from the outset that he was only going to suffer for a few hours.
Nope, he was crucified, dead and buried. Then he descended into Hell. On the third day he rose. Didn’t get to heaven until about 40 days later, no?
One of my favourite Sunday school moments. The minister was going over the events of Easter weekend and painted a very vivid picture of the suffering on Good Friday. He summed up with Jesus finally dying, and then he asked, semi-rhetorically, and then you know what happened? My friend, Doug, yelled out, “Yeah, he went to Hell!”
The minister was in a bit of a theological quandry at that point!
No, actually. The Bible doesn’t say any of that. The Bible says he was in Paradise that same day (Lk. 23:43). There’s nothing about descending to Hell. That’s non-Biblical Christian tradition.
