Does simply being a human being count as “suffering?” If that’s the case, then aren’t all humans as great as Jesus?
Well, it’s not inconsistent with Scripture to have him going down into Hell, so long as he’s also in Heaven at some point. Maybe he popped upstairs just long enough to escort St. Dismas (the name being another thing that comes only from tradition; the Bible gives no name for the repentant thief) and introduce him around a bit, then went back downstairs to free the patriarchs and other righteous who predated him and to taunt Satan. Or maybe the routing of Hell only took an afternoon, and he went back up to Heaven that evening to kick back for the weekend.
No, I mean, wasn’t Prometheus chained to the rock for 30 years? Obviously, Prometheus suffered more than Jesus, but this thread isn’t really about Jesus. It’s about martyr gods in other religions.
Well, you know the whole “to God an instant is like an eternity and an eternity is like an instant” thing. 3 days to one afternoon is peanuts next to that.
I haven’t seen that 30 year number for Prometheus before. My imprssion was that it was from the time he gave man fire to whenever Hercules freed him. I’m pretty sure that even within the chronology of Greek mythology, fire was not still new within the lifetime of Hercules.
I’m not an expert on Greek mythology, though. I know the myths have a lot of variations, and there isn’t really a canon, so it may be that there’s a version of the story where Prometheus only suffers for 30 years. I’m juts not familiar with it. If I’m totally wrong about “thousands of years” (which was just an assumption about how long humans would have had fire before the time of Hercules), then I stand corrected.
I’m seeing it as being either 30 years, or 30,000 years. Genealogically, though, 30 years is too short, and 30,000 years is too long.
And technically, Prometheus didn’t give fire to mankind. He gave fire back to mankind after Zeus had taken it in punishment for Prometheus tricking him about the sacrifices.
Yes, Oðin sacrificed himself by hanging himself on Yggdrassil to learn wisdom. And who did Oðin sacrifice Oðin to? Oðin.
Is there any connection between Prometheus and the Eden story? In both you have a jealous god getting pissed off because humans acquire knowledge they were not meant to have, the knowledge of good and evil and of fire. Both Prometheus and humans/serpent are punished by God for giving knowledge to mankind. Coincidence?
Sure he did. And who did the Christian god sacrifice himself to? That’s right, himself. And why did he do it? to save us from, well, himself.
If death is final then even a God would not be alive. If a God were not alive then it couldn’t come back. If death just means a change, then that would be different.
Dying for you is easy. The Bodhisattva pointedly *don’t *die for you. They choose to keep reincarnating over and over to help you get your own pass into Nirvana, rather than using theirs. Now that’s commitment.
Didn’t Osiris die for mankind as well ? My Egyptian mythology is really not up to speed, but I recall reading that parts of the story of Jesus were cribbed from prior legends about Isis & Osiris . Any details, ô cultured ones ?
I hope this isn’t too much of a tangent, but how do Christians connect the dots between Jesus dying and me being saved from my sins? The only thing I can think is that it serves as a sort of PR stunt so that he’d be remembered for a long time so we could learn of his teachings.
What did Prometheus do after Hercules freed him?
Atonement theology covers this. There have been three major theories advanced (don’t ask me to defend any of them):
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Ransom atonement; basically, Adam and Eve’s sin “sold” humanity to Satan (all souls went to hell at death), but the death of Christ was so valuable that it paid off this debt. This was prevalent in the early church, but is now out of vogue.
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Substitution atonement; similar to the above, but discards the payment metaphor and emphasizes Christ’s sacrifice as voluntary; he substitutes himself for whatever penalty we rightly deserve. This, I believe, is the mainstream Christian view.
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Moral atonement; this is pretty close to your PR stunt; Christ’s perfect obiendence “even unto death” serves as such a perfect moral exemplar that people who hear about it are naturally influenced away from sin.
Aeschylus in Prometheus Bound includes a lengthy dialogue between Prometheus and the wandering Io, another victim of the abusive gods. It includes the following passage:
In some old versions, Osiris was the first to die and be resurrected and he represents both the renewal of the harvest from the flooding of the Nile and the rebirth of the Ba in the afterlife. There is also some indication that the relationship between Osiris and Ra was similar to the rebirth of the sun from the darkness every day.
Note that in the usual story, Osiris is not sacrificed ritually, but is instead entombed by his brother Set and then dismembered. This may represent the older agricultural aspects of this deity, in that the threshed wheat is ‘dismembered’ upon its death.
I suggest also that John Barleycorn might be a more modern variety of this story.
“They’ve hired men with the crab-tree sticks,
To cut him skin from bone,
And the miller he has served him worse than that,
For he’s ground him between two stones.” – Traffic
Osiris also had his “body” ritually eaten in the form of bread.
I admit it - I don’t understand what that quote means or if it answers me.
I just have an image of the newly freed Prometheus cracking his knuckles and having a good stretch. Hercules asks him what he’s going to do with himself. He says he a few old scores to settle. Or maybe he’s going to wander the countryside planting appleseeds. Or maybe he’s going to find his kinfolk and try and pick up life where he left off. Or maybe he’s doubling down, he’s going to give humanity the secret of squaring the circle. Or… are there answers about what he does?
I think it was meant to answer not you but Dio and Captain Amazing, who were trying to figure out how long it took to free Prometheus.
CJJ* notes that according to Aeschylus, it took thirteen generations after Prometheus’ little chat with Io for Hercules to show up.
As to the question of whether Jesus went to Hell when he died, 1 Peter 3:18b-20aff seems to suggest so.
“Seems to suggest” I said.
Anyway, it was actually a bit beside the point to ask whether the NT says Jesus went to hell, since clearly the quoted Creed says so and it is as definitive of Christian doctrine as anything.