The most obvious one is Christ. Then there is the Egyptian myth of Osiris. I’m sure there are several others. What other religions/myths deals with death-resurrection-becoming some sort of deity?
Balder dies in Norse mythology and was rescued from the underworld. According to the poem Voluska, Balder will come again to rule after Ragnarok.
Zev Steinhardt
I think Apollo died and rose in the form of a dolphin. I could be mixed up.
According to this site, Apollo, at one point, did change himself into a dolphin while alive. However, I don’t remember hearing of any myth (and I took two semesters of Greek Mythology in college) where Apollo died.
Zev Steinhardt
There’s the myth of the Dioscouri, Castor and Pollux. According to one version of the myth, one of them is mortal, and dies. But the other gives up half of his immortality so that they may live on alternate days.
I seem to recall a resurrection theme associated with Mithraism, but, being a mystery religion, I don’t think the myths have survived.
Well, it’s not so much a resurrection, per se, but Prince Siddhartha shed his worldly body and ascended into the heavens as Lord Buddha, per Buddhist mythology.
Dionysus?
The Central Americans had the story of Quetzalcoatl (aka Kukulkan et. al). I’m sketchy on the details, but here’s my sense of the story.
Quetzalcoatl was a great, wise, beneficent, and gentle king. Also a great teacher and moralist. He was tricked one day (if memory serves) into sleeping with his sister. By his own law, the punishment for incest was banishment. Despite his people’s protests, he built a great raft out of snakes and sailed off into the Atlantic.
He promised to return again.
Not a literal death and rebirth, I grant you. But symbolically I think the stories are equivalent.
Like many other cultures, the Aztecs had had a story, and spring-time re-enactment, of the literal death and resurrection of a goddess of the harvest. This, I think, has a possible parallel to the story of Persephone (but I’ll leave it to the more expert in both cultures to consider in detail).
Pele was killed by her sister and was reborn…
I believe all religions…even the extinct ones carry a death-resurrection story.
The point of religion was to explain that things happen [ ie thunder] but not to explain why they occur.
Adonis & Persephone are but two examples. Persephone explaining the Summer/ winter pattern.
What about the great Phoenix? I’ve heard of the bird that (I believe) went into the sun and was reborn. Anyone know the origin and actual story?
The Blackfoot (indian/native americans) buffalo dance is derived from a legend of the resurrection of cheif after being trampled by buffaloes.
Far anyone interested in mythology, I recommend Joseph Campbell works.
I suspect that all cultures originating in temperate zones have resurrection myths.
According to this site the Norse chief god Odin
(I’d heard at least some details of the “Odin hanged on a tree” myth before.)
One thing I’m not sure of is how old some of these stories are. (I wonder the same thing about the resurrection of Baldur tale–anyone know when the Voluska was written?) If the heyday of Norse sagas came after 1000 C.E. (and we know the Vikings had contact–albeit pretty violent contact–with Christian civilization) some of the obvious parallels in these stories with the resurrection myth of Christianity may in fact be cross-cultural “contamination” or adoption of Christian themes by pagans.
The Creation myth of the Norse mythology is that of Chaos. They believed that in the beginning there was nothing but chaos and from that came the world
What is the Eskimo belief on the subject ?
I’ll never understand soccer…
Osiris was killed and hacked to pieces by his brother, Seth. His wife, Isis, found all the pieces (okay, not all of them), and put him back together. With the help of Ra, Anubis and Thoth he was restored to life, but went on the underworld to judge the souls of the dead.
In Sumerian myth, the goddess Inanna returned from the dead.
In American myth, the rock star Elvis returned from the dead.
In Texas myth, the horned toad “Old Rip” returned from the dead.
I guess the good ones keep coming back.
There’s the Babylonian Tammuz (Sumerian Damuzi), beloved of the goddess Inanna (or Ishtar), a sort of nature/fertility symbol. He dies with the grain and is mourned by the goddess (and her followers). She descends into hell to retrieve him and his reappearance returns fertility to the earth. Adonis is his Greek version. It was thought that if all the women did not mourn his death, the grain would not be re-born. So it was considered very important to the community to maintain this worship. Women weeping for Tammuz are mentioned in the Bible, where the prophet Ezekiel condemns them.
I did a report on Tammuz in college, but that was a long time ago, so I googled him to refresh my memory and one of the sites that came up
http://www.templeofantinous.com/tammuz.html
has links at the bottom of the page for others, some of whom have been mentioned in this thread (Osiris, Adonis, Dionysus, Jesus, and Mithras, as well as Attis, Freyr and Jalaludin Rumi - all related to Atinous, I suppose, to whom the site is dedicated). About the last three (including Atinous), I know nothing, but if you’re interested in this, you might check them out.