Inspired by religion discussion on Main

[Carol]

Alla wrote:
>
> So now I am curious, since I consider myself to be pretty well versed (at least on the basic level) with all sort of religious mythos.
> 
> I wonder if somebody could give me the example of the deity who not only died and was resurrected, but did so to save other people. The example of such God or Godlike figure dying for **any** sort of good for another people will do.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Alla
>
Carol responds:
Great question, Alla. I don't know of any deity (besides Christ) who fits your criteria, but I can tell you that Dionysus (or Dionysos, to use the Greek spelling) definitely. He was ritually sacrificed as a child, which is a very different thing from deliberate self-sacrifice to save others (or the whole world, like Christ). Here's a quote from a very interesting and well-researched website on Dionysos:

http://www.dionysia.org/greek/dionysos/thompson/dionysos.html

"According to the myth, as a young child, Dionysos was kidnapped by the Titans, who lured him with marvellous toys. While he is gazing at his own image in a mirror, the Titans slice his throat with a sacrificial knife. The child-Dionysos is then cut up into pieces and first boiled, then roasted. Zeus is attracted by the smell of cooking, and when he realises what is being cooked, he kills the Titans with a thunderbolt and resurrects Dionysos. According to some variants of the story, man then first appeared, born from the ashes of the burned Titans. So Dionysos is the god who dies and is reborn, and from his death... his sacrifice, for the Titans follow correct sacrificial procedure when killing him, humanity comes into being."

Of course, the creation of humanity is an unintended consequence of what amounts to Dionysos's murder, not the reason he died, which he certainly did not choose to do.

And Dionysos is no loving god setting an example of ideal behavior for his followers:

"Death forms a major part of the worship of Dionysos. <snip> Dionysos, by contrast [with the other Greek gods], seems to revel in human sacrifice. There are a number of myths which involve women who he has driven mad as punishment who tear apart their children with their bare hands and later, occasionally, eat them. The best known example is that of Agave in the Bacchants. Agave is running wild on the mountain with the rest of the women of Thebes, having been driven mad by the god, who is fighting to establish his worship in this city. Her son Pentheus, who opposes Dionysos, is lured by the god into going to spy on the women. Agave and her sisters rush upon Pentheus and tear him apart with their bare hands, scattering the pieces of his body over the mountainside. Dionysos's worship is thus established by the simple means of killing the opposition."

Nothing Christlike there (and heaven forfend if Harry Potter is a Dionysus figure rather than a Christ figure)!

Osiris, like Dionysos, was a god of vegetation but, unlike Dionysos, he was unambiguously good. Here's a fragment of his story as told in Frazer's "Golden Bough" (his sources are Greek, so the statement that the Egyptians were once cannibals may not reflect their view of themselves):

"Reigning as a king on earth, Osiris reclaimed the Egyptians from savagery, gave them laws, and taught them to worship the gods. Before his time the Egyptians had been cannibals. Osiris introduced the cultivation of [wheat and barley] amongst his people, who forthwith abandoned cannibalism and took kindly to a corn [grain] diet. Moreover, Osiris is said to have been the first to gather fruit from trees, to train the vine to poles, and to tread the grapes. Eager to communicate these beneficent discoveries to all mankind, he <snip> travelled over the world, diffusing the blessings of civilisation and agriculture wherever he went. <snip> [H]e returned to Egypt, and on account of the benefits he had conferred on mankind he was unanimously hailed and worshipped as a deity. But his brother Set (whom the Greeks called Typhon) with seventy-two others plotted against him. Having taken the measure of his good brother's body by stealth, the bad brother Typhon fashioned and highly decorated a coffer of the same size, and once when they were all drinking and making merry he brought in the coffer and jestingly promised to give it to the one whom it should fit exactly. Well, they all tried one after the other, but it fitted none of them. Last of all Osiris stepped into it and lay down. On that the conspirators ran and slammed the lid down on him, nailed it fast, soldered it with molten lead, and flung the coffer into the Nile. <snip>

"Meantime the coffer containing the body of Osiris had floated down the river and away out to sea, till at last it drifted ashore at Byblus, on the coast of Syria. Here a fine erica-tree shot up suddenly and enclosed the chest in its trunk. The king of the country, admiring the growth of the tree, had it cut down and made into a pillar of his house; but he did not know that the coffer with the dead Osiris was in it. <snip> But <snip> Typhon found the coffer as he was hunting a boar one night by the light of a full moon. And he knew the body, and rent it into fourteen pieces, and scattered them abroad. But Isis [Osiris' sister and wife] sailed up and down the marshes in a shallop made of papyrus, looking for the pieces; <snip> "Isis," writes the historian Diodorus Siculus, "recovered all the parts of the body except the genitals [which had been eaten by fish]; and because she wished that her husband's grave should be unknown and honoured by all who dwell in the land of Egypt, she <snip> moulded human images out of wax and spices, corresponding to the stature of Osiris, round each one of the parts of his body. Then she called in the priests <snip> and <snip> to each of them privately she said that to them alone she entrusted the burial of the body, and reminding them of the benefits they had received she exhorted them to bury the body in their own land and to honour Osiris as a god. <snip>

"The lamentations of the two sad sisters [Isis and Nepthys] were not in vain. In pity for her [their] sorrow the sun-god Ra sent down from heaven the jackal-headed god Anubis, who, with the aid of Isis and Nephthys, of Thoth and Horus, pieced together the broken body of the murdered god, swathed it in linen bandages, and observed all the other rites which the Egyptians were wont to perform over the bodies of the departed. Then Isis fanned the cold clay with her wings: Osiris revived, and thenceforth reigned as king over the dead in the other world. <snip>"

http://www.bartleby.com/196/85.html

So Osiris resembles Christ in his goodness but resembles Dionysus in his connection with wine and agriculture, not to mention being murdered and torn to pieces. His "resurrection" amounts to becoming the king or god of the underworld. More important for this discussion, he didn't sacrifice himself for the good of mankind; he was murdered by his wicked brother through trickery. 

Two down. I don't know how many to go. Anyone know the story of Osiris's brother Horus?

Carol, who cut most of Frazer's version of the Osiris myth and apologizes if it's still too long