The Role of Religion in the Potterverse was Magical Latin

[mmizstorge]

No: HPFGUIDX 186164

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "k12listmomma" <k12listmomma at ...> wrote:
>
> 
> Shelley:
No other religion, save Christianity, has some Savior dying and 
> then raising from the dead. 

Actually, in world mythology there are many deities who die and are resurrected. The myth of Christ is but a fairly recent example. I can name off the top of my head: Osiris, Inanna, Odin, Tammuz and Dionysos.  

I thought JKR's attempt to frame Harry as a Christ-like figure was unsuccessful, largely because of Harry's un-Christlike inclination to fling Unforgiveable Curses. Harry did not 'save' anyone nor did he exactly die and the references in the text to his 'saving people thing' was to me, as a character said in 'The Restaurant at the End of the Universe', needlessly messianic. I was more content to relate Harry's willingness to die after talking to Dumbledore at King's Cross to the Bushido code: only a samurai willing to die at any moment could be fully devoted to his lord.

Sir James Frazer noted that the Dying God is a common motif in many cultures and is frequently associated with agricultural or solar imagery - which made the sunrise at the conclusion of Harry's final duel with Voldemort the only part of the scene that I thought worked.

A protagonist doesn't need to mimic the actions of a deity in order to be heroic - nor does a character who dies and comes back from the dead necessarily convey a Christian message. Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius, for example, died and came back from the dead (frequently!) and the message of the books in which he appeared was decidedly not a Christian one.