[the_old_crowd] Re: John the Baptist?

[Catherine Coleman]

In message 
<209B8A03E1FFCC40A577E6FF0DF25245833A at ...>, 
Aberforth's Goat <mike at ...> writes
>Anyway, she doesn't even give us that much. She just tells us that
>there's an essential link to some aspect of Christian theology,
>tradition or narrative. Which makes looking for a needle in a haystack
>sound easy - at least you know what you're looking for ...
>
>But not all is lost. We do have two clues:
>
>(1) It must be some aspect of Christianity that she *finds important.*
>(Hence, St. Paul's prohibition of women in church leadership probably
>isn't quite what we're looking for ... ) This suggests an investigative
>question: what are the essential aspects of Rowling's reception of
>Christian belief?

Well, leaving aside my non-existent John the Baptist theory, I have one 
other suggestion.  I've been reading Francis Bridger's book this week, 
and one of the Christian tenets he seems to think that JKR believes 
passionately in is that of self-sacrifice and completely unselfish love. 
We see it as a theme right through the books - James and Lily's 
sacrifice for Harry, Sirius' cri de coeur to Wormtail about how he 
(Wormtail) should have died rather than betray his friends - sacrificed 
himself in the way the other Marauders would have done for him.  Harry 
himself has put himself in danger countless times for others, showing 
that he is prepared to face death (the ultimate sacrifice) for what he 
believes in and for the people he loves.

I'm sure there are other examples - it could probably be extended to 
include anyone who puts themselves on the line for anyone else, which 
all members of the Trio do, as do many other characters - even 
McGonagall, when defending Hagrid in OoP (after all, she almost died).

So if this has any bearing at all on the outcome of the series, does it 
mean that Harry will die - sacrifice himself for everyone else?

If this is the case, and parallels are to be drawn between Jesus Christ 
and Harry, I can see flaws in the theory.  For example, we know that JKR 
has always said that when you are dead, you are dead - so no 
resurrection, I presume.

Anyway, as you can probably gather, I'm not very well-versed in any of 
this, but I do think the idea is worth exploring (and elucidating on by 
people who know much more about it than I do).

Thoughts?

Catherine