The Abstract Vegetation-God
Patrick Mooney
Humanities 206
20 November 2005
It has often been noted that the narrative of Jesus's death and resurrection bears certain similarities to older myths of a dying and resurrected god-king whose cyclical death and rebirth parallels the dying and rebirth of crops. This is, for instance, one of the enduring theses of Sir James Frazer's thirteen-volume The Golden Bough, published from 1890 to 1915. T.S. Eliot draws on this and other anthropological works in The Waste Land, a poem that represents the spiritual and existential dryness of contemporary society by juxtaposing "modern" scenes of banality and meaninglessness with scenes from a variety of past cultures, all of which are infused with mythology. These cultural pasts presented by Eliot are emphatically not homogenous, but there are certain structural similarities and equivalencies present that portray Christ (ll. 360-366) as infusing the past with meaning in a similar way (and teaching similar lessons) as, for instance, Prajapati in the last 39 lines of The Waste Land.
There are important differences between the story of Jesus and the earlier narratives of the dying and resurrected fertility deities, however, and it is the intent of this paper to comment on one of these differences: the lack of agricultural significance in the resurrection of Jesus. First, however, it is helpful to review quickly the general structure of the myth of the dying and resurrected vegetation god and how it is similar to the story of Jesus of Nazareth. The Egyptian myth of Osiris can serve as an adequate reference point for the pagan myths.
Osiris, an Egyptian deity, was killed by Set(h) through treachery (as Jesus was betrayed by Judas). His body was discarded (as the body of Jesus was buried after the Crucifixion), but he was given new life when Isis and Nephthys found (most of) the pieces of the body (as Jesus rose from the dead after three days). Osiris now serves as the judge of the dead (as Jesus is reported to do in many places in the Gospels, e.g. in Matthew 7:21-23). The story of Osiris provides a method for explaining the yearly cycle of the death and rebirth of the vegetation. ("Osiris" 3)
There are numerous other ancient myths in varying cultures that parallel, in structure, the story of Osiris as summarized above. An obvious parallel is the narrative of Persphone's abduction by Pluto and the mandate that she spend some time each year in the underworld. Perspehone's mother, Demeter, a vegetation-goddess, mourns her daughter's time in the underworld each year, and no crops grow during this time. Some of the many other myths that follow this structure include the stories of Adonis, Tammuz, and Dionysios. In each case, there is a wounding/death, often through betrayal or trickery and a corresponding resurrection or rebirth. Although there are striking differences in details between stories, there is an underlying structural similarity that is striking, and this structural parallel also encompasses the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus.
It is worth noting, also, that the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus is celebrated annual in the festival of Easter. In fact, the word "Easter" itself comes ultimately from Old English Eostra, a Germanic goddess of Spring (and, hence, of the rebirth of vegetation). (Partridge 175)
What is specifically absent from the explicit story of the death and resurrection of Jesus is an agricultural benefit: The story of the death and resurrection of Jesus does not explain the yearly death and rebirth of vegetation. There is a fairly obvious reason for this: Christianity sprang from the soil of monotheistic Judaism, in which natural phenomena are not identified with deities. As Smith has pointed out:
Where the Hebrews differed from their neighbors was in focusing the personal traits of the Other in a single, nature-transcending will. For other Mediterranean peoples, each major power of nature was a distinct deity; whereas in the Bible, nature in its entirety was created by, and under the sovereignty of the Lord of all being. (181)
Moreover, the story of the crucifixion of Jesus has a historical character, and a fairly late one, at that: It occurred at a specific time, by which point the Jews had doubtless observed the yearly crop cycle already, instead of being relegated to a mythical, long-ago age.
What the story of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus present instead of an agricultural benefit is a spiritual benefit. Although differing segments of Christianity disagree about the exact nature of the requirements for salvation, there is a general consensus among many Western denominations that Jesus was more than simply a teacher of ethical precepts: The death of Jesus, as a sinless man who shared the nature of God, frees believing Christians from the burden of Original Sin. This is a belief (sometimes called the Substitutionary Atonement) that Jesus died so that believing Christians might achieve eternal life.
In a certain sense, this ideology parallels the narratives of the dying vegetation-gods. They, too, died and were resurrected or reborn to bring life to their followers. The yearly rebirth of the vegetation is of vital importance to agricultural communities, as the growth of crops is a basic prerequisite for the continuing maintenance of human life and the social structure in those societies.
Jesus's death and rebirth are similar in the sense that Jesus also died to bring life to his followers. The primary difference is that "life" is conceptualized differently in the case of Christianity — one might say that "life" is here conceptualized abstractly. Christianity is noteworthy for its emphasis on the next life over the earthly life. One of Jesus's more noteworthy sayings in this regard is "He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal." (John 12:25; somewhat milder variants occur in Matt 10:39, Matt 16:25, Mark 8:35, Luke 9:24, and Luke 17:33.)
It is apparent, then, that the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus follow a common mythical pattern that occurs in widely varying cultures. It is also noteworthy, however, that there is a shift in emphasis in the Christian version of the myth from earthly life to the "life eternal" that is the emphasis of Christianity.
Works Cited
Eliot, T.S. The Waste Land in Eliot: Poems and Prose. New York: Knopf, 1998.
"Osiris and the Myth of Abydos." Online. Internet. 15 November 2005. Approx. 6 pp. Available http://history-world.org/osiris_and_the_history_of_abydos.htm.
Partridge, Eric. Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English. New York: Greenwich House, 1983.
Smith, Huston. The Illustrated World's Religions: A Guide to Our Wisdom Traditions. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994.
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