Tryggve N.D. Mettinger,
The Riddle of Resurrection: “Dying and Rising Gods” in the
Ancient Near East. Coniectanea Biblica Old Testament Series 50.
Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2001.
Reviewed by Robert M. Price.
Let
me first avail myself of the author’s own abstract of his book: “From
the 1930’s through the rest of the century, a consensus has developed
to the effect that the ‘dying and rising gods’ died but did not return
or rise to live again. The present work – which is the first monograph
on the whole issue subsequent to the studies by Frazer and Baudissin –
is a detailed critique of this position. It is based on a fresh
perusal of all the relevant source material from the ancient Near
East, Egypt, and the Graeco-Roman world and profits from new finds of
great importance. Modern theory in comparative religion and
anthropology on the nature of rite and myth informs the discussion.
The author concludes that Dumuzi, Baal, and Melqart were dying and
rising gods already in pre-Christian times and that Adonis and Eshmun
may well have been so too. Osiris dies and rises but remains all the
time in the Netherworld. The deities that die and rise do not
represent one specific type of god (e.g., the Baal-Hadad type) but are
deities of widely divergent origin and character. The book is of
interest to scholars and students of the Bible, the ancient Near East,
the Mediterranean world, and Comparative religion.” One might say
“great interest” or “tremendous interest”—especially to those of us
who indulge the guilty pleasure of trying to undo the polemical
obfuscation of self-styled apologists for the Christian faith (as if
they held the copyright on it!).
I have long chafed at the
revisionism of Jonathan Z. Smith (great scholar though he is) and
others on the question of resurrected gods, and this for two reasons.
First, I believe their criticism of Frazer’s paradigm is basically and
drastically flawed, partly from a strange failure to grasp the nature
and heuristic value of Ideal Types, partly from what seems to me a
perverse reading of ancient evidence. Second, I regretted the aid and
comfort Smith’s position seems to give to the efforts of spin-doctors
like William Lane Craig and N.T. Wright, who are mighty glad to be
free, they imagine, of one serious headache. For if Frazer (Adonis,
Attis, and Osiris; The Golden Bough) was even half right,
Jesus can easily be understood as the last in a long succession of
resurrected redeemers and revivified gods. Just as western Comparative
Religion scholars isolate one of the twenty-five legendary Buddhas,
Prince Siddhartha, for the honor of being the historical Buddha,
Christian scholars seek to exempt their own personal savior from the
pervading mythic character of his fellow resurrectees. Significantly,
Professor Mettinger does not espouse the Christ-Myth theory, or even
the “light” version of it espoused by writers so diverse as Joseph
McCabe and Rudolf Bultmann: that Jesus did exist, but that his figure
has been clothed, more or less completely, in the myths of the Corn
Kings.
In this conclusion I
think he is altogether too sketchy. It seems to be enough for him to
rehearse the pointless claim of J.N.D. Anderson and others that the
resurrection of Jesus is supposed to be a one-time event involving a
historical individual, unlike the saviors whose myths he expounds, who
were, e.g., eternally returning figureheads of the harvest. That is
beside the point, since the Christ-Myth theory posits a process of
historicization through story-telling, by which the initially
nonhistorical Jesus Adonis became transformed into a supposed figure
of history. In precisely the same way, Herodotus sought to fix the
dates of mighty Hercules. The Christ-Myth theory rejects Bultmannism
as an attempt at Euhemerism, the derivation of wholly mythical
characters from ostensibly historical figures of remote antiquity. But
it is good that Dr. Mettinger does not espouse the Christ-Myth
position; this way no one can dismiss his conclusions a priori because
they think he must be ax-grinding. Of course, even if he were, that
would say nothing as to the validity or invalidity of his arguments.
The vested interests of N.T. Wright do not invalidate his arguments
either. The true scholar will evaluate each argument on its own merits
and rejoice to learn from their author, no matter his reason for
writing.
Several lesser but still
important points are clarified in this monograph. One of them is that
not every part of a mythic saga will necessarily be the object of
liturgical representation. Not every myth is a script for a ritual.
Many more are guesswork attempting to provide etiologies for puzzling
things, or else charters to legitimate certain current socio-religious
norms. This is itself nothing new, but Mettinger sees the relevance of
the insight for the present subject: Smith and others had pointed out
that gods like Adonis and Tammuz inspired rituals of mourning for
their deaths, but that the sources made no mention of any celebration
of their resurrections. Mettinger’s implicit point is that such a
criticism is as futile as those which condemned Jesus Christ
Superstar for not depicting Jesus’ resurrection, failing to
recognize it was a Passion, like Bach’s, and meant to cover but one
specific segment of the gospel story, available in its entirety
elsewhere.
In some case, though, as
Mettinger shows, there were celebrations of a god’s resurrection, but
they were separated by some months from the mourning rites. This is
altogether natural, celebrating each portion of the story at its
proper spot on the calendar, waiting till Spring to celebrate the
Springtide resurrection. There were others in which the divine death
and resurrection were separated as a single complex, mere days apart,
as in the case of Jesus. (In fact, Mettinger finds vestiges, nothing
more, of a possible pattern of third-day resurrections in these
myths.) When modern scholars come upon something like Ezekiel 8:14, a
ritual of mourning for Tammuz, with no mention of a resurrection
celebration, they are inclined to conclude there was no resurrection
sequel when there is a good reason for one not being noted in the same
reference: it was yet months away.
Mettinger rightly
disposes of the absurdity, urged by Jonathan Z. Smith and apologists,
that Patristic authors who speak of pagan death-and-resurrection
rituals are misconstruing some entirely different thing as a copy of
their own Easter faith. (If they were so different, where was the
point of comparison?). This is to propose that it was Christians who
manufactured highly embarrassing parallels between their own faith and
practice and those of rival pagans. Picture the ancient apologists
first trying to convince pagan hearers that Christianity paralleled
paganism (when they actually didn’t) and then proceeding to
discount the parallels or to explain them away! The picture implied is
fully as ludicrous as Luke’s notion that a Roman taxation census would
require people to register, not where they themselves lived, but where
their remote ancestors had resided a millennium earlier.
Finally, something
Mettinger certainly did not mean to suggest, but which occurred to me
as I read him. He quotes Plutarch (Alchibiades XVIII, 2-3):
“There were some unpropitious signs and portents, especially in
connection with the festival, namely the Adonia. This fell at that
time, and little images like dead folk carried forth to burial were in
many places exposed to view by the women, who mimicked burial rites,
beat their breasts, and sang dirges” (Mettinger, p. 117). Such
memorial images put me in mind of the household gods, or teraphim
of Israel (related to the shades of the dead, Rephaim). And
then I wonder if perhaps the exceedingly strange passage Matthew
27:52-53, “The tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who
had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the tombs after his
resurrection they entered the holy city and appeared to many.” Might
this Matthean prodigy stem from a misreading of an account like
Plutarch’s, if not that very account? We have the occasion of a divine
savior’s death. Portents are abroad. And perhaps Matthew, like
Plutarch, read an episode in which the pious of Jerusalem brought out
for display the memorial effigies of their sainted ancestors, suing
them as an apotropaic device against their unwelcome return along with
the resurrection of the savior, who has thrown open’s Sheol’s doors.
Only Matthew rewrites it so that the return of the dead is the result!
===================
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου