Each December, I hear that "Jesus is the reason for the season." For me, it simply serves as a refreshing reminder that the holiday period should be about more than just getting and spending.

I was born into Judaism, and in my twenties I referred to Christmas as "the Pagan holiday" and avoided it. I changed course a decade ago upon marrying a man reared vaguely Protestant and experiencing how meaningful (and how secular) a tradition it can be.

But my in-laws would be surprised to know my view of their savior-and how inadvertently accurate I was in my initial assessment. For Jesus, born to the Jews and now God of one billion Christians, is also the best and truest Pagan lord there could be. To twist a phrase, if he had not existed, it would have been necessary to invent him. In fact, several sources contend that this is exactly what occurred.

Christianity is founded largely upon three of the most basic, beloved and widespread archetypes of pre-Christian traditions. These archetypes, exemplified in Jesus as doctrine portrays him, are the half-divine hero, the dying hero and the eternal, returning king.

Archetype One: The hero with a divine father and human mother. The New Testament teaches that Jesus is the Son of God born of a mortal woman as described in Matthew 1:18-25 and Luke 1:26-38. (1)

In the classical world of Greece, Herakles (better known by his Roman name, Hercules) serves as example of this same phenomenon, having Zeus, head of the gods of Olympus, as sire. Like Jesus, Herakles was born of a virgin at the winter solstice, was called a savior, confronted the powers of Hell, died during a solar eclipse at the spring equinox and was reborn. (2) Herakles is one of many half-divine heroes in Greek lore such as Perseus, also a son of Zeus, and Theseus, son of Poseidon.

The Hercules of the recently concluded Legendary Journeys television series took liberties with the original stories. But, emotionally the portrayal rings true. Hercules was shown to possess not only godlike power, but also enormous empathy for human beings derived from having lived as a man on Earth. As a non-Christian, it seems to me that this same endearing characteristic is the primary psychological appeal of Jesus to those who do follow his creed.

Herakles, Perseus, Theseus and other Greek gods and heroes were adopted by the Romans, and their cults were practiced throughout the Empire, so the concept of the half-divine hero was known in some dozen nations (including the homeland of Jesus) by 33 C.E. The Roman Empire initially persecuted but later spread Christianity throughout its considerable boundaries.

Archetype Two: The hero who dies an untimely death. According to Scripture, Jesus was killed-the Crucifixion is portrayed in all four Gospels-after only a few years at his ministry. A similarly sympathetic character was known in Hellenistic times-the beautiful youth Adonis, beloved of Aphrodite, gored to death by a boar.(3) Adonis is one of many Old World figures slain before his time. Such sacrificial victims abound: Orpheus and Dionysus of Greece; Osiris of Egypt; Attis, a transplant from Phrygia (Turkey) to Greece and Rome; Diarmuid and Lugh of Ireland; Shiva of India; and Dumuzi/Tammuz of the Sumerian/Semitic traditions.(4)

Joseph Campbell points out the strong connection between Jesus and similar heroes: "…The moving legend of the Crucified and Risen Christ was fit to bring a new warmth, immediacy and humanity to the old motifs of the Tammuz, Adonis and Osiris cycles. Indeed, it was those early myths, filling the atmosphere of the entire eastern Mediterranean, that had furnished the ambient of readiness within which the Christian legend rapidly grew and spread," he wrote in The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology (page 362).

As Christianity developed, the humble Jesus of history was eventually supplanted by the divine Christ, an inevitable process of promotion paralleling what occurred to his Eastern counterpart, the rebel Indian prince now known as Buddha, Campbell says (page 347). But another author, Walker, doubts that Jesus ever existed, calling him "mythic to the core," a composite of virtually every hero-king-savior-god of the Old World (page 470). (5)

Archetype Three: The ever-living king who will return to his people. The Bible says Jesus rose from the dead two millennia ago and is Earthbound again someday. Mainstream Christianity is largely built around anticipation of this Second Coming.

This archetype fits other noble souls. For instance, a famous modern novel about King Arthur is titled simply The Once and Future King. The basics of his tale have been told for centuries throughout the West, including, in our own day, at least half a dozen movies. If you are any kind of Anglophile, as many Neo-Pagans are, then you know that Arthur is not dead but only sleeping and will return to England in her hour of greatest need.(6)

Further yet from Palestine dwelt Quetzalcoatl in pre-Columbian Mexico. Like Jesus, Arthur and the Greek Titan Prometheus, he elevated the human beings around him, teaching new knowledge and values. Some versions of the Quetzalcoatl tale including that in Orpheus: Myths of the World, say that he finally sailed off, promising to come back-a hope that ended in tragedy centuries later when the Aztec ruler Montezuma mistook the ruthless Spanish conqueror Hernán Cortes for the returning culture hero.

Back in the Holy Land, we find another such king and king to be, celebrated in the words of the chant Daveed, melech Yisrael, chai v' kayam ("David, king of Israel, lives and exists") to which I folk-danced as a teen at summer camp. In Ezekiel 37:25, the prophet quotes God as stating that "My servant David shall be their prince forever."

Folktales of Israel presents another prophet, Elijah, (7) as saying that "King David is not dead; he lives and exists. He is sleeping, and he will arise when we are worthy of it. By your virtue and the merit of your longing and love, he will arise and redeem." That sounds a lot like Jesus to me. Maybe we're still waiting to deserve him.

Maria Leach wrote of many in her introduction to Funk and Wagnall's Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend, "Here are the kings asleep in the mountain, the belief in the hero, or savior, who will come again, and some hundred other instances of the inextinguishable hope that all that is wrong in the world can somehow be put right."

That sounds a lot like the Christmas spirit to me. I know we're nowhere near achieving it.

The universal resonance of these three major archetypes of the ancient world ~ half-divine hero, dying hero, eternal/returning king ~ over time has helped to transform an obscure carpenter-rabbi of some twenty centuries ago into history's main man.And so Jesus, the God of many millions who call themselves monotheists, can also rightfully be regarded as a quintessential Pagan deity.

What that should mean to us is that we need feel no spiritual tug-of-war between the religion we were born into and the one we may practice now. Whether Cathwic, Jewitch or polytheistic enough to worship an entire pantheon, we can choose to celebrate the even-more-Pagan-than-we-realized Christian holiday this month.

~ Mazal HaMidbar ("Star of the Desert") is a researcher, writer, professor and herbalist who dreams of becoming the Pagan Martha Stewart. She studied pedagogy in Jerusalem and has taught Hebrew in Los Angeles. Now a Mojave Desert resident, she attends Shabbats and Sabbats with equal fervor.

 

 

FOOTNOTES:

(1) Interestingly, Matthew opens with a genealogy showing Jesus as a direct descendant of the Old Testament's King David, but through his stepfather, Joseph, not his mother, Mary.

(2) For more on Herakles, see Orpheus: Myths of the World and Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets.

(3) Frazer (page 386) says Adonis originated in Phoenicia or modern-day Lebanon, just north of the Galilean home of Jesus.

(4) The practice of "weeping for Tammuz" was condemned in Ezekiel 8:14, but the name remains in Judaism as one of the 12 months of the lunar Hebrew calendar, roughly correspondent to July, the season when Tammuz yearly met his end. Three other quick examples of vestigial paganism in modern Hebrew: The name of the Canaanite goddess Anath is sometimes used for Israeli girls; Anath's colleague, Baal, himself a dying god, lives on in the term meaning husband, master or manager; and the Babylonian sun god Shammash survives as shemesh, the common word for sun.

(5) We have seen such deification at work in our own time. In the mid-20th century a charismatic presence commanded worshipful attention from millions worldwide, then died in his forties. Followers still make pilgrimages to his residence, attend reenactments of his work, refuse to believe he is gone and pray for news of his sighting. I find it significant that nearly a quarter-century after his passing, Elvis Presley is revered as The King.

(6) And if you are any kind of history buff, then you may perceive just that Arthurian greatness in Winston Churchill and other brave Britons who defended Avalon from Nazi terror 55 years ago.

(7) Elijah visits every Jewish home during Passover as Saint Nicholas does each Christian household at Yuletide, making both of them eternal heroes in their own right.

REFERENCES:

Authors' note: Campbell, Frazer and especially Walker describe Pagan antecedents of Jesus including those exemplifying characteristics such as arriving announced by stars and attended by kings, surviving a slaughter of infants, gathering a dozen disciples, working miracles, being symbolically consumed and so on.

Folktales of Israel, edited by Dov Noy with the assistance of Dan Ben-Amos, translated by Gene Baharav. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963.

Funk and Wagnall's Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend, edited by Maria Leach, second edition. New York: Funk and Wagnall, 1972.

King James Bible, National Bible Press, Philadelphia: no publication date given.

Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology. New York: Penguin Books/Viking Press, 1964.

Padraic Colum, Orpheus: Myths of the World. New York: the Macmillan Company,1930.

Sir James George Frazer, The Golden Bough. New York: Collier Books/Macmillan Publishing Company, 1922.

Barbara G. Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1983.

T.H. White, The Once and Future King. New York: Putnam's, 1958.