Building a mythic hero

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

You could have meant that. But that would be uninteresting, because there is no more discussion to be made on that point, unimaginitive because that claim is brought up by every hack-historian, and because it is an arbitrary assertion which cannot possibly be disproved as any possible contrary evidence can be claimed as a fake. And just plain wearisome because if you believe you have to deny that claim and if you disbelieve you have to accept it and there is no more to be said. And the details of a given story are more interesting then whether a given person believes them in the context of this thread.

It might have been uninteresting but at least it was short.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

It might have been uninteresting but at least it was short.

That is a only a virtue in Sparta.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

5. He is also reputed to be the son of a god.

Change that to:
5a. He is the subject of a prophecy.
And you rope in Anakin Skywalker, Neo from Matrix and Harry Potter, to name those that immediately come to mind.

Originally Posted by jason taylor

1. Quite rare. More common for heroes to be divine bastards. I can't remember any virgin births other then Jesus and Darth Vader. I suspect that Ancients found celestial kinkiness more arousing.

Mithras, at least, and there are others I've heard of.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

1. Quite rare. More common for heroes to be divine bastards. I can't remember any virgin births other then Jesus and Darth Vader. I suspect that Ancients found celestial kinkiness more arousing.

Romulus and Remus. Siddharta Gautauma. Perseus.

Google turns up Amunothph III (Egypt), Attis (Phrygia), Fohi (China), Plato (Greece), Adonis (Greece), Quetzalcoatl (Mexico), Hercules (Greece), Indra (Tibet), Devaki (India), Alexander the Great (Greece), Augustus (Rome).

All of these have been attributed to virgin births. I doubt it.

[Hans Rancke-Madsen]

I interpreted the line about royal virgins as the mother having been one until the hero's father came along.


Hans

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Hans Rancke-Madsen

I interpreted the line about royal virgins as the mother having been one until the hero's father came along.


Hans

Which only requires a palace with an efficient security system and not a myth.

[Hans Rancke-Madsen]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Which only requires a palace with an efficient security system and not a myth.

So? Not every requirement needs to be confined to myth and legend. The bit about the father being a king is even less in need of mythology to apply.


Hans

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

Romulus and Remus. Siddharta Gautauma. Perseus.

Google turns up Amunothph III (Egypt), Attis (Phrygia), Fohi (China), Plato (Greece), Adonis (Greece), Quetzalcoatl (Mexico), Hercules (Greece), Indra (Tibet), Devaki (India), Alexander the Great (Greece), Augustus (Rome).

All of these have been attributed to virgin births. I doubt it.

Incorrect for a number of those cases Asta.

A god having sex with a mortal woman and producing a child thereby is not a virgin birth.

[Anders]

It only says "mother is a royal virgin", not necessarily that it has to be a virgin birth. I'd say it's an ambiguous statement, but given that my interpretation gives a greater coverage of mythic heroes it's a more useful one.

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

It only says "mother is a royal virgin", not necessarily that it has to be a virgin birth. I'd say it's an ambiguous statement, but given that my interpretation gives a greater coverage of mythic heroes it's a more useful one.

Nitpick: The mother can't be a virgin and a mother if she's had intercourse with a man or a god, Asta. She can have been a virgin before she conceived, but not before she gave birth, if sexual congress was involved. But sure, your reading is broader and probably more useful! :)





The Virgin Birth (and its corollary, the perpetual virginity of Mary) is quite different from Greek stories of Zeus dallying with mortal women.


The idea that a god could take on flesh, or that a being could be both divine and human in nature, in its broadest sense that forms an area of overlap between Christianity and certain pagan traditions. Christianity is arguably a sort of Hellenistic-Judaic fusion.
At the risk of getting off-topic, I think that 'pagan' myths of man-gods, demigods, and incarnations of divine powers may have helped to 'pave the way' for many Gentiles to convert to the new religion, just as the concept of the Incarnation seems to have repelled many 'old school/anti-Hellenic' Jews.

But of course I'm oversimplifying things...