ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 30, 1997 TAG: 9704010013
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JULIA VITULLO-MARTIN
IT MAY BE the most fundamental myth of all, the story of the young man brutally killed and later miraculously restored to life.
Certainly it is one of the oldest and most universal. Orpheus. Osiris. England's St. George. Even America has a variant: Hiawatha's deity.
But the greatest version of the story is the torture and crucifixion of Jesus Christ, resulting in one of the world's most enduring religions and the muscling out of many earlier religions, particularly the ancient mystery cults.
In his death, Jesus Christ displaced Apollo, but even more important, according to poet and classicist Robert Graves, the God replaced the Goddess, the Western male conquered the Eastern and agricultural female.
Christ did this in part by incorporating the ancient themes, fulfilling the prophecies of the Old Testament but also adhering to the symbols and practices of the pagan mystery rites, which he then enveloped within his new vision.
For example, as the innocent sacrifice, Jesus called himself the Lamb of God, recalling not only the Paschal Lamb that is slaughtered at Passover but the lambs sacrificed in pagan rites.
In both his books and his PBS-televised series, the late anthropologist Joseph Campbell noted that Christ's incorporation of ancient religions, and his victory over them, is clear in retrospect to historians.
More controversially, Campbell argued that it was also well understood in the years after the crucifixion by Christ's most ardent followers.
Campbell concluded that St. Paul's ``great insight on the road to Damascus was the realization that the death of Christ on the cross could be interpreted in terms of classical mystery religions, that the death and resurrection of the savior meant the death of one's purely animal existence and the birth of one's spiritual life.''
The cruelty of the death deepened the enormity of Christ's - the victim's - sacrifice and also linked it to previous agricultural rites exalting death, rebirth, renewal, new life.
The brutality of classical sacrifices often included dismemberment, particularly when a god or the son of a god was killed.
The murdered god was torn apart and scattered to the earth, fostering fertility, before being miraculously resurrected - or sometimes merely symbolically resurrected within the newly fecund earth.
The dismemberment also enabled the god, notes Campbell, to lose his commitment to the insignificant present and be open to the transcendental beyond.
Thus we have the story of Osiris, Egyptian god of the sun, murdered by a jealous brother, Seth, who threw the corpse into the Nile.
Isis, faithful wife-sister to Osiris, salvaged the body. But before she could act, Seth cut the body into 14 pieces, of which 13 were recovered.
The 14th, the phallus, was devoured by the fish of the Nile, ever fertile thereafter.
Osiris was in some accounts restored to life as Apis, the sacred bull, symbol of fertility. In other accounts he rose to heaven in glorious resurrection.
The promise of Christ's death and resurrection was more ambitious - it was that he would share the prize of new life with those who believed.
In his epistle to the Romans, St. Paul gives a new gloss to the ancient theme: ``We have been buried with Him by baptism until death so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in the newness of life.''
Or as St. John wrote, those who believe in Christ ``have already passed from death to life.''
An important difference, however, between Christ's promise and earlier promises held out by pagan sacrifices was that this resurrection was literal - and literal for all initiates - not merely symbolic.
This became the crux of the bitter divisions between the early (orthodox) Christians and the Gnostics, who were eventually suppressed.
Elaine Pagels, professor of religion at Princeton University, has written that the early church fathers declared as heretical anyone who denied that the resurrection had been of the flesh, thereby departing from the symbolic interpretation that had always sufficed. (This later became a fundamental issue during the Protestant Reformation.)
At the end of ``Mythos,'' a long lecture televised by PBS, Campbell set out to summarize the links between paganism and Christianity.
What then, he asks, do Christians believe? What is literal and what is symbolic?
He starts to recite the Credo, admonishing his listeners to listen to what they're saying: ``I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth, and in our Lord Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, who was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried.''
Campbell interrupts himself to note that only the last few phrases - suffered under Pilate and so forth - constitute historical statements. All the rest is mythology.
He continues the Credo: ``He descended into hell; the third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, sitteth at the right hand of the Father from whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.''
Do you believe those things literally? asks Campbell.
Yes, answers a voice from the back of the room.
This is the first word we've heard from the audience. Campbell is startled. Then a sweet smile breaks his austere face and he says, ``Good for you.''
Campbell devoted his life to explicating the continuity of the important myths, the links between the ancient mysteries and those that are still evolving today.
The details of the Passion and Death of Christ should be pondered by believer and nonbeliever alike. Much is to be learned.
As for those who believe: Good for you.
JULIA VITULLO-MARTIN edited ``Breaking Away: The Future of Cities,'' published by the Twentieth Century Fund Press.
- KNIGHT-RIDDERTRIBUNE
LENGTH: Long : 110 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: MATT HARRINGTON LOS ANGELES TIMES SYNDICATEby CNB