Symmetry in the Legends Surrounding Jesus’ Birth and Death

5 thoughts on “Symmetry in the Legends Surrounding Jesus’ Birth and Death”

1. Mary at birth, Mary at the tomb?

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2. Herod sought to kill the infant Jesus; in the Gospel of Peter another Herod crucifies Jesus. (Luke gives the second Herod a cameo appearance in the Passion events.)

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3. I do think the birth and resurrection are related. Resurrection was often seen as a re-birth or second birth. Initiation rituals were considered to be a second birth. The first birth is of the flesh and the second birth is of the spirit.

   “There Is Hope for a Tree”: Job’s Hope for the Afterlife in the Light of Egyptian Tree Imagery(Catholic Biblical Quarterly 77, 2015), Christopher Hays

   Job’s return to his mother’s womb has consistently attracted special attention from interpreters of the book; it has been seen as a “bump” in the text requiring smoothing. Fifty years ago, Giuseppe Ricciotti argued with elegant brevity that the archaeological remains of ancient Near Eastern burials could shed light on this problem; the fetal positioning of many such burials could explain the image of “returning naked to [the mother’s womb].” “If this womb was not materially identical to that of the mother,” Ricciotti wrote, “it was so symbolically.”

   A number of significant commentaries have followed Ricciotti in treating the imagery as a poetic reference to burial,
   but as far as I can see, no one has pointed out that there are very clear Egyptian precedents for such imagery, in which the sarcophagus and/or tomb are described as the womb of the goddess in which the deceased undergoes a rebirth into the blessed afterlife. The fact that Job is already acknowledged as demonstrating awareness of
   Egyptian beliefs about the afterlife such as the judgment of the dead supports the idea of Egyptian influence in 1:21.

   In Egyptian funerary texts, there is “an astonishing consistency” to the imagery of death as a return to a goddess’ womb, from the Old Kingdom through the Hellenistic period. The image of the goddess Nut as the one who gives birth to the deceased king as her son—causing him to “revive and live”—is pervasive in the Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts… Assmann calls this an “entirely typical” image, “that of a mother goddess who embodies the coffin and welcomes the deceased, as he enters her, as her son.”…Job 1:21a makes better sense when understood in light of the Egyptian idea of death as a return to the womb of the mother goddess; that mythology provides a much more likely context than the idea of “Mother Earth,” which is attested only in texts that are (or are likely to be) quite late…

   As a final example, in 14:7-9 Job entertains the idea that he might experience rebirth, like a tree (“there is hope for a tree, if it is cut down, that it will sprout again”), but in the next moment he draws back from that hope (14:12: “Mortals lie down and do not rise again”).

   I also suspect this is part of the reason why the women play such an important role in the death/resurrection narrative. I think there may be some ‘remnant’ of the goddess in the women of the Gospel stories. There may also be a connection with “…whom ye slewed and hung on a tree”. Trees(nature in general) being associated with rebirth/resurrection.

   There’s also a tradition of deities having two births or a normal birth and then a rebirth/resurrection.

   Inter-Actions: Relationships of Religion and Drama(University Press of America, 2009), Nelvin Vos

   The dithyramb represented more than a chant to drive the sacred animal. The song also celebrated the new birth of the god, Dionysus. However, Dionysus was not represented as an infant, but as a young man. Therefore, the emphasis is as the etymology of the word, Dithyrambos, indicates, on the second birth of Dionysus, his adoption by Zeus. He was twice-born, once of his mother, like all men, once of his father’s thigh, like no man. This aspect of the dithyramb is shown clearly in a paean to Dionysus discovered at Delphi. … Therefore, one can see that the birth of Dionysus and
   the coming of spring are intimately connected. As Jane Harrison summarizes: “The Dithyramb … is not only a song of human rebirth: it is the song of the rebirth of all nature, all living things; it is a Spring song ‘for the Year-Feast.’”

   The Many-Headed Muse: Tradition and Innovation in Late Classical Greek Lyric Poetry(Cambridge University Press,2014), Pauline A. LeVen

   As Bacchylides and Plutarch attest, dithyrambs were sung at Delphi in honor of Dionysus only during the winter months, when Apollo visits the Hyperboreans. The song subverts this traditional association by linking from the outset Dionysus Dithyrambus not with winter but with spring … the poet might be referring to the problematic double birth of Dionysus Di-thyrambus.

   Interesting that one birth is celebrated in the winter and the other in the spring.

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4. Jesus was believed to have born in a cave (Dialogue with Trypho, LXXVIII) and reborn in a cave

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5. I think Luke placing Jesus’ birth in a manger among livestock arguably provides foreshadowing of his death, where he replaces/supersedes the Yom Kippur sacrifice. He was born among livestock to be sacrificed as such.

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