A dying god, also known as a death-rebirth, dying-and-rising, or resurrection deity, is a god who dies and is resurrected or reborn, in either a literal or symbolic sense. Male examples include the ancient Near Eastern, Greek, and Norse deities Baal, Melqart, Adonis, Eshmun, Attis Tammuz, Ra the Sun god with its fusion with Osiris/Orion, Jesus, Zalmoxis, Asclepius, Orpheus, Dionysus, and Odin. Female examples include Inanna/Ishtar, Persephone, and Bari.
Read more about Dying God: History, Jesus, Criticism, List of Life-death-rebirth Deities
Famous quotes containing the words dying and/or god:
“I lately met with an old volume from a London bookshop, containing the Greek Minor Poets, and it was a pleasure to read once more only the words Orpheus, Linus, Musæus,—those faint poetic sounds and echoes of a name, dying away on the ears of us modern men; and those hardly more substantial sounds, Mimnermus, Ibycus, Alcæus, Stesichorus, Menander. They lived not in vain. We can converse with these bodiless fames without reserve or personality.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Uncontrolled, the hunger and thirst after God may become an obstacle, cutting off the soul from what it desires. If a man would travel far along the mystic road, he must learn to desire God intensely but in stillness, passively and yet with all his heart and mind and strength.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)