Dennis O’Neil: Resurrection
The grass is riz
I wonder where the boidies is…
Ah. Spring.
No matter that if you live in the midwest there may be snow on the ground, and if there isn’t, there was recently. It is, dammit, spring! What you gonna believe, Skippy – your eyes or the calendar?
And to herald spring, here comes one of my favorite holidays – Easter. You know the story: humanity’s savior gets crucified, chills in a tomb for three days, comes out and starts a religion. If you’re into comparative mythology. you can find that similar things happened to earlier deities, including Adonis, Osiris, and Mithra. The myths, and their attendant holidays, celebrate something real – the emotions,including hope, that we desperate humans experience when the long gloom of winter goes away and life returns to the Earth. Our ancestors tended to give phenomena they didn’t understand names and identities. Maybe that tendency still exists in their descendants.
Do we feel that you can’t keep a good god down?
Then what about comic book characters? They seem to have difficulty staying dead, too. I have personally participated in the demise of four that I can immediately remember, all of whom popped out of the afterlife in one form or another, and they’re only a few entries in a rather long list that includes some of the biggies: Superman, Captain America, Robin the Boy/Teen Wonder version two. And then there are the lesser but still prominent characters, including Cap America’s young pal Bucky, Elektra, and one of my personal favorite supporting cast members, Batman’s butler Alfred. (Full disclosure: Alfred wasn’t really dead, only, you know, deadish. For two years.)
And why do I feel compelled to include a spear-carrier who died and stayed dead? We’re talking Larry Lance, the detective husband of the original Black Canary. We gave him a one panel funeral in Justice League of America, sent his widow off to another universe and sweet love with Green Arrow, and forgot about him. Maybe I’ve given Larry a paragraph as a service to serious trivia freaks.
But Larry wasn’t even a superheroes and superheroes who die are our subject, so back to them. DC Comics has recently killed two prominent costumed good guys and raised a bit of a stink in the doing. The (late) characters are (were?) yet another incarnation of Batman’s youthful sidekick, Robin, and, evidently, John Stewart, the African American Green Lantern. What’s notable about the Robin is that he is (was) the first of his ilk who was Batman’s biological son. John Stewart? The stakes are a bit higher: he was one of the earliest of comics’ superdoers who wasn’t a white guy and for a time, he was pretty much the only Green Lantern in the DC Universe. I’d say that as fictional beings go, he’ll be missed. (The Robin? No idea.)
But will John (and Robin?) stay deceased? Well, they’re not gods, not exactly (though they are first cousins to the mythological deities). Will they return? History may be nodding its head yes, but I’ll content myself with a shrug.
FRIDAY: Martha Thomases
SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman
Jesus didn’t start an earthly “religion.” He said quite clearly that his kingdom “was not of this world.” Anyone becoming a follower, therefore, must undergo an eternal makeover, he must be “born again” (John 3:3).
It has long been noted that there are messianic figures in other religions, but too little thought has been given to the fact that if the Bible is true, there should be. Much as many cultures have stories that parallel the accounts in Genesis (creation of man, the fall, the flood, the tower of Babel, the longevity of the patriarchs, etc.), it should not be surprising that these groups have messianic figures as well. That is what we should expect to find if the Bible is true.
Genesis 3:15 is the earliest recorded prophecy of the one to come. From this scant narrative we can see certain elements. His “heel” was to be bruised. This “wounding” is not too difficult to relate to the prophesied death and resurrection of the Messiah. The important of the “woman” in the narrative also would serve as inspiration for the mourning women of these other stories (Isis in the Osiris myth, for example).
As one goes further into the Scriptures, other aspects of that Messiah become plain. For example, consider the following parallel: “Quetzacoatl of Mexico, crucified in 587 BC, for the sins of the world, descended into hell and rose on the third day, was born of a virgin mother by immaculate conception. He too had forty days of temptation and fasting, rode on an ass, was baptized by water, anointed with oil and forgave sins.”
Isn’t it interesting that these specifics occur at a later date than the Osiris/Horus myth? It is interesting because all the prophetic identifiers of He who was to come had now appeared in Old Testament scripture. If there is a Satan who tries to disrupt the plan of God; how better to do so than introducing a counterfeit? Satan knows the Scriptures and selectively quotes them when deemed advantageous (Matthew 4:6, etc.) Consequently, it is more than interesting that at this later date (when more prophecy was available) the “fuller” account of Quezacoatl comes along. The virgin birth, forty days of temptation, fasting, entering Jerusalem on an ass, etc., had all now been recorded in Scripture. But again, that is what one might expect from an adversary who is a master of the counterfeit (2 Corinthians 11:13-14).
That being said, the many differences between these other would be messiahs and the true Messiah must be noted: all of the “other” messiahs all proclaimed a “gospel” of works. This is a far cry from the Gospel of Grace proclaimed by Christ.