Rethinking Frazer’s Dying Gods: New Perspectives on the Death and Resurrection Pattern in Ancient Mediterranean Myths

Abstract

In this article, I address the ‘old’ question of the ‘dying god’. James G. Frazer’s famous and neglected category is currently considered wrong and outdated and, therefore, not even studied anymore. Through the presentation of the critical positions of Jonathan Z. Smith, I discuss the cases of Dionysus, Baal and Inanna/Ishtar. Although they have received little attention (as studies which depart from the dominant critical current generally have), they prove that Frazer’s intuition is not entirely wrong and that there is still much material to explore.