Lord Raglan's Mythic-Hero Profile

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Lord Raglan's Mythic-Hero Profile

Something like half a century ago, a certain Lord Raglan published his Mythic Hero profile, a sort of average biography of legendary heroes. Many well-known ones fit very well, like Oedipus, Hercules, Perseus, Romulus, Krishna, and the Buddha, while it is hard to find well-documented people who score very high.
Lord Raglan had avoided the question of how well Jesus Christ might fit because of the obvious controversy that it would cause, but Alan Dundes has decided to go ahead and do JC. Lord Raglan's approach in scoring was to use the most mythical variant of various stories; I will do that here.
1. The hero's mother is a royal virgin, whileShe's not called the Virgin Mary for nothing, and if one of the genealogies refers to her, then she's descended from King David. Score: 1/22. his father is a king, andThough Joseph lives as a commoner, he is described as being descended from King David. Score: 13. the father is related to the mother.No. Score: 04. The hero's conception is unusual or miraculous; henceYes. Score: 15. he is reputed to be a son of a god.Yes. Score: 16. Evil forces attempt to kill the infant or boy hero, butKing Herod orders the killing of the Bethlehem baby boys. Score: 17. he is spirited away to safety andJoseph and Mary flee with him to Egypt. Score: 18. reared by foster parents in a foreign land. Besides this,They stay in Egypt for a while, though they eventually return. Score: 1/29. we learn no details of his childhood untilA little bit. His being a child prodigy in the Temple. Score: 1/210. he journeys to his future kingdom, whereHe leaves is family and goes into the desert. Score: 111. he triumphs over the reigning king and/or a giant, dragon, or wild beast, andHe successfully resists the Devil's temptations and the Devil goes away defeated. Score: 112. marries a princess, often his predecessor's daughter, andNo. His extracanonically-rumored girlfriend, Mary Magdalene, was a commoner. Score: 013. becomes king himself.He becomes not only a religious leader, but also a self-styled messiah and "king of the Jews". Score: 114. For a while he reigns uneventfully,Yes. He mainly wanders around, preaching and working miracles. Score: 115. promulgating laws. ButYes. Many of his teachings can easily be interpreted as laws. Score: 116. he later loses favor with his subjects or with the gods andThe leaders and people of Jerusalem turn against him and his followers flee. Score: 117. is driven from the throne and the city andHe is put on trial for blasphemy. Score: 118. meets with a mysterious death,He takes a few hours to die on that cross, a very fast death for a young man in good health. Score: 119. often atop a hill.Golgotha: Skull Hill. Score: 120. If he has children, they do not succeed him.He is childless. Score: 121. His body is not buried, yetHe rises from the dead and leaves his tomb. Score: 122. he has one or more holy sepulchers.The Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. Score: 1
I calculate a score of 18 1/2; others have calculated scores like 19. Jesus Christ is way up there, alongside the other high scorers I'd mentioned.


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To see how someone

To see how someone well-documented compares, let's consider the great biologist Charles Robert Darwin.
1. The hero's mother is a royal virgin, whileSusannah Wedgwood was an aristocrat from a noted family, but, Charles was the fifth of her sixth children. By comparison, most mythic heroes are their mothers' first or only children. Score: 1/2
2. his father is a king, andRobert Darwin was an aristocrat, and his father was the noted biologist Erasmus Darwin. Score: 1/2
3. the father is related to the mother.No. Score: 0
4. The hero's conception is unusual or miraculous; henceNo. Score: 0
5. he is reputed to be a son of a god.No. Score: 0
6. Evil forces attempt to kill the infant or boy hero, butNo. Score: 0
7. he is spirited away to safety andNo. Score: 0
8. reared by foster parents in a foreign land. Besides this,No. Score: 0
9. we learn no details of his childhood untilWe do learn some details; he was a rather ordinary sort of boy who liked collecting beetles. Score: 0
10. he journeys to his future kingdom, whereHe was never "exiled", and even his Beagle voyage was as a part of the scientific community. Score: 0
11. he triumphs over the reigning king and/or a giant, dragon, or wild beast, andHe gradually works out evolution and other such things. Score: 0
12. marries a princess, often his predecessor's daughter, andEmma Wedgwood was from his mother's family. Score: 1/2
13. becomes king himself.He becomes an eminent biologist who writes voluminously. Score: 1
14. For a while he reigns uneventfully,He lives a quiet life and lets others do the fighting for him. Score: 1/2
15. promulgating laws. ButMaking evolutionary biology a rigorous discipline might be interpreted as issuing "laws". Score: 1
16. he later loses favor with his subjects or with the gods andHe retains the respect of his colleagues for the rest of his life. Score: 0
17. is driven from the throne and the city andSee above. Score: 0
18. meets with a mysterious death,His death was not really unusual. Score: 0
19. often atop a hill.In his home. Score: 0
20. If he has children, they do not succeed him.His children went on to become noted scientists in their own right, even if not particularly noted evolutionary biologists. Score: 1/2
21. His body is not buried, yetIt is, in Westminster Abbey. Score: 0
22. he has one or more holy sepulchers.His body continues to remain there. Score: 0
Total score: 4 1/2. Well-documented people usually have scores like this; I've added up scores for Abraham Lincoln, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and Adolf Hitler, and I've found them to be within that range. Well-documented heroes often have very undistinguished parentage, typically don't have very unusual conceptions, and go through their infancy with nobody trying to kill them. Also, they are seldom repudiated late in their careers;
Lord Raglan's profile could be clarified and expanded.
As Lord Raglan himself had noted, one seldom finds much on *anyone's* childhood, so that absence is only significant when someone's infancy is described in any detail.
And child-prodigy stories, like Jesus Christ in the Jerusalem Temple, are a common folkloric motif.
A more serious omission from the profile is prophecy. Many mythic heroes fulfill various prophecies, despite the efforts of their opponents to thwart that fulfillment; Jesus Christ was far from alone:OedipusPerseusZeus (he fits the first 2/3 of LR's profile very well)RomulusKrishnaThe Buddha


BenfromCanada
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This was all commented on in

This was all commented on in "The God Who Wasn't There". However, the comparisons of real life people is intriguing, you go more in depth, and this:

lpetrich wrote:
A more serious omission from the profile is prophecy. Many mythic heroes fulfill various prophecies, despite the efforts of their opponents to thwart that fulfillment; Jesus Christ was far from alone:OedipusPerseusZeus (he fits the first 2/3 of LR's profile very well)RomulusKrishnaThe Buddha

is a worthy addition to the discussion.

I really donm't have anything else to say. 


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Lord Raglan's profile can

Lord Raglan's profile can be divided into several parts; it is instructive to compare to how well-documented people fare in each of them.
* Aristocratic, royal, and divine parentage. Some well-documented heroes have indeed had very distinguished parentage, but especially in modern times that has not been very common. In fact, the opposite is often common: undistinguished parentage, often middle-class or sometimes rich or aristocratic.
As to divine parentage, these well-documented heroes supposedly had divine biological paternity:PythagorasPlatoAlexander the GreatAugustus CaesarBut nobody more recently than them.
* Prophecies of the coming of the hero. There are very few about some well-documented heroes; the only ones that I know about are:Alexander the GreatAugustus Caesar
* Attacks on the hero in his infancy. Those poor little baby heroes, so often under siege. But the closest thing for a well-documented hero is about Augustus Caesar, when the Roman Senate supposedly decreed that no male child is to be raised for a year, to keep the baby Augustus from being cared for.
* Triumph over some great enemy and subsequent quiet reign. Many well-docuemnted heroes have careers that do not quite fit that profile, sometimes being tumultuous and dramatic for their entire duration.
* Repudiation of the hero by the gods or his people. That is much rarer for well-documented heroes than for mythic ones; the closest I've found is for Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler, and in both cases, and even then, it was under the pressure of conquering armies. And it was not even complete; Hitler had some diehard supporters who fought until the bitter end, and who were willing to defend their actions at the Nuremberg Trials. I have not examined Richard Nixon in this context, but he seems to fit that pattern also.
* Mysterious or unusual death. The closest I've found for well-docuemnted heroes is the endless controversy over the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
* Dying on a hilltop. That is rare for well-documented heroes; the closest I know of is Abraham Lincoln being assassinated in the upper balcony of a theater. Sometimes one finds the opposite, like Adolf Hitler committing suicide in his Berlin bunker.
* Empty tomb. Rare for well-documented heroes; offhand, I know of no example.