<P> The category "dying - and - rising - god" was debated throughout the 20th century, most modern scholars questioning its ubiquity in the world's mythologies . By the end of the 20th century the overall scholarly consensus had emerged against the category, given its limited applicability outside of Ancient Near Eastern religions and derived traditions . Tryggve Mettinger (who supports the category) states that there is a scholarly consensus that the category is inappropriate from a historical perspective . Kurt Rudolph in 1986 argued that the oft - made connection between the mystery religions and the idea of dying and rising divinities is defective . Against this view, Mettinger (2001) affirms that many of the gods of the mystery religions do indeed die, descend to the underworld, are lamented and retrieved by a woman and restored to life . </P> <P> While the concept of a "dying - and - rising god" has a longer history, it was significantly advocated by Frazer's Golden Bough (1906--1914). At first received very favourably, the idea was attacked by Roland de Vaux in 1933, and was the subject of controversial debate over the following decades . One of the leading scholars in the deconstruction of Frazer's "dying - and - rising god" category was Jonathan Z. Smith, whose 1969 dissertation discusses Frazer's Golden Bough, and who in Mircea Eliade's 1987 Encyclopedia of religion wrote the "Dying and rising gods" entry, where he dismisses the category as "largely a misnomer based on imaginative reconstructions and exceedingly late or highly ambiguous texts", suggesting a more detailed categorisation into "dying gods" and "disappearing gods", arguing that before Christianity, the two categories were distinct and gods who "died" did not return, and those who returned never truly "died". Smith gave a more detailed account of his views specifically on the question of parallels to Christianity in Drudgery Divine (1990). Smith's 1987 article was widely received, and during the 1990s, scholarly consensus seemed to shift towards his rejection of the concept as oversimplified, although it continued to be invoked by scholars writing about Ancient Near Eastern mythology . As of 2009, the Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion summarizes the current scholarly consensus as ambiguous, with some scholars rejecting Frazer's "broad universalist category" preferring to emphasize the differences between the various traditions, while others continue to view the category as applicable . Gerald O'Collins states that surface - level application of analogous symbolism is a case of parallelomania which exaggerate the importance of trifling resemblances, long abandoned by mainstream scholars . </P> <P> Beginning with an overview of the Athenian ritual of growing and withering herb gardens at the Adonis festival, in his book The Gardens of Adonis Marcel Detienne suggests that rather than being a stand - in for crops in general (and therefore the cycle of death and rebirth), these herbs (and Adonis) were part of a complex of associations in the Greek mind that centered on spices . These associations included seduction, trickery, gourmandizing, and the anxieties of childbirth . From his point of view, Adonis's death is only one datum among the many that must be used to analyze the festival, the myth, and the god . </P> <P> A main criticism charges the group of analogies with reductionism, insofar as it subsumes a range of disparate myths under a single category and ignores important distinctions . Marcel Detienne argues that it risks making Christianity the standard by which all religion is judged, since death and resurrection are more central to Christianity than many other faiths . Dag Øistein Endsjø, a scholar of religion, points out how a number of those often defined as dying - and - rising - deities, such as a number of figures in ancient Greek religion, actually died as ordinary mortals, only to become gods of various stature after they were resurrected from the dead . Not dying as gods, they thus defy the definition of "dying - and - rising - gods". </P>

An example of an egyptian dying and reborn god was