Editing Christian mythology (section)

===Dying God===
{{See also|Jesus in comparative mythology}}
Many myths, particularly from the Near East, feature a God who dies and is resurrected; this figure is sometimes called the "[[Death or departure of the gods|dying god]]".<ref name="leemingdyinggod"/><ref>Burkert 99</ref><ref>Stookey 99</ref> An important study of this figure is [[James George Frazer]]'s ''[[The Golden Bough]]'', which traces the dying God theme through a large number of myths.<ref>Miles 193–94</ref> The dying God is often associated with fertility.<ref name="leemingdyinggod"/><ref>Stookey 107</ref> A number of scholars, including Frazer,<ref>Miles 194</ref> have suggested that the Christ story is an example of the "dying God" theme.<ref name="leemingdyinggod"/><ref>Sowa 351</ref> In the article "Dying God" in ''The Oxford Companion to World Mythology'', David Leeming notes that Christ can be seen as bringing fertility, though of a spiritual as opposed to physical kind.<ref name="leemingdyinggod"/>

In his 2006 homily for [[Corpus Christi (feast)|Corpus Christi]], Pope Benedict XVI noted the similarity between the Christian story of the resurrection and pagan myths of dead and resurrected gods: "In these myths, the soul of the human person, in a certain way, reached out toward that God made man, who, humiliated unto death on a cross, in this way opened the door of life to all of us."<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/homilies/2006/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20060615_corpus-christi.html |title=Homily of His Holiness Benedict XVI |location=Saint John Lateran |date=15 June 2006 |publisher=Libreria Editrice Vaticana }}</ref>