Editing Christian mythology (section)

===Hero myths===
{{See also|Hero's journey}}
In his influential 1909 work ''[[The Myth of the Birth of the Hero]]'', [[Otto Rank]] argued that the births of many mythical heroes follow a common pattern. Rank includes the story of Christ's birth as a representative example of this pattern.<ref name="dundesheropattern"/>

According to Mircea Eliade, one pervasive mythical theme associates heroes with the slaying of dragons, a theme which Eliade traces back to "the very ancient cosmogonico-heroic myth" of a battle between a divine hero and a dragon.<ref name="Eliade, Cosmos and History, 38"/> He cites the Christian legend of [[Saint George]] as an example of this theme.<ref name="eliade39">Eliade, ''Cosmos and History'', 39</ref> An example from the [[Late Middle Ages]] comes from [[Dieudonné de Gozon]], third Grand Master of the [[Knights of Rhodes]], famous for slaying the dragon of Malpasso. Eliade writes:

<blockquote>
"Legend, as was natural, bestowed upon him the attributes of St. George, famed for his victorious fight with the monster. [...] In other words, by the simple fact that he was regarded as a hero, de Gozon was identified with a category, an [[archetype]], which [...] equipped him with a mythical biography from which it was ''impossible'' to omit combat with a reptilian monster."<ref name="eliade39"/>
</blockquote>

In the ''Oxford Companion to World Mythology'', David Leeming lists Moses, Jesus, and King Arthur as examples of the [[monomyth|heroic monomyth]],<ref name="leemingheroicmonomyth">Leeming, "Heroic monomyth"</ref> calling the Christ story "a particularly complete example of the heroic monomyth".<ref name="leemingchristianmythology"/> Leeming regards resurrection as a common part of the heroic monomyth,<ref name="leemingheroicmonomyth"/><ref>Leeming, "Resurrection"</ref> in which the resurrected heroes often become sources of "material or spiritual food for their people"; in this connection, Leeming notes that Christians regard Jesus as the "bread of life".<ref name="leemingheroicmonomyth"/>

In terms of values, Leeming contrasts "the myth of Jesus" with the myths of other "Christian heroes such as St. George, [[Song of Roland|Roland]], [[el Cid]], and even King Arthur"; the later hero myths, Leeming argues, reflect the survival of pre-Christian heroic values—"values of military dominance and cultural differentiation and hegemony"—more than the values expressed in the Christ story.<ref name="leemingchristianmythology"/>