The Research On The Resurrection Motif Of The Ancient Mythologies

Resurrection is an ancient mythological motif, which exists widely in the world, not only limited in Babylon, Syria, Virginia, Egypt and other Eastern nations, but also shared with the nations from the Aegean Sea coast and islands. This dissertation breaks the stereotyped mode in isolated and enclosed research of a single mythology, while introducing the new mechanism into the recognition of the Resurrection cultural connotation. It also extends the research range, which contained six mythological systems, i.e., the Ancient Greece and Rome myth, the Ancient Egypt myth, the Ancient Mesopotamia and Western Asia myth, the Ancient Iran myth, the Ancient Indian myth, and the Ancient Chinese myth.This paper mainly adopts the mythological analytic method, supposed by Chen Jianxian, who intends to construct the methodological system of mythology based on the mythological territory. The first chapter introduces the basic questions of the mythological motifUnder the instruction of the methodology, the second part analyzes and classifies the Resurrection among the above mentioned six mythological systems, borrowing from the methods used by Vladimir Propp in The Morphology of the Folktale, and the classification method of Resurrection myth adopted by Stith Thompson in the motif classification research. The last chapter of the paper analyzes the cultural connotation of Resurrection from three aspects: first, the historical value, mainly analyzing the human history at ancient time presented by the myth; second, the sociologic value, which will be studied from ethnic cultural viewpoint, ceremony culture and ethnic customs; third, the literature value, researching the great charming of this mythological motif.