saviour-legend

Updated: May 6, 2025

But when the Saviour-legend sprang up as indeed I think it must have sprung up, in tribe after tribe and people after people, independently then, whether it sprang from the divinization of some actual man who showed the way of light and deliverance to his fellows "sitting in darkness," or whether from the personification of the tribe itself as a god, in either case the question of the hero's parentage was bound to arise.

Edward Carpenter - Pagan and Christian creeds: their origin and meaning