Jesus the True Aeneas: The Connection Between Easter and Pagan Heroes

At my high school I teach an old poetic work called The Epic of Gilgamesh. This is actually the oldest recorded work of literature in the world. If you haven’t read it, it is worth reading and it is only like 80 pages long.

Anyways, this work tells the story of Gilgamesh, an ancient Sumerian hero that lived before Abraham. Gilgamesh is the ultimate tough guy—he takes what he wants and destroys anyone and anything that gets in his way. He is so strong he is even able to defy the gods and defeat monsters they send against him.

Gilgamesh is as strong and powerful as a man can be . . . and yet there is one thing he cannot defeat: death. The Sumerians had a clear understanding that no matter how great they or their heroes were, death was greater still.

In a similar way, the Greeks and the Romans had a vague notion that a true, ultimate hero would somehow be able to overcome death. Theseus and Odysseus, as well as Aeneas, all entered death (Hades) and returned. None conquered death; all of them did in fact die at a later time. But all of these heroes did temporarily master death, or at least held it at bay. The tales of Odysseus and Aeneas are the greatest stories of two of the greatest cultures in history and both show a universal human longing for a literally larger-than-life hero to conquer death.

This longing was in fact realized in the God-man Jesus Christ! Every Easter we celebrate Christ’s victory over death. In myth Odysseus and Aeneas went into death and returned to the land of the living; in reality Christ went into death, mastered it, and tore down its gates thereby making a way out of death for us all. Whereas Odysseus and Aeneas died even after entering and exiting death, Christ has once and for all defeated death. As master of death Christ will never die, and what is more, He allows us to share in His everlasting and eternal life.

On Easter Sunday Christ conquered that which the Sumerians feared and completed and actualized what the Greeks and Romans longed for. Jesus Christ is greater than Gilgamesh and an actual and true embodiment of what the Romans longed for in Aeneas. Christ accomplished more than our ancestors dreamed their heroes could accomplish and He did this in reality, not simply in the realm of myth.

It is Christ’s great victory, the victory we get to share over our seemingly invincible opponent death, that we celebrate every Easter.