J. Z. Smith, 'Dying and Rising Gods' (Encyclopedia of Religion)
The most influential demolition of Frazer's unified "dying and rising god" category. Smith reviews each canonical member — Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Tammuz/Dumuzi, Baal, Marduk — and argues the class is "largely a misnomer based on imaginative reconstructions and exceedingly late or highly ambiguous texts": deities either die without returning (Osiris reigns below; Dumuzi is a substitute on a rotation), or disappear and return without dying, and the explicit "resurrection" testimonies are mostly post-Christian. The entry reset the field's null hypothesis and is the necessary foil for any motif note on the topic.
Core verdict: "All the deities that have been identified as belonging to the class of dying and rising deities can be subsumed under the two larger classes of disappearing deities or dying deities. In the first case the deities return but have not died; in the second case the gods die but do not return" (Smith 1987, 'Dying and Rising Gods').
Adonis: pre-Christian evidence (Sappho fr. 140 onward) attests mourning rites only; resurrection claims appear in 2nd-c.-CE and later authors (Lucian, Origen), possibly under Christian influence.
Methodological charge: Frazer assembled the category from harmonized fragments across millennia and cultures, then read seasonal vegetation symbolism into it as the explanatory key.
Smith wrote before Sladek-era recoveries were fully absorbed in comparative circles and, crucially, before Mettinger's 2001 re-examination; his treatment of Baal is the weakest point (the Ugaritic text really does say Baal lives again). Some critics find his skepticism as totalizing as Frazer's credulity. Use as the steelman against the category, not as the final word.
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