Resurrecting the Maiden: From Hades to the Grid

Lloyd D. Graham

Abstract: The motif of the innocent maiden who is rescued from the underworld of the dead is codified in the Greek myth of Persephone, the desirable daughter of Zeus and of harvest-goddess Demeter. Persephone is often known simply as “the Maiden” (Greek Korē, Latin Cora). With Zeus’s tacit consent, Persephone was abducted by his brother Hades to become the queen of his subterranean kingdom of death, but pined for her former happy existence among the living, to which she was ultimately (albeit conditionally) restored. The myth provides an allegorical explanation for the seasons. The relevance of the Maiden’s return from the dead to the raising of Jairus’s daughter (korasion, “Little Korē”) by Jesus in Mark 5:25-34 was identified in 2001 by Roy Kotansky. Here, I suggest some additional possibilities. A hitherto baffling search-and-capture mission for “the maiden” that was undertaken in Eastern lands by the Tuatha Dé Danann – the major pantheon of the Irish Mythological Cycle – could well be a refraction of Persephone’s abduction and her mother’s agonized search for her. A charismatic historical personage known in her own time as la Pucelle, “the Maid,” but better known to us as Joan of Arc, also suffered capture and imprisonment. In fulfillment of mythic expectation, her execution in 1431 was followed a few years later by the appearance of a resurrected Joan, whose authenticity was widely attested. Like Demeter, it was Joan’s mother who triggered her daughter’s eventual redemption. The motif of the virtuous maiden trapped in a shadowy underworld from which she is eventually rescued persists in modern fiction, where its ancient roots are sometimes successfully obscured by a futuristic veneer. For example, in the blockbuster science fiction movie Tron: Legacy (2010), the young digital heroine Quorra (cf. Korē) – who longs for a human life in the warmth of the sun – overcomes a betrayal by the powerful algorithm Zuse (cf. Zeus) and brings new hope to the world with her liberation from the dark and chilling confines of the electronic universe known as “the Grid.”

Introduction The Greek myth of Persephone is the best-known embodiment of the motif in which a virtuous and likeable girl – the Maiden – descends into the realm of death but ultimately returns to the world of the living. The relevance of this myth to the raising of Jairus’s daughter by Jesus was noticed some twelve years ago by Roy Kotansky. In the present short paper, I suggest some other narratives that may owe a debt to the same source. Starting with the Greek myth and reprising its likely parallel in the New Testament, our consideration of these new possibilities takes us from Irish mythology to medieval French history and thence to modern science fiction. Persephone

Persephone, the beautiful daughter of chief god Zeus and harvest-goddess Demeter, was often known simply as “the Maiden” (Greek Korē, Latin Cora). The gods Hermes and Apollo had wooed Persephone, but Demeter rejected them and hid her daughter away from the Olympian deities. Hades, the brother of Zeus and god-king of the underworld, was also in love with Persephone. With Zeus’s tacit consent, he abducted her;

Detail of Proserpine (Latin form of Persephone), 1844, Hiram Powers.1

while Persephone was gathering flowers with some nymphs in a field, Hades came bursting through a cleft in the earth and carried her – along with a herd of pigs2 – down to his dismal abode. There he instated Persephone as his bride and queen in the land of death. Unhappy in her captivity, she assumed a severe and formidable aspect as Queen of the Dead.

When Demeter found that her daughter had disappeared, she searched for Persephone all over the earth. During her desperate search she abandoned her care of the land and forbade it to bear fruit. Hekate, an old goddess who had heard the sounds of Persephone’s abduction, and Helios, the sun-god who sees everything, subsequently told Demeter what had happened and eventually the distraught mother discovered where her daughter had been taken. In the end, Zeus – realizing that the human race would die from hunger if he did not intervene – forced Hades to return Persephone to her mother. Hades complied with the demand, but before releasing his queen into the custody of Hermes, he tricked her into eating a pomegranate seed. Because Persephone had tasted food in the underworld, she was unable to leave it permanently; she was obliged to spend a third of each year there, but could spend the remaining part of the year with Demeter and the other gods above. For the four months of each year that Demeter is without her daughter, she grieves; as a result, the earth is barren and gripped by winter. In late versions of the tale, Persephone's time in the underworld expands to half of the year. Overall, Persephone’s abduction, Demeter’s response to her loss and the ensuing “time-share” compromise represent an allegory of the agricultural cycle, and provide a mythic foundation for the seasonal production of crops.

There are Syro-Mesopotamian antecedents to the Persephone/Demeter narrative; for example, Inanna is a Sumerian fertility goddess (cognate with Ishtar/Astarte) who descended to the underworld, where she was killed and revived prior to her return to the world above. Some versions go further and explain the seasonal cycle in terms of Inanna mourning the loss of her husband to the underworld for half of the year. Similarly, in Egyptian mythology, Isis searches in sorrow for her missing husband Osiris, god of the underworld, during which time the earth is barren. The Greek myth of Perspehone and Demeter is considered to have originated no later than the 7th century BCE.3 There are many variants of the story, which features both in Hesiod’s Theogony and in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. Early versions may be closer to the Inanna narrative, insofar as the goddess enters the underworld of her own volition rather than being taken there forcefully; the evolution of her descent into “the rape of Persephone” may reflect the shift over time from a largely matriarchal society to a more violent patriarchal one.4

Hades’ red pomegranate seed (more correctly, an aril; see photo) symbolizes the onset of sexual maturity; when Persephone returns to her mother from the masculine thrall of Hades, it is not as a child but as a young woman who is now capable of bearing children herself.5 Like the forbidden “apple” offered to Adam in the Garden of Eden,6 the pomegranate seed is offered duplicitously to Persephone by her consort and imparts both sexual awareness (Gen 3:7, 3:16) and a contract with death (Gen 3:3). Late versions of the myth deepen and extend the relationship between Persephone and Hekate, with

Pomegranate arils (seeds encapsulated by flesh); Fir0002/Flagstaffotos.7

the old woman becoming companion and advisor to Kora the Maiden, which in turn links Hekate inextricably to the underworld and death.8 Another Old Testament parallel occurs when Korah, the male leader of a rebellion against Moses, is swallowed alive by the earth (Num 16:31-33).9 Jairus’s daughter In two highly perceptive papers, published in 199810 and 2001,11 Roy D. Kotansky argues that a segment describing four of Jesus’s miracles in the earliest of the synoptic gospels – Mark 4:35-5:43, to be precise – is set not in real-world Galilee but rather in a mythic or liminal “otherworld.”12 Having crossed an unnamed sea, during which odyssey he saves the boat’s occupants from drowning in a fierce storm, Jesus alights in the strange land of the Gadarenes (Greek, Gadarēnoi) where he encounters first the man possessed by the legion of demons, whom he exorcises; then the woman with the unending issue of blood, whose flow is stopped by Jesus’s power; and finally Jairus’s daughter, whom he raises from the dead.

Kotansky identifies the land in which Jesus has arrived as Gadeira and hence Cádiz, in Mark’s time an Iberian outpost of the Phoenician empire, whose location beyond the Mediterranean in the extreme west of the known world made it a symbol of death, magic and mystery. The cliffs and rocky tombs of Cádiz (at that time an island off the Spanish coast) fit well with the physical setting in which the demoniac operates. Swine were taboo in the cult of its principal deity, Heracles Melqart; they were thus a suitable receptacle for the legion of exorcised demons, who promptly hurl themselves off a cliff.

The Phoenician god Heracles Melqart was an agricultural “year god” of the dying-and-rising type, and thus a male equivalent of the Greek goddess Persephone, the Maiden. Kotansky sees a reflection of the return of the Maiden (Korē) from the land of death in Jesus’s raising of Jairus’s daughter (korasion, “Little Korē”) from the dead. To his impressive list of circumstantial evidence for a link between Mark 5 and the myth of the Maiden, I would add the herd of swine that leap from the cliff after the demoniac is cured (Mark 5:11-14), an event strangely reminiscent of the herd of pigs that hurtle headlong into the underworld at the time of Persephone’s abduction. Hades’ pomegranate seed, which symbolizes Persephone’s acquisition

of sexual maturity, is reflected superficially in Mark’s narrative by Jesus’s request that the resurrected girl be given something to eat (Mark 5:43), but is supplanted symbolically by the woman with the issue of blood. Kotansky explains that the haemorrhagic’s twelve-year menstrual flow is stopped so that the twelve-year old girl can be raised from the dormancy of childhood into the fullness of life as a woman. At an even deeper level, Kotansky suggests that the woman with the fountain of blood represents an archetypal “Lady of the Sea/Abyss/Womb.” Her intimate contact with Jesus causes power to shoot from him into her, bringing her menstruation to an end in the manner of a

Raising of the Daughter of Jairus, 1881, Gabriel von Max.13

cosmogonic hieros gamos whose consummation has resulted in conception. This cosmic conjunction of opposites vanquishes the forces of chaos and in doing so generates new life, a gift that is promptly transferred by Jesus to Jairus’s daughter.

Agreeing with the connection between Jairus’s daughter and Persephone, Sharon Betsworth convincingly extends the relationship between Mark 5-6 and the Greek myth by casting Herodias and her daughter – the temptress who (at her mother’s behest) demanded from Herod the head of John the Baptist (Mark 6:22-29) – as anti-types to Demeter and her daughter.14 Tuatha Dé Danann There are overlaps between elements of the Greek myth of Persephone and the general tropes of Celtic mythology. For example, Persephone, Demeter and Hekate correspond to the three aspects of the triune Great Goddess – Virgin, Mother and Crone – revered by Celtic cultures.15,16 The pigs that descend into the earth with Persephone are chthonic animals to the Celts as much as to the Greeks,17 and physical acts such as eating food or touching the ground are the catalyst for irreversible transformations in the myths of both cultures.18

Complementary to this, the Lebor Gabála Érenn’s account of the Tuatha Dé Danann – the main hero-deities of the Irish Mythological Cycle – is defined by R.A.S. Macalister as a theogonia (Greek, “genealogy of the gods”). “The Theogonia,” he enthuses, “despite the condensed and desperately confused form in which it is presented to us, is of such enormous importance, as the most complete documentary account of any European non-classical pantheon, that it calls for a special effort to get it into order.”19 Of particular relevance to us is the fact that two of the three redactions of the Lebor Gabála describe the Tuatha Dé as sojourning among the Greeks shortly before their arrival in Ireland.20 In the eastern Mediterranean, they reportedly used druidry each night to resurrect the bodies of Athenian soldiers killed by day in the ongoing battle between Greeks and Philistines.21

The claim that the Tuatha Dé were in Greece not long before their arrival in Ireland suggests that we should look to Greek mythology for the key to an otherwise mysterious account, which is recorded only in the second text in the 14-15th century CE Book of Lecan (f.264-312, at f.277r).22 This source – identified in Macalister’s critical edition/translation of the Lebor Gabála as “M” – is unusual in having a number of interpolations not found in other ancient versions.23 The one of interest to us agrees with statements in the canonical redactions that the Tuatha Dé were descendants of Nemed, but adds that “they were the people of Nemed belonging to the party who went to the east to seek the maiden: for they captured her, and made a great feast in the east, till their grandchildren and great-grandchildren came afterwards, at the end of a long time.”24 Shortly thereafter, the Tuatha Dé travelled to Ireland and took possession of the island.

Book of Lecan f.277r, detail; account of the Tuatha Dé Danann’s search for the maiden, “do cuindgid na hingine.” Photo © Royal Irish Academy.25

A baffled Macalister, shirking for a moment the special effort required to get the Irish theogonia in order, admits in his endnotes that “A reference to the quest for ‘the maiden’ (¶ 267) is unintelligible to me,” and uncharitably condemns the entire interpolation as “paragraphs from some other source, written by some charlatan.”26 If, however, we interpret the eastern location of the search as Greece, then a memorable search for an anonymous maiden fits well with Demeter’s prolonged search for the Maiden of Greek mythology. Demeter was aided in the search for her daughter by others, including Hekate and Helios, so it takes only a small stretch of the Celtic imagination to add in some members of the Tuatha Dé as well. After all, they have been helping the Greeks by resuscitating dead Athenian soldiers, so why should they not assist Demeter in reclaiming Persephone from the land of the dead? The reference to them capturing, rather than rescuing, the maiden is probably a refracted memory of her abduction by Hades. During Demeter’s search, no crops can grow. The ultimate focus on food recapitulates both Persephone’s eating of Hades’ pomegranate seed and, more particularly, the bounty yielded by the land after Persephone’s return to her mother. In other words, it is an awareness and proper understanding of the seasonal cycle of agriculture that sustains the endless feasting enjoyed by the Tuatha Dé following the successful conclusion of their search.

Joan of Arc

Like Persephone, Joan had a pastoral childhood. Persephone was gathering flowers in a meadow

when Hades struck, while Joan’s first encounter with a commander from the next world came in a summer garden.27 In the latter instance, how-ever, the unexpected visitor – St. Michael – was from heaven rather than hell. Joan was about thirteen at the time, much the same age as Jairus’s daughter at the time of her first encounter with the afterlife. Thereafter, Joan would emulate Persephone by straddling two disparate universes: in this case, the world of men and the kingdom of God. At the urging of her angelic voices and visions, Jehanne la Pucelle (Joan the Maid) – often known simply as “the Maid”28 – transformed herself from a simple peasant girl into a holy warrior and became the inspiration for both the Dauphin and his troops, who were then at war with the combined might of England and Burgundy. By raising the siege of Orléans, Joan was directly responsible for reversing the Dauphin’s flagging military fortunes, which in turn allowed her to fulfill her primary mission of

Joan of Arc, medallion.29 ensuring his coronation in Reims as Charles VII, king of France. Although Joan’s otherworldly visitors were agents of God, their intervention was as effective

as Hades’ grip insofar as it set her on the trajectory that culminated in her imprisonment and early death. Like the enigmatic maiden of the Tuatha Dé Danann, Joan was sought not for rescue by her mother but for capture by her enemies, in this case the Burgundian/English alliance, who rejoiced – no doubt also with much feasting – when she was taken prisoner in 1430 CE.30 (The fact that the Book of Lecan was completed in 1418 CE31 precludes the possibility that Joan’s story might be intended by the Irish passage, but in any case it seems unlikely that Celtic hero-gods would have been assisting the English against the French and Scots.) Joan was burnt at the stake in 1431. Her heart did not burn; in some accounts, it was thrown into the Seine along with her ashes;32 in others, all of her remains were burnt twice more, leaving nothing but cinders

which were then dumped in the river.33 Both versions highlight her executioners’ need to demonstrate publicly that the Maid really was dead and that nothing of her remained.

Despite these strenuous precautions, mythic necessity prevailed; in 1436 – five years after

her execution – a risen Joan re-entered public life.34 Authenticated by Joan’s brothers, Jean and Pierre, and by various nobles who had known the Maid prior to her death, the new Joan was welcomed and rewarded in numerous cities, including Orléans. But there were problems: this Joan was vague and evasive; she enjoyed frivolity and feasting; her magic tricks earned her excommunication; and she had killed in battle, something her former embodiment had never done. Abandoning the Maid’s commitment to virginity, this “Jehanne du Lys,35 the Maid of France,” married Sir Robert des Hermoises in 1436 and bore him two sons. By 1457 she had been widowed and remarried. With the objectivity of hindsight, it is clear that the resurrected Joan was an imposter who chose to assume the role for the privileges and prestige that it offered. Joan’s brothers may have joined in for the perks, or they too may have been fakes. What is most interesting about the whole episode is that nobody seemed very surprised to find that Joan had come back from the dead; indeed, it almost seems to have been expected.

Her physical resurrection disavowed, we should note that Joan’s spiritual history and legacy

– like Persephone’s existence – progresses from extreme light and grace to its antithesis and back again. Following years of faithful service as holy Maid, devotee of Christ and messenger of God, for which she was revered by her people and honored by her king, Joan found herself in 1431 abandoned by her country and condemned by her beloved Church as “a liar, pernicious deceiver of the people, sorceress, superstitious, blasphemer of God, defamer of the faith of Jesus Christ, boastful, idolatrous, cruel, dissolute, invoker of demons, apostate, schismatic and heretic.”36 The eventual rescue of Joan’s integrity began in 1455 when, with a loyalty to her child as stubborn as Demeter’s, Joan’s mother Isabelle demanded of the Pope a posthumous retrial for the Maid. The aged Isabelle subsequently appeared before the Papal commissioners in Paris to testify passionately – and successfully – for the redemption of her daughter.37

When the official tribunal concluded at Rouen in 1456, it was Joan’s former accusers and

executioners who stood exposed for their “fraud, calumny, iniquity, contradiction and manifest errors of fact and law,” with the conclusions of their sham trial declared “null, invalid, worthless, without effect and annihilated.”38 In consequence, it was proclaimed that “Joan did not contract any taint of infamy and that she shall be and is washed clean of such […] absolutely.” Like Persephone’s return from the underworld, which constituted not just a family reunion but a restoration of the fertility for the whole earth, Joan’s tribunal of rehabilitation was “a collective catharsis staged at the national level, in which not only Joan but the entire French populace achieved redemption.”39 Her reputation and honor thus restored, the Maid became a folk heroine in France and beyond. Joan was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920; she is currently the patron saint of France, and an iconic figure to anyone oppressed for their beliefs.

Tron: Legacy Tron: Legacy is a 2010 science fiction movie40 that forms a sequel to the 1982 cult classic Tron, the first film to use computer-generated imagery.41 The story follows 27-year-old Sam Flynn, who responds to a message from his long-lost father, Kevin, only to find himself transported into

a virtual reality called the Grid. This video-game universe – invented by his father – is the world in which Flynn senior has been trapped for the last 20 years. Kevin Flynn’s confidante and apprentice in this cyber-universe is a beautiful, fearless and somewhat naïve algorithm named Quorra. She is an ISO – a digital life-form that has arisen spontaneously on the Grid.42 We are told that ISOs hold huge promise for the advancement of human welfare, but by the time Sam meets Quorra she is the only one left: the rest of her kind were exterminated by a megalo-maniacal program named CLU, which saw them not as a miracle but as an imperfection. Kevin has shared his knowledge of the real world with Quorra, who consequently longs to escape the confines of the Grid and to experience our world first-hand. She finds a willing ally in Sam, who is desperate to reprise his real-life existence, and even Kevin (by now somewhat institutionalized in his electronic confinement) is talked into joining – or at least assisting – their attempt at escape. CLU, who already dominates life on the Grid, has no intention of letting them out. To do so would threaten his existence and jeopardize his planned expansion into the human world, which he intends to add to his list of conquests. In a visually stunning series of adventures, Kevin, Sam and Quorra engage in a white-knuckle race against CLU through a digital world far more sophisticated and menacing than its predecessor in Tron.

Quorra in a Tron: Legacy advertisement. © Walt Disney Studios, reproduced here as Fair Use.43

Quorra conforms well to the archetype of the virtuous maiden trapped in a deathly

underworld from which she eventually escapes to life in the warmth of the sun. Her name is not the only hint that her character relates to the Korē of Greek mythology. Like Persephone, Quorra holds a Utopian promise of earthly renewal: “She’s the miracle, man, […] In our world, she could change everything.”44 Just as Persephone was betrayed by Zeus, Quorra places her trust in a former ally named Zuse45 who betrays her group to CLU. Having sacrificed herself to save Sam, Quorra – visibly dead, like Jairus’s daughter – is restored to life by Kevin. But this virtuous virtual maiden’s resonances extend even further. Olivia Wilde, the Irish-American actress who plays Quorra, revealed at interview: “I was very much inspired by Joan of Arc; when I made the connection between Quorra and Joan of Arc, it all fell into place.”46 This is an important and unifying insight, given that Joan the Maid is the subject of the previous section of this paper.

Two movies in another “digital universe” blockbuster franchise, The Matrix, feature a character who is actually named Persephone.47 Just as the Greek goddess is married to the ruler of a repository for souls that have been retired or parted from life, the Matrix character (played by Monica Bellucci) is the wife of a powerful computer program that provides a virtual afterlife

for programs that are obsolete or have been exiled from the Matrix. At least one webpage is devoted to considering whether Quorra/Olivia Wilde or Persephone/Monica Bellucci is the preferred “digital hottie;” I am happy to report that the victory goes to Quorra/Wilde.48 Curiously, in a movie released the year before Tron: Legacy, Wilde had played a princess named Inanna;49 as mentioned above, the mythical Inanna is a Sumerian fertility goddess whose descent to the underworld was a precursor to the Greek myth of Persephone.

At the time of writing,50 the encyclopedic Tron Wiki takes Quorra’s name to be the Italian

Cuore, meaning “heart,” and overlooks the more probable allusion to the Greek Korē or its Latin equivalent, Cora.51 It does, however, mention that early concept-renders for the movie had her character named “Paige,” an old English term meaning “attendant,” but – despite citing Olivia Wilde’s reference to Joan of Arc – does not connect these tidbits with the fact that a female attendant is often called a maid. Other writing about Tron: Legacy has also come close to making explicit the connection between Quorra’s canonical story-arc and the Greek myth of the Maid. In an online fan-fiction set in the human world after CLU has invaded it, a captured Quorra is taken to Encom Tower by CLU and offered food – including pomegranate – which she declines because she remembers the tale of Hades’ duplicity from a myth-book in Kevin Flynn’s library.”52 Without naming Persephone, Jane Beal almost closes the loop in a perceptive analysis of the movie titled “The Mythologies of Tron: Legacy,” which she concludes with the words “At the very end of the film, both Sam and Quorra escape the destructive intentions CLU has for them. We see them […] in the sunlight and going past green trees growing along the roadside. The contrast with earlier parts of the story is striking, for the events that happen in the digital world happen in the dark, as if in the underworld, but outside there is light.”53

Conclusion In this essay we have considered the possible relevance of Persephone, the resurrected Maiden of Greek mythology, to a selection of historical and fictional individuals whose narratives appear to reprise the original story. Although our journey – which has ranged from Sumerian mythology to science fiction movies – has come to an end, the power of this mythic motif lives on.

Detail of She Is Love, I Am Dust, 1990, © Danny Malboeuf; reproduced by kind permission.54

Article text (excluding quotations) © Lloyd D. Graham 2013; v05_12.08.15.

Keywords: Persephone, Quorra, Korah, Korahite, Korahite rebellion, Qōraḥ, Jairus, Joan of Arc, Tuatha Dé Danann, Kore, Demeter, Gadarenes, St. Joan, Lebor Gabala Erenn, Tron Legacy, Cora, maiden, the Maid, Hades, Underworld, Book of Lecan, resurrection, return from the dead, Greek mythology, Kevin Flynn, Roy Kotansky, the Grid, triumph over death, mythology of agriculture and fertility

All online resources were accessed 1-9 Nov, 2013. 1 Detail of a marble bust in the Cincinnati Art Museum; public domain image from Wikimedia Commons, online at

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%27Proserpine%27,_marble_bust_by_Hiram_Powers,_1844,_Cincinnati_Art_Museum.jpg.

2 The animals of the swine-herd Eubuleus. Robert Graves (1960) The Greek Myths, vol. 1, Penguin UK, 3rd & 4th pages of Section 24 (paragraph f).

3 Steve Eddy & Claire Hamilton (2012) Understand Greek Mythology, Hodder Education, London, p.73. 4 Deanna J. Conway (1994) Maiden, Mother, Crone: The Myth and Reality of the Triple Goddess, Llewellyn

Worldwide, St. Paul, MN, p.27-31. 5 Eddy & Hamilton, Understand Greek Mythology, p.79 6 Noel Cobb (1992) Archetypal Imagination: Glimpses of the Gods in Life and Art, Lindisfarne Press, NY, p. 224. 7 Image credit: fir0002 at www.flagstaffotos.com.au; file obtained from Wikimedia Commons at

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pomegranate02_edit.jpg, and reproduced here under the Creative Commons license: Attribution NonCommercial Unported 3.0.

8 Eddy & Hamilton, Understand Greek Mythology, p.77 & 120. 9 The final redaction of Numbers probably dates to the 5th century BCE, some two centuries after the presumed

origin of the Greek myth of Persephone. The rebel leader’s name transliterates from the Hebrew as Qōraḥ [see online at http://biblehub.com/interlinear/numbers/16-1.htm]. In the New International Version, the Biblical passage reads as follows (emphasis mine). “1 Korah son of Izhar, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi, and certain Reubenites—Dathan and Abiram, sons of Eliab, and On son of Peleth—became insolent 2 and rose up against Moses. With them were 250 Israelite men, well-known community leaders [...] 28 Then Moses said, “This is how you will know that the Lord has sent me to do all these things and that it was not my idea: 29 If these men die a natural death and suffer the fate of all mankind, then the Lord has not sent me. 30 But if the Lord brings about something totally new, and the earth opens its mouth and swallows them, with everything that belongs to them, and they go down alive into the realm of the dead, then you will know that these men have treated the Lord with contempt.” 31 As soon as he finished saying all this, the ground under them split apart 32 and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them and their households, and all those associated with Korah, together with their possessions. 33 They went down alive into the realm of the dead, with everything they owned; the earth closed over them, and they perished and were gone from the community.”

Equally interesting is the fact that – like Persephone – the abducted group seems to have managed some sort of return from the underworld. “Numbers 16 […] reports an uprising by the Korahites that supposedly resulted in their annihilation by divine intervention. Yet the Korahites will appear again. In fact, several of the psalms are attributed to them…” [J. Maxwell Miller & John H. Hayes (2006) A History of Ancient Israel and Judah, 2nd ed., Westminster John Knox Press, KY, p.106]. Here, the incomplete nature of the return to life is more easily envisaged in terms of the number of returnees than in terms of the duration of their return.

10 Roy D. Kotansky (1998) “Jesus and Heracles in Cádiz (τὰ Γάδειρα) – Death, Myth and Monsters at the ‘Straits of Gibraltar’ (Mark 4:34-5:43),” In: Ancient and Modern Perspectives on the Bible and Culture: Essays in Honor of Hans Dieter Betz, [Scholars Press Homage Series, 22], eds. Hans D. Betz & Adela Y. Collins, Scholars Press, 1998. Online at http://www.academia.edu/3147847/_Jesus_and_Heracles_at_Cadiz_ta_Gadeira_Death_Myth_and_Monsters_at_the_Straits_of_Gibraltar_Mark_4_35-5_43_.

11 Roy D. Kotansky (2001) “Jesus and the Lady of the Abyss (Mark 5:25-34) – Hieros Gamos, Cosmogony and the Elixir of Life,” In: Antiquity and Humanity: Essays on Ancient Religion and Philosophy, Presented to Hans Dieter Betz on his 70th Birthday, eds. Adela Y. Collins and Margaret M. Mitchell, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, p.77-120. Online at http://www.academia.edu/3147813/_Jesus_and_the_Lady_of_the_Abyss_Mark_5_25-34_Hieros_Gamos_Cosmogony_and_the_Elixir_of_Life_.

12 Readers are strongly encouraged to read Kotansky’s articles for themselves, as the telegraphic selection of conclusions presented here does not do justice to his thorough analyses and persuasive arguments.

13 Detail of painting in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore; public domain image from Wikimedia Commons,

online at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gabriel_Max_-_The_Raising_of_the_Daughter_of_Jairus_-_Walters_37170.jpg.

14 Sharon Betsworth (2010) The Reign of God is Such as These: A Socio-Literary Analysis of Daughters in the Gospel of Mark, [Library of New Testament Studies, 422], Continuum, London, p.121-124.

15 Eddy & Hamilton, Understand Greek Mythology, p.78. 16 Deborah F. Sawyer (1996) Women and Religion in the First Christian Centuries, Routledge, London, p.61. 17 Eddy & Hamilton, Understand Greek Mythology, p.82. 18 Eddy & Hamilton, Understand Greek Mythology, p.79. 19 R.A. Stewart Macalister, ed. & trans. (1941) [1987 reprint] Lebor Gabála Érenn – The Book of the Taking of

Ireland, Part IV, Irish Texts Society, London, p.97. 20 Macalister (1941) Lebor Gabála Érenn, Part IV, p.139-141 (§321) & p.167 (§356). The interpolation that forms

the main topic of our subsequent discussion also mentions a tradition in which “the Tuatha Dé Danann were poets of the Greeks;” R.A. Stewart Macalister, ed. & trans. (1940) [1987 reprint] Lebor Gabála Érenn – The Book of the Taking of Ireland, Part III, Irish Texts Society, Dublin, p.155 (§269).

21 Macalister (1941) Lebor Gabála Érenn Part IV, p.139-141 (§321). 22 In the digital archive, online at http://www.isos.dias.ie/english/index.html, the manuscript page has the

coordinates 277 277 (268) r [553]a, l. 19. 23 R.A. Stewart Macalister, ed. & trans. (1941) [1993 reprint] Lebor Gabála Érenn – The Book of the Taking of

Ireland, Part I, Irish Texts Society, London, p.xxi. 24 Macalister (1940) Lebor Gabála Érenn, Part III, p.155 (§267). 25 Reproduced here by kind permission of the RIA Library, Dublin; http://www.ria.ie/Library.aspx. 26 R.A. Stewart Macalister, ed. & trans. (1956) [1995 reprint] Lebor Gabála Érenn – The Book of the Taking of

Ireland, Part V, Irish Texts Society, Dublin, p.198. The admission is also captured in Michael Murphy’s Index to Macalister’s Lebor Gabála Érenn (Section Q-S), online at http://www.ucc.ie/celt/LGQS.pdf, p.73, under the heading “Nemed.”

27 Willard Trask, ed. (1996) Joan of Arc – In Her Own Words, BOOKS & Co./Turtle Point Press, New York, p.5-6. 28 For example, the verdict from Joan’s trial opens “We declare that thou, Joan, commonly called the Maid, art fallen

into diverse errors…” [Nancy Goldstone (2013) The Maid and the Queen: The Secret History of Joan of Arc, Phoenix/Orion, London, p.182]; the sign nailed above the stake at which she was burned reads “Joan, who had called herself the Maid, …” [Edward Lucie-Smith (1976) Joan of Arc, Penguin, London, p.281].

29 Image source http://www.medailles-jeannedarc.fr, posted by user iron45 to Wikimedia Commons at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jeanne_d%27arc.jpg, and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license.

30 Goldstone (2013) The Maid and the Queen, p.160. 31 Data online at http://www.ria.ie/library/special-collections/manuscripts/book-of-lecan.aspx 32 Goldstone (2013) The Maid and the Queen, p.184. 33 Alex Duval (2006) “Solved at Last: the Burning Mystery of Joan of Arc,” The Observer, 17 Dec, 2006; online at

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/dec/17/france.alexduvalsmith. 34 Dick Berents (1994) “The Resurrection of Joan of Arc,” In: Joan of Arc – Reality and Myth, ed. Jan van

Herwaarden, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands, p.75-96. 35 Joan and her family were ennobled by Charles VII in 1429. As the coat-of-arms consisted of a sword flanked by

two fleurs de lys, the family adopted the name “du Lys.” See Lucie-Smith (1976) Joan of Arc, p. 125 & 193-195, and online at http://www.jeanne-darc.info/p_jeanne/coat_of_arms.html.

36 Lucie-Smith (1976) Joan of Arc, p.281. 37 Goldstone (2013) The Maid and the Queen, p.240-242. 38 Goldstone (2013) The Maid and the Queen, p.246. 39 Goldstone (2013) The Maid and the Queen, p.243. 40 Internet Movie Database entry is online at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1104001/. 41 Internet Movie Database entry is online at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084827/. 42 ISO is an abbreviation of “isomorphic algorithm,” a wholly new type of program. ISOs unexpectedly self-

generated in the Grid “like flowers in a wasteland, ” a pastoral image reminiscent of Persephone’s role as the herald of spring. Kevin Flynn tells us that ISOs are “profoundly naïve, unimaginably wise.”

43 Image from http://tron.wikia.com/wiki/File:Tron_20x60_Full_wave7_v1.jpg, accessed 3 Nov, 2013. Licensing tag reads: “This file is copyrighted. The individual who uploaded this work and first used it in an article, and

subsequent persons who place it into articles, assert that this qualifies as fair use of the material under United States copyright law.”

44 Words of Kevin Flynn to his son, Sam. 45 Zuse habitually conceals and protects his identity by using the name Castor; see online at

http://tron.wikia.com/wiki/Castor. 46 Online at http://www.reelz.com/movie-news/8560/olivia-wilde-channels-joan-of-arc-in-tron-legacy/. 47 See, for example, online at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persephone_(The_Matrix). 48 Online at http://www.joblo.com/hollywood-celebrities/gossip/fo-face-off-persephone-the-matrix-reloaded-vs-

quorra-tron-legacy. It is important to note that the comparison is prompted not by the realization that both roles relate to same the Greek myth, but by the fact that “There haven't been a lot of movies dealing with the concept of programs as characters […] It’s also not surprising that two of the most beloved cinematic programs are hotties, going by the names of Persephone from The Matrix trilogy and Quorra from Tron: Legacy. With both characters parts of popular movie franchises and played by beloved hottie actresses, how does one decide which hottie plays a better program?”

49 Internet Movie Database entry is online at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1045778/. 50 9 Nov, 2013. 51 Online at http://tron.wikia.com/wiki/Quorra. 52 Deathweaver (2011) “Pandora, Persephone and Other Victims of Mythology,” accessed 10 Nov, 2013, online at

http://deathweaver.tumblr.com/post/3541317847/victims-of-mythology-pt-3. This fan-fic is set in a time-period subsequent to that of the actual movie, and CLU’s food is offered to Quorra not in the Grid but “above” in the human world.

53 Posted 31 Jan, 2011; accessed 8 Nov, 2013, online at http://thepoetryplace.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/the-mythologies-of-tron-legacy/. For consistency, I have capitalized Beal’s “Clu” and, for clarity in its new context, removed her italics from the last three words of the excerpt.

54 Acrylic on canvas. The complete painting can be viewed online at http://kolaboy.deviantart.com/art/She-is-love-I-am-dust-2881843.