Our Western collective memory is replete with all kind of heroes, superheroes, saviors, and messiahs, either religious or secular in nature. This Western hero is not infrequently described (aesthetically and rhetorically) in Christian terms. At the same time, simply labeling all heroes from our collective narratives as religious, messianic, and/or Christlike does not do justice to the specifics of every one of them. The messiah/Christ figure is but one of four, nonmutually exclusive categories of heroes: (1) the common or normal hero, (2) the self-sacrificial hero, (3) the messianic hero, and (4) the christophoric hero. In the chapter ‘Messiah/Christ’, I differentiate between the four with the help of video game case studies.
More information: Society of Biblical Literature.
Frank G. Bosman 