Heroic Sacrifice/Oral Tradition

Examples of Heroic Sacrifices in Oral Tradition include:

Folklore

Stories about the basilisk that portray it as the Enemy to All Living Things sometimes mention its Arch Enemy, the weasel. A weasel will attack a basilisk on sight without fear nor mercy, and while the basilisk cannot hope to survive this fight, the weasel will perish as well.

Myths and Legends

Jesus is the archetype of this character, of course, though he's obviously not the first to have done so. Jesus had the advantage of knowing that there was an afterlife, and that he was going to sit at God's right hand... but He also knew he had to go through infinite pain, Hell.
- This is even more starkly illustrated by the fact that He said the line quoted rather than something about the horrifying physical pain one would endure when dying of asphyxiation and blood loss during the crucifixion process, to the point where a word was made specifically to describe such pain: excruciating, or "out of the cross." In other words, the pain of that separation was so much worse than torture that words literally could not describe it.
A divine being helping humanity through self-sacrifice has been an enduring theme in religion and mythology. See Prometheus, doomed to be chained for eternity with an eagle devouring his entrails as punishment for giving mortals the gift of fire. Although he was eventually freed by Hercules after a few thousand years. Legends say that even then, his punishment meant Prometheus had to wear a wreath and a ring of his chains for all eternity- and in respect, humans began wearing wreaths and rings as well.
- Jesus and the others are the heritors of a long legacy. Thanks to our planet's faulty axis, we've long associated new life as coming from death, and gods/kings being sacrificed by old men whose knives were mostly used for cutting mistletoe.
The Book of Mormon, one of the four parts to LDS ("Mormons") scripture, tells the story of a prophet named Abinadi. King Noah was wicked: he and his priests committed murder and whoredoms and reveled in his riches, among other things, so Abinadi went to King Noah and told him that what he was doing is wrong, and that he needed to set things straight and repent. King Noah and his priests didn't listen and had Abinadi thrown out after warning him not to return. Rather than giving up and leaving, Abinadi returns in disguise and tells him his message again. The wicked priests try to kill him, but find that they cannot, and Abinadi says that they cannot harm him until he has finished saying what he came to say. After he finished, they burnt him to death, and while he is burnt to death, he prophecies that King Noah will also be burnt, which comes true. His death wasn't for naught, however, because one of the king's priests, Alma, listened to what Abinadi had to say, and then ran away from King Noah and repented. He alone helped literally thousands of people to find God, and many of the people who were righteous because of him converted thousands more.
According to legend, Minamoto no Yoshitsune's retainer, the famed Warrior Monk Saito Musashibo Benkei, died this way, fighting off an army to buy time for his lord to commit Seppuku. It seemed none of the enemy was brave enough to get close to him, believing him to be a demon from hell. They assaulted him with arrows and he was dead long before any of them dared approach to confirm it. A small shrine dedicated to him now marks the spot where this happened.

Back to Heroic Sacrifice