He is Riz

I am always looking for ways the Christ story fits with other myths/traditions/stories from other cultures. Currently, I'm reading Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking. She describes (ppg. 150-153) her need to reread Euripides' Alcestis, which she hadn't read since she had been a teenager. Anyhow, she mentions that Alcestis agrees to die for her husband, and she is actually allowed to come back from the land of the dead, in what Didion calls a "remarkably (even for 430 B.C.) clumsy deus ex machina." What's interesting is that no one can hear Alcestis' voice until "she is purified from her consecration to the Lower Gods, and until the third dawn is risen." Huh. Three days. I seem to remember having to say "..after three days he rose again" in the Nicene Creed every Sunday in High School when I was dragged to the Lutheran Church. I wonder if there is any other tradition in which there are three days until resurrection. In the Buddhist tradition the spirit is finally gone from the Earth after three years. Maybe it's the number three. (Ecumenical) food for thought.