The Golden Bough scandalized the British public when first published, as it included the Christian story of the resurrection of Jesus in its comparative study. Critics thought this treatment invited an agnostic reading of the Lamb of God as a relic of a pagan religion.

For the third edition, Frazer placed his analysis of the Crucifixion in a speculative appendix — while discussion of Christianity was excluded from the single-volume abridged edition.[6][7]

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The critic Camille Paglia has identified The Golden Bough as one of the most important influences on her book Sexual Personae (1990).[26] In Sexual Personae, Paglia described Frazer's "most brilliant perception" in The Golden Bough as his "analogy between Jesus and the dying gods", though she noted that it was "muted by prudence".[27] In Salon, she has described the work as "a model of intriguing specificity wed to speculative imagination." Paglia acknowledged that "many details in Frazer have been contradicted or superseded", but maintained that the work of Frazer's Cambridge school of classical anthropology "will remain inspirational for enterprising students seeking escape from today's sterile academic climate."[28] Paglia has also commented, however, that the one-volume abridgement of The Golden Bough is "bland" and should be "avoided like the plague.”[19]

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René Girard, a French historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social science, "grudgingly" praised Frazer for recognising kingly sacrifice as "a key primitive ritual", but described his interpretation of the ritual as "a grave injustice to ethnology."[13][14] Girard's criticisms against The Golden Bough were numerous, particularly concerning Frazer's assertion that Christianity was merely a perpetuation of primitive myth-ritualism and that the New Testament Gospels were "just further myths of the death and resurrection of the king who embodies the god of vegetation."[13] Girard himself considered the Gospels to be "revelatory texts" rather than myths or the remains of "ignorant superstition", and rejected Frazer's idea that the death of Jesus was a sacrifice, "whatever definition we may give for that sacrifice.”[13][14][15] 

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[René Girard, was a philosopher turncoat who became a catholic… GUSNOTE]

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Robert Ackerman writes that, for British social anthropologists, Frazer is still "an embarrassment" for being "the most famous of them all" even as the field now rejects most of his ideas. While The Golden Bough achieved wide "popular appeal" and exerted a "disproportionate" influence "on so many [20th-century] creative writers", Frazer's ideas played "a much smaller part" in the history of academic social anthropology. Lienhardt himself dismissed Frazer's interpretations of primitive religion as "little more than plausible constructs of [Frazer's] own Victorian rationalism", while Ludwig Wittgenstein, in his Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough (published in 1967), wrote: "Frazer is much more savage than most of his 'savages' [since] his explanations of [their] observances are much cruder than the sense of the observances themselves."[10] R. G. Collingwood shared Wittgenstein's criticism.[11]

Initially, the book's influence on the emerging discipline of anthropology was pervasive. Polish anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski said of The Golden Bough: "No sooner had I read this great work than I became immersed in it and enslaved by it. I realized then that anthropology, as presented by Sir James Frazer, is a great science, worthy of as much devotion as any of her elder and more exact studies and I became bound to the service of Frazerian anthropology."[12] However, by the 1920s, Frazer's ideas already "began to belong to the past" according to Godfrey Lienhardt, who noted

The central theme (or, as he thought, theory) of The Golden Bough—that all mankind had evolved intellectually and psychologically from a superstitious belief in magicians, through a superstitious belief in priests and gods, to enlightened belief in scientists—had little or no relevance to the conduct of life in an Andamanese camp or a Melanesian village, and the whole, supposedly scientific, basis of Frazer's anthropology was seen as a misapplication of Darwin's theory of biological evolution to human history and psychology.[10]

EXTRACTS FROM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Bough

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Here we leave the critics of James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough — of which Frazer was a critic of his own work, hoping someone would find a better explanation for the myths of things… 

WE CAN SAY THAT myths, magic or beliefs are not mutually exclusive, nor does one item belongs to “primitive” societies while the others is from more elevated civilisations. Advanced civilisation still have people, including leaders, who believe in gods and myths. This is mostly due to imbecility and a desire to spruik an artful way to control populations.

Thus, while Frazer might have been an embarrassment to the anthropologist profession, his views are actually highly explanatory of the average modern moron’s, including US Presidents’, twisted way of thinking… 

Magic [not the theatrical Britain’s got talent’s which is based on trickery and/or slay of hands] but also seen as majik, beliefs and myths are all delusional concepts, designed to alleviate the human suffering and unknowingness about our existence. Most of us, apart from rabid atheists, from birth onwards, live with the hope of life beyond death, otherwise what we do seem to become purposeless and useless, even if our activities are providing survival…

We thus invent magic, myths and beliefs to give us purpose. There is no better example than DONALD TRUMP who believes in his own shit, being imperialist somewhat believing in a divine influence — all being worth of a few "holy" stupid wars. The myths, the beliefs in his (America’s) superiority are amplified by the magic trickery of real militarism designed to kill people. Even if Donald’s beliefs rely on the secularisation of “good and evil” — which is not exclusive to him though — his influence on loonies and believers is undeniable. 

And there is little we can do, except take him out in a straitjacket to an asylum for retired presidents… They’re all there, or should be there, all the deluded leaders of the Western world who have dipped into the religious dictum pool… 

In The Golden Bough, Frazer explored a myth [wrong lake, who cares] about “Aeneas and the Sibyl presenting the golden bough taken from a sacred grove to the gatekeeper of Hades to gain admission.” 

The lyrics of the song "Not to Touch the Earth" by the Doors were influenced by this in The Golden Bough, with the title and opening lines being taken from its table of contents. Francis Ford Coppola's film Apocalypse Now shows the antagonist Kurtz with the book in his lair, and his death is depicted as a ritual sacrifice.

HERE IS THE DOORS:

Not to touch the earth

Not to see the sun

Nothing left to do, but

Run, run, run

Let's run

Let's run

House upon the hill

Moon is lying still

Shadows of the trees

Witnessing the wild breeze

C'mon baby run with me

Let's run

Run with me

Run with me

Run with me

Let's run

The mansion is warm, at the top of the hill

Rich are the rooms and the comforts there

Red are the arms of luxuriant chairs

And you won't know a thing 'till you get inside

Dead president's corpse in the driver's car

The engine runs on glue and tar

Come on along, not goin' very far

To the East to meet the Czar

Run with me

Run with me

Run with me

Let's run

Whoa!

Somehow outlaws lived by the side of a lake

The minister's daughter's in love with the snake

Who lives in a well by the side of the road

Wake up, girl, we're almost home

Ya, c'mon!

We should see the gates by mornin'

We should be inside the evenin'

Sun, sun, sun

Burn, burn, burn

Soon, soon, soon

Moon, moon, moon

I will get you

Soon, soon, soon!

I am the Lizard king

I can do anything

YES DONALD IS THE LIZARD KING AND HE THINKS HE CAN DO ANYTHING…

HE IS A DANGEROUS HUMAN...

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

         RABID ATHEIST

 PAINTING AT TOP BY Charles-Antoine Coypel (born July 11, 1694, Paris , France—died June 14, 1752, Paris) — a French painter and engraver.... ABRAHAM PREPARES TO SACRIFICE HIS SON....