ABSTRACT
The dictum "God is dead" can be seen as a modification of the ancient experience of the notion of the Death of God, a modification which has led to intense cultural discussions throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. These discussions often refer to Nietzsche's dictum and the ancient notion of the Death of God as interchangeable; however, their relationship is like that of a genus and a species. For the scholar of the history of religions it is a surprising fact that a fairly common motif in religious history, such as the death of a divine being, could have caused such an influential intellectual movement as the notion of "God is dead" did throughout the twentieth century. The notion of the Death of God has been intrinsically combined with the notion of evil. Evil is indeed the force that brings about the death of gods, Osiris, Christ or God himself.
