Sir James George Frazer OM FRS FRSE FBA[1] (/ˈfreɪzər/; 1 January 1854 – 7 May 1941) was a Scottish social anthropologist and folklorist[2] influential in the early stages of the modern studies of mythology and comparative religion.

Four times elected to Trinity's Title Alpha Fellowship, he was associated with the college for most of his life, except for the year 1907–1908, spent at the University of Liverpool.

He was knighted in 1914, and a public lectureship in social anthropology at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Glasgow and Liverpool was established in his honour in 1921.

Frazer's interest in social anthropology was aroused by reading E. B. Tylor's Primitive Culture (1871) and was also encouraged by his friend, the biblical scholar William Robertson Smith, who was comparing elements of the Old Testament with early Hebrew folklore.

He published a single-volume abridged version, largely compiled by his wife Lady Frazer, in 1922, with some controversial material on Christianity excluded from the text.

[16] The symbolic cycle of life, death and rebirth which Frazer divined behind myths of many peoples captivated a generation of artists and poets.

For instance, in the 1980s the social anthropologist Edmund Leach wrote a series of critical articles, one of which was featured as the lead in Anthropology Today, vol.

[18] Leach criticised The Golden Bough for the breadth of comparisons drawn from widely separated cultures, but often based his comments on the abridged edition, which omits the supportive archaeological details.

In a positive review of a book narrowly focused on the cultus in the Hittite city of Nerik, J. D. Hawkins remarked approvingly in 1973, "The whole work is very methodical and sticks closely to the fully quoted documentary evidence in a way that would have been unfamiliar to the late Sir James Frazer.

"[19] More recently, The Golden Bough has been criticised for what are widely perceived as imperialist, anti-Catholic, classist and racist elements, including Frazer's assumptions that European peasants, Aboriginal Australians and Africans represented fossilised, earlier stages of cultural evolution.

[20] Another important work by Frazer is his six-volume commentary on the Greek traveller Pausanias' description of Greece in the mid-2nd century AD.

[23][24] He also defined magic separately from belief in the supernatural and superstition, presenting an ultimately ambivalent view of its place in culture.

[26] In contrast to both magic and science, Frazer defined religion in terms of belief in personal, supernatural forces and attempts to appease them.

On the other hand, Frazer displayed a deep anxiety about the potential of widespread belief in magic to empower the masses, indicating fears of and biases against lower-class people in his thought.

For example, children may be allowed to put tobacco into a chameleon's mouth so that the nicotine poisons it and the creature dies, writhing while turning colours.

But a malicious lizard, Agadzagadza,[31] hurried ahead of the worm and told the people to dig a grave, wrap the corpse in cloth, and bury it.

For the natives of the island of Nias, the story was that the messenger who completed their creation failed to fast and ate bananas rather than crabs.

[37] Larsen also criticizes Frazer for applying western European Christian ideas, theology, and terminology to non-Christian cultures.

[39] Frazer applied Christian terms to functionaries, for instance calling the elders of the Njamus of East Africa "equivalent to the Levites of Israel"[39] and the Grand Lama of Lhasa "the Buddhist Pope... the man-god who bore his people's sorrows, the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for the sheep".

[39] He routinely uses the specifically Christian theological terms "born again", "new birth", "baptism", "christening", "sacrament", and "unclean" in reference to non-Christian cultures.

[39] A year later, Frazer excoriated Spencer for refusing to equate the non-estrangement of Aboriginal Australian totems with the Christian doctrine of reconciliation.