Dionysus was the Greek god of wine and ecstatic experience, as well as vegetation, death and rebirth. As a nature god, he slept through the winter and awoke with the spring. Thus he was identified with the springtime, and his emblems were the vine (Just like Jesus - John 15:1, 5) and the phallus. His cult became popular in the 7-6th centuries BCE. Dionysus was the son of Zeus and Semele (a mortal woman) but he was not considered a hero, but a god. While he was yet unborn, Hera killed Semele and his fetus was lodged on Zeus' thigh until birth. (Note: Semele is thought to have been Zemelo, a Phrygian earth goddess.) Both the Romans and Greeks tended to assimilate local gods into their pantheon, so Zeus became Jupiter for the Romans. With Dionysus, he became identified with Bacchus, who is thought to have been a Lydian historical figure, originally. (Note: 'Bacchus' is thought to be of Semitic origin, possibly meaning 'wailing'.) He was also identified with the Roman god Liber, but it is as Dionysus he is best known. He was a dying and rising god who brought new life to his followers.
Dionysus was purported to perform miracles for his followers. In Sidon, on the evening of his feast, three jars were left in the temple, which, when inspected in the morning, were full of wine. [2] (Remind anyone of Cana?)
The cult of Orpheus was a more philosophically minded cult, possibly a reformed Dionysian cult. They believed in a dualism between the spirit and the body (Similar to that of John: see John 3:6; 6:63; Galatians 5:16-17; 6:8; etc). Their god was Dionysus Zagreus, and included a slightly different story. The Titans killed and ate Dionysus, and Zeus killed them. From their ashes rose man. So from the sacrifice of Dionysus - for the Titans followed sacrificial procedure) mankind arose. Man is a mixture of the divine Dionysus (soul) and the bodies of the Titans (earth/flesh). The only thing left of Dionysus was his heart (some accounts have a single limb) and from this he resurrected. Orphics believed in the subjugation of the flesh, in a judgement for all after death, leading to eternal reward or eternal punishment and ate the raw flesh of a bull, which symbolised the body of Dionysus.
Livy, History of Rome, Book 39.8-19. Describing the ban on Dionysan worship.
"The following year diverted the consuls, Spurius Postumius Alburius and Quintus Marcius Phillipus, from the command of armies and the conduct of campaigns abroad to the crushing of conspiracy at home. The praetors drew lots of their spheres of office: Titus Maenius received the juridiction in Rome, and Marcus Licinius Lucullus was appointed judge in suits between citizens and foreigners; the province of Sardinia fell to Gaius Aurelius Scaurus, Sicily to Publicus Cornelius Sulla, Hither Spain to Lucius Quinctius Crispinus, Further Spain to Gaius Calpurnius Piso. A senatorial decree entrusted both the consuls with an inquiry into secret conspiracies.
"The trouble had started with the arrival in Eturia of a Greek of humble origin, possessed of none of those numerous accomplishments which the Greek people, the most highly educated and civilised of nations, has introduced among us for the cultivation of mind and body; he dealt in sacrifices and soothsaying. But his method of infecting people's minds with error was not by the open practise of his rites and the public advertisement of his trade and his system; he was the hierophant of secret ceremonies performed at night. There were initiations which at first were only imparted to a few; but they soon began to be widespread among men and women. The pleasures of drinking and feasting were added to the religious rites, to attract a larger number of followers. When wine had inflamed their feelings, and night and the mingling of sexes and of different ages had extinguished all power of moral judgement, all sorts of corruption began to be practised, since each person had ready to hand the chance of gratifying the particular desire to which he was naturally inclined. The corruption was not confined to one kind of evil, the promiscuous violation of free men and women; the cult was also a source of supply of false witnesses, forged documents and wills, and perjured evidence, dealing also in poisons and in wholesale murders among the devotees, and sometimes ensuring that not even the bodies were found for burial...
"This evil, with all its disastrous influence, spread from Etruria to Rome like an epidemic. At the start, the very size of the city concealed it, giving ample room for such evils and making it possible to tolerate them, but at length information reached the ears of the consul Postumius...
"There had been three fixed days in a year on which initiations took place, at daytime, into the Bacchic mysteries; and it was the custom for the matrons to be chosen as priestesses in rotation. But when Paculla Annia of Campania was priestess she altered all this, ostensibly on the advice of the gods. She had been the first to initiate men, her sons, Minius and Herennius Cerrinius; and she had performed the ceremonies by night instead of by day, and in place of three days in a year she had appointed five days of initiation in each month...Men, apparently out of their wits, would utter prophecies with frenzied bodily convulsions...
"The Senate decreed that the priests of these rites, male and female, were to be sought out...so that they should be available for the consuls [who were investigating the cult]...
"The next task entrusted to the consuls was the destruction of all shrines of Bacchic worship, first at Rome and then throughout Italy...for the future it was provided by decree of the Senate that there should be no Bacchanalia in Rome or Italy."
(Trans: Henry Bettenson, "Livy: Rome and the Mediterranean", New York, Penguin, 1976)
Orphic Hymns - the praises of Orpheus to the gods.
"I call upon loud-roaring and reveling Dionysos,
primeval, two-natured, thrice-born, Bacchic lord,
savage, ineffable, secretive, two-horned and two-shaped.
Ivy-covered, bull-faced, warlike, howling, pure,
You take raw flesh, you have triennial feasts, wrapt in foliage, decked with grape clusters.
Resourceful Eubouleus, immortal god sired by Zeus
When he mated with Persephone in unspeakable union.
Hearken to my voice, O blessed one, and with your fair-girdled nurses
breathe on me in a spirit of perfect kindness."
(Trans: Apostolos N Athanassakis, The Orphic Hymns: Text, Translation & Notes, Society of Biblical Literature Texts and Translations, no12, 1977)
Betrand Russell A History of Western Philosophy
"In intoxication, physical or spiritual, he recovers an intensity of feeling which prudence had destroyed; he finds the world full of delight and beauty, and his imagination is suddenly liberated from the prison of everyday preoccupations. The Bacchic riual produced what was called 'enthusiasm', which means etymologically having the god enter the worshipper, who believed that he became one with the god."
Justin Martyr, First Apology, 54. He said that Dionysus/Bacchus was sent as an imitation Christ before Christ's birth. Thus acknowledging the similarities between Jesus and Dionysus.
"The devils, accordingly, when they heard these prophetic words [in the Old Testament], said that Bacchus was the son of Jupiter, and ...having been torn in pieces, he ascended into heaven."
Pausanias, Description of Greece, Book 6: ELIS 2, 26.1-2
"Between the market-place and the Menius is an old theatre and a shrine of Dionysus. The image is the work of Praxiteles. Of the gods the Eleans worship Dionysus with the greatest reverence, and they assert that the god attends their festival, the Thyia. The place where they hold the festival they name the Thyia is about eight stades from the city. Three pots are brought into the building by the priests and set down empty in the presence of the citizens and any strangers who may chance to be in the country. The doors of the building are sealed by the priests themselves and by any others who may be so inclined. On the morrow they are allowed to examine the seals, and on going into the building they find the pots filled with wine. I did not myself arrive at the time of the festival, but the most respected Elean citizens, and with them strangers also, swore that what I have said is the truth. The Andrians too assert that every other year at their feast of Dionysus wine flows of its own accord from the sanctuary."
(Trans: W H S Jones, Pausanias: Description of Greece: III, Loeb Classical Library, 1933)
Dionysus From Belinus Press
Dionysus From Dionysia.org
Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth Still under construction, as of 16/1/02