Ampelinos🍷

This is the first ever entirely unraveled papyrus scroll from the great Herculaneum library. In its entirety. The technology that allowed us to do this will make it easier to unravel every single one of the thousands of scrolls still waiting to be read within the library.

Herculaneum was buried in ash thousands of years ago, along with Pompeii. The above text is Philodemus’ On Gods, written around the 1st century BC. Other Hellenistic works are expected to follow it. Upwards of twenty-five-thousand scrolls are thought to still be down there. Tantalizing us.

Philodemus is thought to be the owner of the villa and a philosophy enthusiast, hence the abundance of such texts already discovered and partially decrypted before now. In my mind, this is the most important historical innovation of the millennium. This will revolutionize our understandings of Greece and Rome. It’s already helped us discover the precise location of Plato’s tomb.

statue of Bacchus & Pan, 2nd century. marble

Dionysus in female attire, 2nd - 1st century bce.

Found in Delos, at the small sanctuary of Dionysus

I want to follow up on this post, and briefly discuss the debate around how much influence, if any, the Dionysian cult had over the development of Christianity. The short answer is: "Not much."

There are actual parallels between Jesus and Dionysus — a lot, actually! (Especially in comparison to most of the other gods who are compared to Jesus. Lookin' at you, Horus...) Here are some of those parallels:

Dionysus is the only Olympian who's the son of a human woman. (As said in the last post, I believe he was always fully-divine, not a demigod, and most sources seem to support that.) He's the son of a human woman and the Lord of Heaven. Being the son of Zeus isn't terribly notable in Greek mythology, but Dionysus is consistently identified with Zeus in a way that his other sons aren't (down to his very name). In Orphism, Dionysus is the heir of Zeus, the next Lord of the Universe, and therefore a version of Zeus himself.

He was hidden away as a baby to keep him safe from the persecution of a powerful figure. This is a common trope in "divine king" myths — it's the case for not just Jesus, but also Zeus, Horus, and Krishna. The exact details of Dionysus' childhood vary; sometimes he's raised by nymphs in the mythical valley of Nysa, sometimes he's raised by his mortal aunt Ino and her family, etc. Sometimes he's guarded by the Kouretes/Korybantes, further identifying him with Zeus.

He died and was resurrected. You're probably familiar with the "Orphic" version of Dionysus' origin story, in which he is the son of Persephone and Zeus. Zeus named Dionysus his heir, and took him to Olympus, giving him thunderbolts. Hera was angry about this, and sent the Titans to lure baby Dionysus away from the thunderbolts with toys. They dismembered and ate him. Athena was able to save his heart, and he was reincarnated as the son of Semele. In one version of this myth, the Titans were burnt to ashes by Zeus' thunderbolts, and humanity rose from those ashes, containing the "base" essence of the Titans and the divine essence of Dionysus. (Though Radcliffe Edmonds, a leading scholar of Orphism, points out that this myth is often interpreted in very Christianized ways. There is no "original sin" in Orphism, and it's debatable if it's salvific at all.)

He spent most of his early years walking the earth, spreading his cult with a band of "disciples" (read: deranged cultists) called the thiasus. The thiasus consisted of Maenads (madwomen who could be either human or nymphs), satyrs, and Dionysus' notable followers like his wife Ariadne and Silenus. Dionysus spread his cult directly, going from city to city to teach winemaking and encourage humans to worship him. This direct participation in his own worship is very unusual for a Greek god.

He was persecuted and interrogated. Almost every major location in Greece has a myth about the initial rejection of Dionysus' cult, because of how intrinsically controversial it is. This is also very unusual for a Greek god; other gods' worship is never contested like this. Dionysus has to force the locals to worship him through displays of divine power and strange punishments. The most notable myth of this type is that of Pentheus, the subject of The Bacchae by Euripides. In The Bacchae, Pentheus interrogates Dionysus. This scene is so similar to the interrogation of Jesus by Pontius Pilate, that there's some speculation that the former directly inspired the latter. (Although the gods' responses, in words and in actions, could not be more different.)

His worshippers physically take him into their bodies via wine. Dionysus' worshippers believed that by drinking wine, they could become temporarily possessed by him, and therefore closer to the divine. The trance state produced by wine also opens one to ecstatic mystical experiences. There are some sources (e.g. Tiresias' speech in The Bacchae) that say that wine literally is Dionysus.

This seems like a slam dunk, right? Well, no. Contrary to what internet memes might make you think, mythological similarities don't mean anything by themselves. It's notable that there are so many of them in this case, but they're not evidence. Evidence would be syncretism, or other cross-pollination between the two cults. There's some shaky Biblical evidence, e.g. Jesus saying "I am the true vine" implies that there is a "false" one. There's also the emphasis on wine in general in both cults, and the idea of theophagy, i.e. physically imbibing the god. But while this implies a connection, it doesn't prove one.

Beyond that, there's very little actual evidence that Christianity was directly influenced by the Dionysian cult, or even that they interacted at all. The one actual example of syncretism between the two cults (that I know of) is this:

This is a stone depicting a crucified man, inscribed with the names of Orpheus and Bacchus. It dates to roughly the second or third century CE, which means it's from after the birth and spread of Christianity. That means it's not proof that Dionysus influenced Christianity, it's actually proof of the opposite! This was probably made by a pagan who adopted Christian iconography in their worship of Dionysus and/or Orpheus.

Internet posts (and some books) treat this as if it's some kind of gotcha. It's not. This is syncretism, guys. This is how religions work. There's plenty of examples of Christians adopting pagan motifs or iconography. What's notable about this one is that it's a rare example of pagans adopting Christian iconography, and it's a point of contact between Jesus and the Dionysian cult/Orphism specifically. Unfortunately, it was lost in WWII, so we'll never know any more about it than we do now.

And... that's it. That's pretty much the extent of the evidence for interaction between Christianity and the Dionysian cult: A lost stone, some mythic parallels, and the fact that wine is an important thing. I'm not seeing the smoking gun.

The thing is, even if the Dionysian cult directly inspired Christianity (and I'll grant that it's plausible), that's still not a gotcha. That's

✨ SYNCRETISM ✨

...and syncretism is a normal thing that normal religions do. Some Christians may want to pretend that their religion sprang fully-formed out of a vacuum, but no scholar who studies early Christianity (including Christian ones!) actually believes that.

Putting on my mystic's hat now, I don't think that it's surprising that Christianity and the Dionysian cult share so much common ground, becuase they're both mystery religions. Mystery religions tend to have a lot in common, almost by nature. I recently published a post about the continuity between different mystical traditions that I've personally noticed, and it's also common for the Greco-Roman mystery cults to treat each other kind of interchangeably (e.g. the Orphic Hymn to Mise, or Isis' speech at the end of The Golden Ass). Christianity began as essentially a public mystery sect of Judaism. I think that, through its Hellenization, it absorbed a lot of concepts common to Greek mystery cults in general. The same goes for comparisons between Jesus and Attis or Adonis; pretty much all the parallels amount to, "hey, I think Christianity is a mystery cult!" to which I reply, "NO SHIT, SHERLOCK!"