Dionysus and Communion
As a result of this many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Him anymore. John 6:66 NASB
As a result of this – Have you ever wondered why many followers of Yeshua left after he spoke at the synagogue in Capernaum? You remember what he said, right? Things like this: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves.” If you knew just a bit of Greek religious history, you would understand completely why this caused so much concern. It’s all about Dionysus.
“The central rite of the Dionysiac orgies was that of theophagy, i.e., of eating the god. Worshippers, rapt in ecstatic trance, tore an animal—the incarnation of the god—and devoured its flesh. By killing the god, eating his flesh, and drinking his blood, they were filled with divine power and transplanted into the sphere of divinity. In order to make room for the entrance of the higher force, the person must forfeit the power over the self. He must abandon his mind in order to receive the spirit. Loss of consciousness, ecstasy, is a prerequisite for enthusiasm, or possession.”[1]
Now you see why Dionysus is associated with wine. Wine was the means of achieving this ecstatic state, a loss of conscious control, so that the god might enter. You got drunk in order to become divine. “The Greeks, who coined the word ‘ecstasy’ (ekstasis), understood by it quite literally a state of trance in which the soul was no longer in its place, but had departed from the body, or a state in which the soul, escaping from the body, had entered into a relationship with invisible beings or became united with a deity.”[2]
“Among the Greeks, such a condition is described as a divine seizure, as the state of being filled with the god, enthusiasmin the original sense of the word entheos: having god in oneself.”[3]
Is it any wonder that Jews found Yeshua’s words scandalous? Yeshua certainly sounded like a Dionysian preacher. They wanted nothing to do with this Greek mystery religion. Of course, Yeshua doesn’t avoid this theme. Much later, at the last supper with his disciples, he reiterates the idea. “. . . for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins,” perhaps with a bit more explanation. But there is another element in Dionysian beliefs that causes even more distress, the death and resurrection of a god.
“In his religion, identical with or closely related to Orphism, Dionysus was believed to have been born from the union of Zeus and Persephone, and to have himself represented a chthonic or underworld aspect of Zeus. Many believed that he had been born twice, having been killed and reborn as the son of Zeus and the mortal Semele. In the Eleusinian Mysteries he was identified with Iacchus, the son (or, alternately, husband) of Demeter.”[4]
Unfortunately, the Church seems to have had no compunction about adopting Dionysian ideas. There is no equivalent to communion in Jewish practice. Where do you suppose that idea came from? And if communion was syncretism, can the death and resurrection of a god be far behind?
We don’t live in the first century when the world was filled with competing religions. We live in a world that has millennia of syncretism under its belt. But once in a while, it might be useful to find out where our religious beliefs began. What do you think?
Topical Index: Dionysus, communion, blood, flesh, ecstasy, John 6:66
[1] Abraham Heschel, The Prophets: Two Volumes in One (Hendrickson Publishers, 1962), Vol. 2, p. 107.
[2] Ibid., p. 104.
[3] Ibid, p. 106.
