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Drunkenness, Excess, and Bacchanalia ISTOCK PHOTO BSFL: Ephesians 5:8-21 AN BR AL A . N J C Y H B Drunkenness, Excess, and Bacchanalia ISTOCK PHOTO LIFEWAY.COM/BIBLICAL ILLUSTRATOR 67 PHESIANS 5:18 SAYS, “AND DON’T GET at particular times of the year and for brief periods. The drunk with wine, which leads to reckless living, most famous depiction of such events is from Livy’s but be filled by the Spirit.”1 Alcohol consump- (59 bc–ad 17) History of Rome. He described alcohol-fueled tion and drunkenness were common compo- heterosexual and homosexual abandonment and orgies. nents in Greco-Roman life, and Paul contrasted Livy summarized Dionysiac worship: “To regard nothing Ethe dissipation of being under the control of wine with as impious or criminal was the very sum of their religion.”4 being filled with the Holy Spirit. Christians were called While modern historians question the accuracy of Livy’s to a counter-cultural ethic of godly restraint instead of description, the Roman Senate had passed a law in 186 bc pagan moral licentiousness. This can be seen by examining prohibiting the Bacchanalia. Nonetheless, the cult was worship of the pagan god Dionysus, the nature of meals hard to suppress and continued in popularity. The celebra- in banquets in antiquity, and then contrasting these with tions of Dionysus were so orgiastic and ecstatic that his Paul’s command in Ephesians 5:18. followers were called maenads, from the Greek word mania, Dionysus (Bacchus to the Romans) was the Greek god or “madness.”5 of wine and debauchery, ritual madness, and the theatre. Expressions of Dionysiac worship differed from region According to Greek mythology, Dionysus was the son to region. One scholar described the variety: of Zeus and a mortal woman named Semele. “Dionysus was the deity under whose powers came the fertility of The forms of Bacchic initiation probably varied a vineyards, wine and ‘every type of life-giving moisture.’ ”2 A mystery cult dedicated to Dionysus originated at least by the fifth century bc, con- Christians were called to a tinued until the time of the church fathers, and was widespread through- counter-cultural ethic of godly out the Mediterranean world. People closely associated the worship of restraint instead Dionysus with hope for an afterlife, and Dionysiac scenes on sarcoph- of pagan moral agi were common in the imperial period of Rome (27 bc–ad 476).3 licentiousness. The most famous aspect of Dionysus worship were Bacchanalia, festivals and sacred rites charac- mals depicted had terized by abandonment of moral special significance restraint. Usually, these were held only in the mystery cult of Dionysus. On ILLUSTRATOR PHOTO/ BRENT BRUCE/ WALTERS ART MUSEUM/ BALTIMORE (75/0004) the lid is the birth of Dionysus and his reception by nymphs. Upper left: From (64/2418) PHOTO/ G.B. HOWELL/ BOSTON MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS ILLUSTRATOR Athens, a ceramic cup in the shape Left: Sarcophagus of a donkey’s depicting the head; dated to triumphal march about 480 BC; of Bacchus. At lacking a foot, a the left, Dionysus cup of this type rides in a chariot had to be emptied pulled by pan- before it could thers. Preceding be set down. him is a procession Like the maenad of his followers painted on the and exotic animals, rim, the donkey including lions, was associated elephants, and with Dionysus, even a giraffe. the Greek god of Many of the ani- wine. 68 BIBLICAL ILLUSTRATOR / SUMMER 2020 ILLUSTRATOR PHOTO/ G.B. HOWELL/ BOSTON MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS (64/2103) PHOTO/ G.B. HOWELL/ BOSTON MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS ILLUSTRATOR Above: From idyllic outdoor Carrara in north- banquet, holding central Italy, a garland of flow- marble relief ers and a wine dated AD 50 cup (kantharos) in depicts a his left hand. The man reclin- relief may have ing under been a votive gift a tree at an to Dionysus. ILLUSTRATOR PHOTO/ BRENT BRUCE/ NAPLES ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM (173/B/2376) cultural background in Greco- Above: Fresco covered mountain followers Roman antiquity in which alco- painting from is probably Mount (known as the House of Vesuvius, before its Bacchantes) hol consumption and drunkenness the Centenary in eruption. and creatures were common. Greek dinner parties, Pompeii; dated AD that were part called symposiums, were limited to 62-79. To the left, Right: Marble por- human and center is Dionysus, trait of Bacchus part animal, men except for female entertainers. The his body covered with a grapevine mostly satyrs feasts included extensive wine drinking with bunches of headpiece; AD and fauns. They after the meal and often singing hymns grapes to evoke 1st cent; Roman. represented the his being the god Bacchus was often unfettered, some- to a pagan god. Roman dinner parties were of the vine and depicted as hav- times bawdy, con- similar, but were called a convivium, and allowed respectable wine. In the back- ing a retinue of duct brought on by ground, a vine- uninhibited female wine. women to be present. Though not always opportunities for sexual immorality, dinner parties sometimes turned into ILLUSTRATOR PHOTO/ G.B. HOWELL/ ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO (65/4762) PHOTO/ G.B. HOWELL/ ART ILLUSTRATOR great deal from group to group, and from period to orgies. “Greek and Roman literature is filled with illus- period, with the extent of these variations stretching trations of symposia devolving into drunkenness, sexual from outdoor picnics to an existential turning-point excess, and violence.”7 in life, from sublime symbolism to downright orgies.6 The sexual use of dining couches . is widely por- Nonetheless, drunkenness and sexual immorality were trayed on stone, pottery, and gems in museums common. A house at Pompeii known as the Villa of the throughout Greece. In many of these depictions Mysteries contains several frescoes depicting Dionysus food is shown on nearby dining tables, perhaps indi- worship, including impious sexual imagery. cating that the sensual pleasures of eating and sexual Worship of Dionysus formed part of the broader intercourse may commonly have been combined.8 LIFEWAY.COM/BIBLICAL ILLUSTRATOR 69 Below: Bronze from the temple mask of a maenad at Golgoi on or female fol- Cyprus; dated to lower of Bacchus; the end of the 6th Roman, 1st cent. cent. BC. In the AD. The piece like- center would have ly adorned a piece been a table that of furniture would have held a crater, a large Right: Limestone bowl from which scene of five ban- the banqueters queters reclining would have drunk, on cushions; likely using straws. when he said such behavior is “reckless living.” The Greek word translated “reckless living” is asotia, which generally denotes wastefulness, and thus reck- less abandon, debauchery, dissipation, or profligacy, especially as exhibited in convivial gatherings. In other words, it is wild living.10 Some sense of the destructive lifestyle implied by asotia is seen in that the adverbial form of the word is used in the story of the prodigal son which says the young man squandered his wealth with “loose [asotos] living” (Luke 15:13, nasb). Paul called Ephesian Christians to moral purity in a vulgar culture. In the same way, modern Christians in a day and age NEW YORK CITY (60/7710) MUSEUM OF ART/ PHOTO/ BRENT BRUCE/ METROPOLITAN ILLUSTRATOR ruled by moral autonomy should follow the non-conforming stance of Ephesians 5:18, “And don’t get drunk with wine, which leads to reckless living, but be filled by the Spirit.” I ILLUSTRATOR PHOTO/ BRITISH MUSEUM/ LONDON (31/23/23) ILLUSTRATOR 1. Unless indicated otherwise, all Scripture quotations are from the Christian Standard While modern readers cannot know for certain if Bible (CSB). Paul was specifically attacking either Dionysus wor- 2. John McRay, Archeology and the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1991), 317. ship or ancient dinner banquets in Ephesians 5:18, we 3. Trevor W. Thompson, “Dionysus,” in Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception, do know that at least shadows of those practices lin- ed. Sebastian Fuhrmann, Gary S. Helft, and Anne-Kathrin Runte, vol. 6 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), 854, and Cleon L. Rogers, Jr., “The Dionysian Background of Ephesians 5:18,” gered into Paul’s day. The moral atmosphere in Greco- Biblotheca Sacra 136 (July-September 1979): 250–51. Roman culture was one in which pagan devotion, 4. Livy, The History of Rome 39.13 in The History of Rome, trans. Rev. Canon Roberts, vol. 6 (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1905). drunkenness, and sexual immorality went hand in 5. Britt-Mari Nasstrom, “The Rites in the Mysteries of Dionysus: The Birth of the Drama,” Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis 18 (January 1, 2003): 139, 141. hand. In context, Paul had already reminded his read- 6. Walter Burkert, Greek Religion, trans. John Raffan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. ers, “Therefore, I say this and testify in the Lord: You Press, 1985), 292. 7. Richard A. Wright, “Drinking, Teaching, and Singing: Ephesians 5:18-19 and the should no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futil- Challenges of Moral Instruction at Greco-Roman Banquets,” Lexington Theological ity of their thoughts” (Eph. 4:17). The vulgar behavior Quarterly vol. 47 (Fall-Winter 2017): 87. 8. John McRay, Archeology and the New Testament, 317. associated with drunkenness is in complete contrast 9. Klyne Snodgrass, Ephesians, The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids: with Christian ethics. Klyne Snodgrass rightly says, Zondervan, 1996), 289. 10. “aÓswti÷a“ (asotia, wastefulness) in A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament “To write against drunkenness was a convenient way and Other Early Christian Literature, ed. Frederick William Danker, 3rd ed. (Chicago: Univ. for [Paul] to call to mind the destructive and unaccept- of Chicago Press, 2000), 148.
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