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The Common Wine Cult of Christ and the Orphic Dionysos: the Wine and Vegetation Saviour Deity Dionysos As Model for the Dying and Rising Christ

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REL 4990, MA thesis. Culture and Ideas, History of Religion. Autumn 2010. Maritha E. Gebhardt. Page: 1 The common wine cult of Christ and the Orphic Dionysos: the wine and vegetation saviour deity Dionysos as model for the dying and rising Christ. MA Thesis, Master's Programme in Culture and Ideas, History of Religion, Department of Culture and Oriental Languages, Autumn 2010, by Maritha Elin Gebhardt. Synopsis: In 2005 the Hebrew University Excavation Project unearthed a small incense burner from the fourth century C.E. in the Jewish capital of the Galilee, Sepphoris, depicting a crucified figure, Bacchic satyrs and maenads, and the Christian representation of the sacrifice of Isaac in symbolic form as a ram caught in the thicket of a bush. Five years later the book Orphism and Christianity in Late Antiquity, by Herrero de Jáuregui, refers to two large funerary cloths, one depicts a Dionysiac scene similar to the murals from the Villa dei Misteri and the other one show scenes from the life of Jesus and Mary, both found in the same tomb in Egypt. Both of these depictions testify to the continued syncretism of the Orphic and the Christian symbols and that people in the Hellenistic era found the figure of Christ similar to the Bacchic Orpheus. In my thesis I claim that the dying and rising saviour deity of Dionysos is the forerunner to the dying and rising saviour deity of Christ. I claim that I will prove this by showing that the cult of Christ is a wine cult. The epiphany of Jesus was as a human guest at a party, turning water into wine at the wedding-feast at Cana in John 2:1-11, likewise the epiphany of the wine-god Dionysos is in a similar scene as the Cana-miracle, where he turns water into wine (Achilleus Tatius' De Leucippes et Clitophontis amoribus 2.2:1-2.3:1). The wine is present and tied to Christianity in all its religious aspects. Wine was a strong symbol of life in the Middle East and had been for more than a thousand years before the birth of Christianity. After the criticism of Frazer's The Golden Bough [1922], historians of religions have hesitated to continue claiming that Jesus was just another dying and rising god of vegetation, mimicking the many gods of vegetation around the Middle East, whose cults offered an eschatological doctrine of hopes for a better afterlife for the initiates. In 2008 Braarvig published his book Myths, Metaphors and Metaphysics, where he rekindles the debate where Dionysos is seen as a nature-metaphor, in which we humans reflect our own life when we think and compare our own life with the existence of plants. In the doctrine of Orphism Dionysos was the child of Zeus killed by the titans, slayed and eaten, except for his heart is saved so Zeus can impregnate Semele with the god Dionysos. From the sinful ashes of the titans and the remains of Dionysos, man is created with an inherited sin to atone for in the afterlife, like the original sin of man in Christianity. Orphic Bacchus-cults offered this atonement to free the divine side of man, and was therefore a competitive cult to the Christ cult offering resurrection for the sinful soul. REL 4990, MA thesis. Culture and Ideas, History of Religion. Autumn 2010. Maritha E. Gebhardt. Page: 2 The common wine cult of Christ and the Orphic Dionysos, The wine and vegetation saviour deity Dionysos as model for the dying and rising Christ. MA Thesis, Master's Programme in Culture and Ideas, History of Religion, Department of Culture and Oriental Languages, Autumn 2010. REL 4990, MA thesis. Culture and Ideas, History of Religion. Autumn 2010. Maritha E. Gebhardt. Page: 3 Table of contents: Synopsis Introduction: Theme...................................................................... Dionysos as dying and arising wine-god.................. Presenting my thesis................................................. The four initale tasks................................................ Use of Material........................................................ Primary Sources..................................................... Iconographic usage of Orpheus.............................. Who was Orpheus?................................................. The Orphic gold tablets.......................................... The Hellenistic Age............................................... Secondary sources................................................... Theory and method................................................. The wine cult of Christ: Jesus, as Dionysos, a vegetation deity....................... The Vine as tree.......................................................... Water of Life and wine into water............................. Vegetation symbols in the Epistles of Paul................ Wine and the Corinthians........................................... From drinking-party to Eucharist............................... Corinth: Paul and the Corinthian Christ cult.............................. The evidence of Dionysos and Demeter/Kore cults....... The Chthonic Christ cult of Corinth.............................. Wine cults around the Mediterranean: Evidence of ritual meals and wine in Middle Eastern cults. Wine in Judaism and ancient Israelite religion.................... Wine as a symbol for eschatological abundance................... Dionysos in Palestine............................................................... Christian and Bacchic rituals and theology: Rituals of lustration....................................................... Baptism, Created ex nihilo, not the main and only ceremony of initiation, or not an initiation ceremony at all?................................................................. Bacchic purification rituals.............................................. Nocturnal Bacchic rites.................................................... Bloodshed and Dionysos............................................... Bloodshed in the Christ cult........................................... Orphic eschatology............................................................ A concluding Discussion. List of Literature. REL 4990, MA thesis. Culture and Ideas, History of Religion. Autumn 2010. Maritha E. Gebhardt. Page: 4 1. Theme. Christianity, a wine cult. Similiar neighbouring wine cults, especially the cult of Dionysos. Corinth and its cults. A phenomenological comparison of Christian and Orphic theology and rituals. Evidence of Dionysiac influence on the Christ cult, and shared Orphic iconography in early Christianity, Graeco-Roman and Jewish religion in the Hellenistic Age. Dionysos as dying and arising wine-god Professor of religious studies at the University of Oslo, Jens Braarvig writes in his book Myths, Metaphors and Metaphysics, Orphic Metamorphoses of Dionysus about Dionysos as a dying and resurrective god, who develops traits of a saviour-deity in Orphism, representing hope for a better fate after death for the devotee; a continued existens for the soul, even a life for the soul after death. At the same time Braarvig treats Dionysos as a nature-metaphor, in which we humans reflect our own life when we think and compare our own growth, life and demise with the existence of plants. The wine-god Dionysos dies with the harvesting and pressing of grapes and is resurrected and given new life when reborn in the wine jars the following spring. In Orphism Dionysos represents one who died to rise again. Braarvig points to different sources and concludes that this Wine-and Saviour god might just as well have influenced Christian theology. Presenting my thesis May we venture even further and claim that the wine-and saviour god Dionysos is the inspiration, if not the origin of Christ as figure of salvation in the afterlife? My claim is that Christianity is a wine cult. The wine is present and tied to Christianity in all its religious aspects. Wine was a strong symbol of life in the Middle East and in all the Mediterranean and had been for more than a thousand years before the birth of Christianity. Red like blood, wine is the blood of nature, the life force itself. You crush the plant and a liquid as red as blood is spilt, the plant dies but the wine lives on. This metaphor of life was given in libation to the gods and it gave life to the one who drank it. Jesus continues this when he passes the cup of wine and bids his disciples drink, remembering they are partaking of his blood. «Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.» (The Gospel of Matthew, 26:27 King James Version). Indeed the whole body of Christ is a metaphor of wine and life: «Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, REL 4990, MA thesis. Culture and Ideas, History of Religion. Autumn 2010. Maritha E. Gebhardt. Page: 5 verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whose eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.» (The Gospel of John, 6:53-56 King James Version). This identification of Jesus with wine and bread could lead to excesses, where the cult of Christianity was, according to Paul, reduced to a feast of eating and drinking. According to Luther H. Martin Paul rebukes (I Cor. 11:17-22) the Corinthian church for misunderstanding the Christian sacramental
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