Jesus, Dionysus and Olympic Outrage

Was Jesus Imagery Borrowed from Bacchus?

At the opening of the Olympic Games in Paris last week, one episode caused outcry around the globe. The queer scene, which seemed to mimic Da Vinci’s oft-parodied Last Supper, served the world a scantily-clad smurf on a silver platter, while onlookers exposed a background dancer for having not entirely 'girded his loins.’

For many Christians, this was a deeply uncomfortable, even blasphemous, moment. Yet others have claimed that the Parisian ‘Last Supper’ had nothing to do with Christianity. The figure painted in blue was the Greek God Dionysus, known also to the Roman tradition as Bacchus. The imagery was firmly Olympian.

DJ Butch supposedly takes the place of Christ in the Olympic scene.

Without spilling ink on the cultural debate, I couldn’t help but see the irony in the clash between Jesus and Dionysus. For while in antiquity these two figures already represented disparate value systems – hedonic excess versus salvation from sin – early Christians sometimes drew on Dionysan imagery in their depictions of Christ.

It seems apropos, then, to follow our series on ‘Jesus-like’ figures in antiquity with the Greek god. Let us take a look at some of the parallels which scholars draw.

1. Both turn water into wine

The most striking affinity between Jesus and Dionysus is that Dionysus is also believed to have performed wine-related miracles.¹ In the second century CE, Pausanius describes the following miracle as taking place among followers of Dionysus’ cult:

… three pots are brought into the building by the priests and set down empty in the presence of the citizens and of 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. (Description of Greece 2.26)

This is not quite the water-into-wine scenario at the Wedding of Cana in John 2. However, a number of texts do report such miracles. In Lucian’s True Stories, rivers taste like wine (1.7) and supplies of water produce wine upon Dionysus’ appearance (Pliny, Natural History, 2.2.231; 31.13; Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 3.66.2).

One parallel is found in Achilleus Tatitus’ novel, Leucippe and Clitophon. The narrator tells of how Dionysus visited the people of Tyre, who had not yet discovered wine. When the herdsman offered him the same drink ‘as that of the oxen’, the drink becomes wine. And when they enquire how he acquired this ‘purple water,’ Dionysus takes them to a vine and says, ‘[here] is your water… this is its source’ (2.2.1–6).

Paolo Veronese, The Wedding at Cana, 1563