Was Jesus Copied Off the Greek God Dionysos?

As everyone reading this is doubtlessly already aware, there are hundreds of memes and articles out there on the internet claiming that Jesus was “copied off” various pagan deities. The usual culprits include Horus, Dionysos, Mithras, Attis, Tammuz, Adonis, Sol Invictus, et cetera. I have already written a detailed article debunking claims about Jesus being copied off of Horus. Now I am going to debunk the claims about Jesus being copied off of Dionysos.

This article will be a lot more nuanced than my article about the alleged parallels between Horus and Jesus, however, since there really are some significant parallels between Jesus and Dionysos; they just aren’t nearly as numerous or as significant as Mythicists on the internet often claim. There is some evidence that some Christians may have intentionally shaped certain stories about Jesus in response to stories about Dionysos, but there is no good evidence to suggest that Christians just “copied” Jesus wholesale off of Dionysos.

A review of the alleged Jesus-Dionysos connection

First, let’s look at some of the claims that are often made about the supposed parallels between Jesus and Dionysos. Here is a meme from Mythicist Milwaukee, a convention held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for people who think that there was no historical Jesus, that presents most of the major alleged parallels between Jesus and Dionysos:

Here is another meme from Acharya S.’s website that gives even more detailed claims about the relationship between Jesus and Dionysos:

These claims should be plenty to work with. Now it is time to give these memes a solid debunking!

Born of a virgin?

Both the memes shown above claim that Dionysos was “born of a virgin.” In reality, there are many different versions of the story of Dionysos’s birth. There is only one of them—a very obscure version recounted in a late, often unreliable Roman source—that could possibly be construed as a story of a “virgin birth,” but even that version never mentions anything about his mother being a virgin. Since there are several different versions of the story of Dionysos’s birth, I will start out with the most common version, which does not involve anything that could realistically be construed as a virgin birth of any kind.

The most common version of the story itself exists in a few variations, so the version I am about to relate is admittedly something of a composite version cobbled together from a few different ancient accounts. Anyway, here it goes: Zeus, the king of the gods, came to the mortal woman Semele, the daughter of King Kadmos of Thebes, in the form of a serpent and showered her with his love and affection. He courted her for a very long time, slowly winning her over.

Finally, Zeus had sexual intercourse with her and, when he impregnated her, her bedchamber was overgrown with the vines and flowers of Dionysos and the earth itself laughed. Then Zeus revealed to her his true identity as the king of the gods and promised her that her child would be a god.

Zeus’s wife, Hera, the queen of the gods, grew jealous, however, so she came to Semele in the form of an old hag. Hera told Semele that Zeus did not really love her because, if he truly loved her, he would appear to her in his true, divine form, the one he had never shown to any mortal, the form in which only the gods had seen him. Semele insisted that Zeus really loved her.

Hera, in turn, goaded her to beg Zeus to let her see his true, divine form. Hera, of course, knew that the reason why Zeus never appeared to mortals in this form was because it was so glorious that mortals could not gaze upon it without being incinerated. In other words, Hera knew that, if Zeus were to appear to Semele in this form, Semele would never be able to survive the experience.

ABOVE: Jove and Semele, painted in c. 1695 by the Italian Baroque painter Sebastiano Ricci

Semele prayed to Zeus to show himself to her in his true, divine form to prove to her that he really did love her, saying that, if he refused, that would mean he did not love her. Zeus granted Semele’s prayers and appeared to her in his true form, but it was too much for Semele to handle, for she was only mortal, and the sight of Zeus in his full, divine glory burnt her to ash.

The fetus Dionysos, however, being immortal, survived the flames. Zeus rescued Dionysos from the ashes of his dead mother and sewed him inside his own thigh. (In ancient times, the word for “thigh” was commonly used as a euphemism for “testicles,” so, when ancient sources say Zeus sewed Dionysos into his “thigh,” they probably mean his scrotum.)

Then, when the time came, Zeus gave birth from his thigh to his son Dionysos, the immortal god. When he was born, Dionysos had horns shaped like the crescent moon. The Horai, or “Hours,” the goddesses representing the seasons, crowned him in a wreath of ivy and flowers and wrapped horned serpents around his horns.

Because Dionysos was born twice—once from the ashes of his mortal mother Semele and once from his immortal father Zeus’s thigh—he was known in antiquity by the epithet διμήτωρ (dimḗtōr), which means “the Twice-Mothered.”

ABOVE: Second-century AD Greek marble statue of the nude Dionysos resting his arm against a stump with a grape vine growing up it

That is the usual version of the story. There is also, however, another version of the story that probably stems from the Orphic tradition. Unfortunately, this version of the story that I am about to tell is only recorded in one very late source written in Latin: the second-century AD Roman mythographic composition Fabulae, which is traditionally attributed to the renowned Roman scholar Gaius Julius Hyginus.

We can be almost certain that the Fabulae was not written by the real Hyginus, since the writing is extremely crude, barely even literate, and the stories are sometimes seemingly confused and conflated. The author of the Fabulae was most likely a schoolboy or an amateur—not a renowned scholar of any sort. Scholars today refer to the unknown author of the work as “Pseudo-Hyginus.”

Here is the account of the birth of Dionysos given by Pseudo-Hyginus in Fabulae 167, as translated by R. Scott Smith and Stephen M. Trzaskoma:

“Liber [i.e. Dionysos], the son of Iupiter [i.e. Zeus] and Proserpina [i.e. Persephone], was ripped apart by the Titans. Iupiter ground his heart, put it in a potion, and gave it to Semele to drink. When she became pregnant from this, Iuno [i.e. Hera] took the form of Beroë, Semele’s nurse, and said to her, ‘Dear child, ask Iupiter to come to you as he comes to Iuno, so that you may know how great a pleasure it is to lie with a god.’ Prodded in this fashion, she asked Iupiter to do so and was struck by a thunderbolt. Iupiter took Liber out of her womb and gave him to Nysa to raise. This is why he is called Dionysus and Twice-mothered.”

Pseudo-Hyginus says nothing at all about whether or not Semele was a virgin, but, because, in this version of the story, as far as we can tell from the account given, Iupiter does not have sex with Semele, but instead gives her a potion to drink that makes her pregnant, you could perhaps reasonably construe this story as technically being a tale of a virgin birth.

Nonetheless, there are some serious problems here. The first problem is that, again, our only source for this version of the myth is the Fabulae of Pseudo-Hyginus, which is a generally not very reliable source that was written in Latin in around the second century AD. At the time when Pseudo-Hyginus’s Fabulae was written, it is likely that all the canonical gospels had probably already been written. Additionally, Pseudo-Hyginus is known for frequently getting stories confused and it is possible that the account he has given here is a confabulation of his own making.

The second problem is that Semele’s virginity is not really the focus of the story; the main focus of the story is on the fact that Liber (i.e. Dionysos) had two mothers: Prosperpina and Semele. Thus, he was, quite literally, “twice mothered” (διμήτωρ). Pseudo-Hyginus does not even mention whether Semele was a virgin, nor does he even explicitly state that Iupiter and Semele never had sexual intercourse.

The bottom line is, it takes a real stretch to see this story as the inspiration for the story of the virgin birth of Jesus. This is especially true since, as I intend to discuss in much greater depth in an upcoming article, there is very good reason to believe the whole story of the virgin birth comes not from pagan mythology, but rather from a mistranslation of the Hebrew word עַלְמָה (‘almāh), meaning “young woman,” as the Greek word παρθένος (parthénos), meaning “virgin,” in the Book of Isaiah 7:14 in the pre-Christian Greek Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Bible.

This mistranslation led many readers of the Septuagint to believe that the Messiah was supposed to be born of a virgin, which led early Christians to invent a story about Jesus having been born of a virgin to fulfill the mistranslated prophecy. (Ironically, the original passage in the Book of Isaiah probably was not originally supposed to be about the birth of the Messiah at all, but rather about the birth of King Hezekiah of Judah.)

ABOVE: Jupiter and Semele, painted between 1894 and 1895 by the French Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau

Born on December 25th?

If you are really willing to stretch things, you could claim that, at least in one story, Dionysos was maybe, kind of, sort of born of a virgin. The part about Dionysos being born on December 25th, though, is just 100% fabrication. December is a month that only exists on the Roman calendar and the ancient Greeks did not use the Roman calendar. Instead, there were a variety of different regional calendars that were used throughout the ancient Greek world, none of which had a month called “December.”

In Athens during the fifth century BC, Dionysos had two main festivals that were celebrated in the city. The smaller of these was the Lenaia, which occurred during the Athenian month of Gamelion, which corresponds roughly to late January and early February. The larger of these festivals was the City Dionysia, which occurred during the Athenian month of Elaphebolion, which corresponds roughly to late March and early April. Dionysos’s main festivals in classical Athens, then, were in late winter and mid spring respectively.

In addition, Dionysos also had a smaller festival that was celebrated in the countryside during the month of Poseideon known as the “Lesser Dionysia” or “Rural Dionysia.” This festival was essentially the rural equivalent of the Lenaia. The month of Poseideon on the Athenian calendar corresponds roughly to late December and early January on the Roman calendar.

Therefore, Dionysos did indeed have a festival in Athens in early winter during the classical period, but it was a small, rural festival and we have no evidence to indicate that it was ever seen as a celebration of the date of Dionysos’s birth. Furthermore, the towns in the region of Attika around Athens all celebrated the Rural Dionysia on different days, meaning it would have been pretty much impossible for someone to have even thought it was a celebration of Dionysos’s birthday, since it was not held on any specific day.

The fact that the Rural Dionysia took place in midwinter is not really significant. The ancient Greeks had festivals during every part of the year. Each major deity had multiple festivals associated with them. Quite simply, it was only inevitable that at least one deity would end up having at least one festival at some point in early winter.

In any case, even if Dionysos had been said to have been born on December 25th, it would not matter, because, as I discuss in much greater detail in this article I published recently, there is actually absolutely nothing about Jesus having been born on December 25th anywhere in the canonical scriptures or in any of the earliest surviving Christian writings.

It was not until around the fourth century AD that Christians began saying Jesus was born on the December 25th, long after all the canonical scriptures had been written. Therefore, if the ancient Greeks had believed that Dionysos had been born on December 25th (which we have absolutely no evidence to indicate that they did), that would only mean that Christians in the fourth century were influenced by Greek beliefs about Dionysos when they selected December 25th as the day to celebrate Jesus’s birth; it would not mean that Jesus was “copied off” Dionysos as is often claimed.

ABOVE: Modern speculative illustration from 1880 imagining what a dramatic performance at the Theater of Dionysos Eleuthereus in Athens might have looked like. Dramatic performances were a central part of the celebration of the City Dionysia.

“Put in a manger ‘among beasts’”?

One of the memes I showed above claims that, when he was an infant, Dionysos was “put in a manger ‘among beasts.’” This is just plain, outright nonsense. There is nothing in any of the birth narratives of Dionysos about him being laid as an infant in a manger. Dionysos is often depicted as an adult surrounded by wild animals such as leopards, but those depictions have very little to do with how he was born.

“Turned water into wine”?

The memes I showed above claim that Dionysos “turned water into wine.” Surprisingly, the Mythicists are actually correct with this one. There are actually several stories recorded in ancient Greek and Roman sources about Dionysos turning water into wine. The Roman writer Pliny the Elder (lived 23 – 79 AD) tells us in his encyclopedic work Natural History 2.106, as translated by John Bostock, H.T. Riley, and B.A. London, “In the island of Andros, at the temple of Father Bacchus, we are assured by Mucianus, who was thrice consul, that there is a spring, which, on the nones of January, always has the flavour of wine; it is called διὸς θεοδοσία.”

Pliny the Elder mentions the same spring on the island of Andros again in his Natural History 31:13, in which he writes, once again, as translated by Bostock, Riley, and London, “According to Mucianus, there is a fountain at Andros, consecrated to Father Liber, from which wine flows during the seven days appointed for the yearly festival of that god, the taste of which becomes like that of water the moment it is taken out of sight of the temple.”

Meanwhile, in the ancient Greek romance novel Leukippe and Kleitophon, which was probably written in around the late first or early second century AD, includes a scene in which Dionysos comes to a cowherd as a guest. The cowherd offers Dionysos everything he has, but all he has to drink is the same water that he gives his oxen. Dionysos, however, miraculously turns the cup of water given to him by the cowherd into a cup of wine. The cowherd, who has never tasted wine before, drinks the wine and is puzzled. He asks Dionysos why the water has turned crimson and why it gives him such a warm feeling in his stomach. Dionysos explains to him that it is wine, which he describes as “the blood of the vine.”

ABOVE: Detail from an Attic black-figure plate dating to between c. 520 and c. 500 BC, found at Vulci in Etruria, depicting the god Dionysos sitting on a chair holding out a kantharos of wine. In this relatively early depiction of Dionysos, he is shown bearded, although in later portrayals he is usually clean-shaven.

The Syrian satirist Loukianos of Samosata (lived c. 125 – after c. 180 AD) includes in the first book of his satirical novel A True Story an incident in which the characters are exploring a strange land and come across a river of wine, which they interpret as evidence that Dionysos had explored the land before them. Loukianos goes on to describe how the source of the river was a cluster of grapevine flowing with wine. In Loukianos’s story, Dionysos is not explicitly described as transforming water into wine, but the association is clearly there, since rivers normally flow with water, but the one Dionysos has created flows with wine instead.

Clearly, the miracle of turning water into wine was closely associated with Dionysos in the early second century AD when the Gospel of John was written. Anyone reading the Gospel of John’s account of Jesus turning water into wine would have been instantly reminded of Dionysos. I am willing to give the Mythicists a point for this one. This does not, however, mean that the whole story of Jesus is an imitation of the story of Dionysos; the story of Jesus turning water into wine is only one story out of many.

The story about Jesus turning water into wine only occurs in the Gospel of John, which is the latest of all the canonical gospels; the Synoptic Gospels, which were written earlier, do not include this story. Therefore, the story of Jesus turning water into wine can only be used as evidence that the Gospel of John—and not necessarily the other gospels—may have been influenced by Greek stories of Dionysos.

Finally, it is important to notice that even the story in the Gospel of John 2:1–11 only has a Dionysian flavor; it is not directly “copied” off any known story about Dionysos. There are stories about Dionysos turning water into wine, but none of them take place at a wedding where the hosts have run out of wine. The story about Dionysos turning the cowherd’s water into wine from Leukippe and Kleitophon is the closest to the Biblical story, but even it does not match the Biblical story exactly.

ABOVE: The Bacchanal of the Andrians, painted from 1523 until 1526 by the Italian Renaissance painter Titian, depicting the people of the island of Andros drinking the wine from the stream that Dionysos caused to run with wine every January

“A travelling teacher who performed miracles”?

One of the memes I showed earlier claims that Dionysos was a “travelling teacher who performed miracles.” That is, I suppose, sort of true in a sense, but it is definitely a distortion—a distortion that hides some of the most glaring differences between Jesus and Dionysos. Dionysos was believed to have travelled the Earth teaching mortals and performing miracles, but the things he is said to have taught and the miracles he is said to have performed are very different from the things Jesus is said to have taught and the miracles Jesus is said to have performed.

Jesus is described in the Synoptic Gospels as preaching a message about the imminent arrival of the Kingdom of God on Earth. Throughout the Synoptic Gospels, he delivers various apocalyptic and moral teachings. Dionysos, on the other hand, is said to have gone around teaching people how to make wine and have a good time, which is a very different sort of teaching from the sort Jesus is portrayed as giving.

Jesus is said to have performed miracles like healing people, curing lepers, and restoring sight to the blind. Dionysos’s “miracles” are, in many cases, a bit less humanitarian. One of the most famous stories of Dionysos performing a miracle comes from Homeric Hymn 7 “To Dionysos.” According to this hymn, Dionysos was once captured by a group of pirates. The pirates abducted him and took him on their ship. They tried to bind him, but the ropes they tried to use to tie him all miraculously fall off.

The helmsman declared that Dionysos was a god and that the pirates should let him go free on shore as soon as possible. The other pirates did not listen. Then Dionysos caused it to rain wine. A vine began to sprout from the mast of the ship. Then Dionysos himself turned into a lion and he charged at the sailors. He chased all of them—except the helmsman who had recognized him as a god—off the ship. As the pirates dove into the water, Dionysos transformed them all into dolphins.

That, my friends, is the kind of “miracle” Dionysos was known for: the terrifying, vengeful kind.

ABOVE: Photograph of the tondo of a black-figure kylix by the Exekias Painter, dating to c. 530 BC or thereabouts, depicting Dionysos on the pirate ship with a grape vine growing from the mast and the sailors transformed into dolphins all swimming around him

All those epithets

Mythicists have a whole slew of epithets that they claim were applied to both Dionysos and Jesus. The memes I showed at the beginning of this article list the following: “Savior,” “Father,” “Only Begotten Son,” “King of Kings,” “God of Gods,” “Sin-Bearer,” “Redeemer,” “Anointed One,” and “Alpha and Omega.” I will start at the beginning of this list and work my way to the end.

I cannot think of a specific example of a text in which Dionysos is referred to as “Savior,” but I could certainly believe that he was known by this title, since it was commonly applied to deities in the ancient world who rescued people from danger. During the Hellenistic Era, the title was also sometimes applied to kings. For instance, the first Ptolemaic ruler of Egypt was Πτολεμαῖος Σωτήρ (Ptolemaîos Sōtḗr), whose name means “Ptolemaios the Savior” in Greek.

The sense in which Ptolemaios was seen as a “Savior,” though, is a very different sense from how Christians typically see Jesus as a “Savior” today. Ptolemaios was known in the ancient world as “Savior” because he saved the people of the island of Rhodes from a siege by the forces of Demetrios I Poliorketes; whereas Jesus is usually seen as a “Savior” because he saves people from sin. For the ancient Greeks, the word Σωτήρ meant “Savior from peril,” not “Savior from sin.”

Dionysos’s Roman aspect, Liber, was definitely sometimes known as Pater Liber, which means “Father Free Man.” Dionysos in his Greek aspect, however, was not generally assigned a paternal role. Instead, he was usually seen as the son of Zeus, who was the All-Father of the Greek pantheon. Ironically, since Christians regard Jesus as “the Son” and not “the Father,” by claiming that Dionysos was known as “Father,” Mythicists are actually making him sound less like Jesus.

ABOVE: Bust of Ptolemaios I Soter, whose epithet means “the Savior.” For the Greeks, “Savior” meant “Savior from danger,” not “Savior from sin.”

I am not aware of any texts in which Dionysos is referred to as “Only Begotten Son,” “King of Kings,” “God of Gods,” “Sin-Bearer,” “Redeemer,” or “Alpha and Omega.” Since the memes do not reference any texts in which he is referred to by any of these titles, I am assuming they are just making stuff up.

The title of “Only Begotten Son” especially does not work well with Dionysos, since anyone who knows anything about Greek mythology knows that Dionysos was definitely not Zeus’s only son. (On another note, it is interesting to point out that the rulers of the Persian Achaemenid Empire actually bore the title of Šāhanšāh, which literally means “King of Kings.” The title “king of Kings” is definitely pre-Christian, then, but I am not aware of it ever being applied to Dionysos.)

Dionysos was definitely widely known as “Liberator.” In Greek, one of his major epithets was Ἐλευθερεύς(Eleuthereús), which means “Liberator” or “Freer.” The Theater of Dionysos Eleuthereus at the base of the Athenian Akropolis is named for Dionysos in this aspect. Meanwhile, in Latin, Dionysos was known as “Liber,” which means “the Free One.” On the other hand, I am not currently aware of any place where Jesus is referred to as “the Liberator” anywhere in the Bible. If Jesus was known by this epithet in antiquity, it was certainly not one of his more common epithets.

Dionysos also has quite a few epithets that are most certainly not Christ-like. For instance, he was known as Χοιροψάλας (Choiropsálas), which means “the Pussy-Fucker.” χοῖρος literally means “pig,” but it was also used as a vulgar slang term for female genitalia, similar to our English word “pussy.” The second element of this epithet comes from the verb ψάλλω (psállō), meaning “to pluck.” In this case, it refers to a specific kind of “plucking.”

Dionysos also had the epithet Ἐνόρχης (Enórchēs), which literally means “He of the Testicles.” This title, of course, refers to Dionysos’s role as a god of fertility and possibly also his birth from Zeus’s testicles. Another one of Dionysos’s titles was Βρόμιος (Brómios), which literally means “Loud, Roaring One,” in reference to Dionysos’s role as a loud, boisterous deity. He was also known as Ἀκρατοφόρος (Akratophóros), which means “the Bearer of Unmixed Wine.” I could list more very un-Christian epithets of Dionysos all day, but I think you all probably get the picture.

ABOVE: Photograph of the remains of two gigantic marble phalli from the entrance to the ruined temple of Dionysos at Delos. Several of Dionysos’s epithets, such as Χοιροψάλας and Ἐνόρχης, reference his role as a god of sexual fertility.

His blood “the wine of sacrifice”? Dionysian “eucharistic ritual”?

The memes I showed at the beginning of this article both make claims that Dionysos was worshipped through some kind of Eucharist in which his followers consumed wine. The memes claim that this wine was seen as Dionysos’s blood, poured out for the forgiveness of sins. The memes do not cite any sources for any of these claims, but, from reading around, I have managed to figure out that this idea probably originates from a widely-circulated mistranslation of a passage from the ancient Greek tragedy The Bacchae.

The Bacchae was written by the Athenian tragic playwright Euripides (lived c. 480 – c. 406 BC) and was first performed at the Theater of Dionysos Eleuthereus in Athens at the City Dionysia in 405 BC, about a year after Euripides’s death. In a scene that occurs fairly early on in the tragedy, the Theban prophet Teiresias delivers a speech in which he declares that there are two fundamental things that all mortals need: grain, which is a gift from the goddess Demeter, and wine, which is a gift from Dionysos. The crucial part of the speech dealing with wine occurs in lines 278–285 of the original Greek text. Here is the passage in the original Ancient Greek:

“ὃς δ᾽ ἦλθ᾽ ἔπειτ᾽, ἀντίπαλον ὁ Σεμέλης γόνος
βότρυος ὑγρὸν πῶμ᾽ ηὗρε κεἰσηνέγκατο
θνητοῖς, ὃ παύει τοὺς ταλαιπώρους βροτοὺς
λύπης, ὅταν πλησθῶσιν ἀμπέλου ῥοῆς,
ὕπνον τε λήθην τῶν καθ᾽ ἡμέραν κακῶν
δίδωσιν, οὐδ᾽ ἔστ᾽ ἄλλο φάρμακον πόνων.
οὗτος θεοῖσι σπένδεται θεὸς γεγώς,
ὥστε διὰ τοῦτον τἀγάθ᾽ ἀνθρώπους ἔχειν.”

Here is the passage, in my own fairly literal, prose translation:

“But then came the son of Semele, who found and carried in
the counterpart [of grain]: the liquid drink of the grape
for mortals, which ends the pain of suffering mortals.
Whenever they are filled with the flowing vine,
it gives sleep and forgetfulness from the evils of the day,
and there is no other medicine for hardships.
This god is made as a drink-offering to the gods,
so that through him human beings have happiness.”

I know my translation is clunky and does not read very well. Here is a poetic translation of the exact same passage by Emily Wilson, who is a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania and a widely respected translator of classical texts:

“Then came the son of Semele, who found
the liquid counterpart, the juice of grapes,
his gift of pain relief to suffering souls.
The flowing vine, drunk to the full, provides
sleep and forgetfulness from daily pain,
nor is there any other cure for trouble.
This god is poured as an offering to the gods,
so through this god comes human happiness.”

Here Teiresias envisions wine as the embodiment of Dionysos, bringing happiness to mortals through sweet intoxication. Unfortunately, you often encounter versions of this passage on the internet that have been deliberately tampered with to make the passage sound more like a description of the Christian Eucharist than it really is. For instance, here is an egregiously mistranslated version of the passage I just quoted that is in widespread circulation on the internet:

“Next came Dionysus, the son of the virgin,
bringing the counterpart to bread:
wine and the blessings of life’s flowing juices.
His blood, the blood of the grape,
lightens the burden of our mortal misery.
Though himself a God,
it is his blood we pour out to offer thanks to the Gods.
And through him, we are blessed.”

You can see how the passage has been utterly warped to make it sound as much like a Christian Eucharist as possible. In the original Greek, Dionysos is described as the “son of Semele,” but this mistranslation has replaced the name “Semele” with the phrase “the virgin,” even though Semele is not described as a virgin in the play. The Greek word meaning “virgin” is παρθένος (parthénos), but that word never occurs anywhere in the original passage.

Meanwhile, the Greek word αἷμα (haîma), meaning “blood,” never occurs anywhere in the original passage; instead the wine is described as “βότρυος ὑγρὸν πῶμ᾽,” which literally just means “liquid drink of the grape.” The translator, however, has opted to translate this phrase as “his blood, the blood of the grape” instead, which is a huge distortion of what the line actually says.

There are other passages in Greek literature in which wine is described as “blood.” For instance, as I mentioned before, in Leukippe and Kleitophon, Dionysos calls it “the blood of the vine.” Nevertheless, this is hardly of much significance, since wine really looks like blood and the comparison between them is virtually inevitable. There are no passages anywhere in Greek literature that I am aware of in which wine is specifically described as the blood of Dionysos poured out for the forgiveness of sins or indeed anything even remotely along those lines.

This egregious mistranslation of the passage that I have just exposed seems to come from a translation published in 1987 by a Greek Cypriot filmmaker named Michael Cacoyannis. Since then, it has become widely quoted in various Mythicist writings, such as the 2007 book Water into Wine by Tom Harpur. It has also become widely circulated online through various memes and articles.

ABOVE: Photograph of Ben Whishaw and Kevin Harvey as Teiresias and Kadmos from a modern production of Euripides’s Bacchae from 2015 (image found on this website)

Triumphal procession on an ass?

One of the memes I showed claims that Dionysos has a “triumphal procession on an ass.” There is one story in Greek mythology that you could maybe construe to mean that Dionysos had a “triumphal procession on an ass,” but it is a real stretch to interpret the story in which this happens as bearing any resemblance to the gospels.

I wrote about this myth previously in my article about how most stories in Greek mythology that involve Ares usually involve him getting beat up, but I will summarize it again here. Basically, the story goes that the god Hephaistos wanted revenge on his mother Hera for having thrown him off Olympos, so he presented her with a magic throne that, when she sat on it, trapped her so she could not escape. Then Hephaistos fled to his forge. Zeus declared that whoever could bring Hephaistos back and force him to free Hera would be given the goddess Aphrodite’s hand in marriage as a reward.

Ares, who loved Aphrodite, went out to apprehend Hephaistos with weapons, but Hephaistos blasted him with molten metal and he was forced to return to Olympos beaten and humiliated. Then Dionysos decided to try to subtler approach. He went to Hephaistos and offered him wine, which made him happy and relaxed. Then Dionysos convinced Hephaistos that, if he returned voluntarily and freed Hera on his own, he would be given Aphrodite as his reward.

The François Vase, an Attic black-figure volute-krater painted by a vase-painter named Kleitias, dating to between c. 570 and c. 565 BC, depicts the triumphal return of Hephaistos and Dionysos to Olympos. Hephaistos is shown riding on the back of a donkey, with Dionysos on foot ahead of him, and a couple ithyphallic satyrs walking along behind him.

You could maybe interpret this as a “triumphal procession” of Dionysos with a donkey, but it is a stretch. For one thing, in the François Vase, Dionysos is actually shown on foot and Hephaistos is the one on the donkey. I am going to say that, for me, this does not really count as a “triumphal procession on an ass,” since Dionysos is not actually the one on the donkey and, furthermore, the context bears no real resemblance to the story of Jesus’s triumphal entry to Jerusalem from the gospels.

ABOVE: Photograph of the François Vase, an Attic black-figure vase dating to between c. 570 and c. 565 BC. In the lower register shown here, the god Hephaistos rides on a donkey, with Dionysos walking ahead of him and satyrs walking along behind him.

“Man of the Tree” and crucifixion

One of the memes I showed at the beginning of this article claims that Dionysos’s “sacrificial title of ‘Dendrites’ or ‘Young Man of the Tree’ indicates he was hung on a tree or crucified.” δενδρίτης (dendrítēs) is a real epithet of Dionysos and it really does mean “Man of the Tree,” but it almost certainly does not refer to Dionysos (or anyone else) being crucified. The title comes from the Ancient Greek word δένδρον (déndron), meaning “tree.” The same word is the root of our English words dendrite and dendrochronology.

It takes an absolutely insane leap of logic to interpret the title δενδρίτης as having anything to do with crucifixion. The only way anyone could reach such an insane conclusion is by saying, “Well, crosses are made of wood and wood comes from trees, so anything that has anything to do with trees must refer to crucifixion.” I sincerely hope everyone can tell how absurd this reasoning is.

By the same reasoning, I reckon some ill-informed person could argue that the Magic Tree House children’s book series by Mary Pope Osborne must be about a cursed house where anyone who enters is brutally and gruesomely crucified by an invisible poltergeist, since, after all, the title of the series has “tree” in it and apparently the word “tree” can only possibly be a reference to crucifixion.

In reality, the title δενδρίτης almost certainly refers to Dionysos’s role as a fertility deity. Dionysos was associated with fertility, both in humans and in plants. He was believed to aid in the growth of plants, including trees. It is far, far more likely that the title δενδρίτης is a reference to Dionysos’s role in aiding the growth of trees than a reference to some unattested story in which Dionysos is crucified.

ABOVE: Larger-than-life second-century AD Roman marble sculpture of a nude Dionysos holding a bunch of grapes, and reclining against a tree stump with a Panther beside it. On Dionysos’s left is a satyr.

The now-lost hematite gem with “ΟΡΦΕΩΣ ΒΑΚΧΙΚΟΣ”

There is one other piece of evidence that you often see online cited as evidence that Dionysos was thought to have been crucified. This piece of evidence is a photograph of a carved hematite gemstone depicting a crucified man with the label “ΟΡΦΕΩΣ ΒΑΚΧΙΚΟΣ” beneath it, which means “Bacchic Orpheus.” This gemstone is often presented as definitive proof that Dionysos, who was also known as Βάκχος (Bákkhos), was believed to have been crucified.

Contrary to how it is usually presented, however, the gemstone is probably no such thing. The gemstone shown in the photographs was once held in the Early Christian Byzantine Collection I at the Berlin Bode Museum. At the museum, it had the inventory number 4939. Unfortunately, the original gemstone vanished from the museum’s collection during World War II and has never been recovered. It was most likely destroyed in a bombing or stolen. In any case, at this point it is unlikely that any professional scholar will ever set eyes on the gemstone again.

Scholars have long suspected for various reasons that the now-lost gemstone may have been a forgery created in the seventeenth or eighteenth century. Because the gemstone has been irretrievably lost, though, it is impossible for present-day scholars to examine it using modern techniques to determine whether or not it is a forgery. All we have are some old, black-and-white photographs of it and descriptions of it by scholars who studied it before it was lost. (The color image you normally see of the gem online is actually a colorized version of an originally black-and-white photograph.)

Even if it was authentic, details about the gemstone, such as the techniques that are believed to have been used to carve it and the style of the lettering on it, strongly indicate it would have dated to around the second or third century AD. That means that, even if the gemstone was indeed authentic, it was still probably carved after the canonical gospels were written. Therefore, the most likely explanation is that, if the gemstone was authentic (which it may not have been), it represents an unusual—perhaps even unique—example of very early Christian-pagan syncretism.

As I have discussed in previous articles such as this one I wrote in December 2017 and this one I wrote in March 2019, in late antiquity, there was a great deal of syncretism between Christianity and paganism, especially in terms of iconography. Oftentimes, Christians were the ones adapting pagan iconography to suit Christian figures, but, if this gem was authentic, it would be an almost unique example of pagans adapting Christian iconography to suit pagan figures.

If the gem was authentic, this would not prove that Dionysos was thought to have been crucified in pre-Christian times, but it would be evidence to suggest that some followers of Dionysos in late antiquity may have adapted the Christian story of the crucifixion of Jesus to suit a figure from their own mythology.

ABOVE: Colorized version of an originally black-and-white image of a carved hematite gemstone depicting a crucified man with the label “ΟΡΦΕΩΣ ΒΑΚΧΙΚΟΣ.” The original gemstone was lost during World War II and was never recovered, so it is impossible for scholars to examine it to determine its authenticity. Even if authentic, it would probably date to the second or third centuries AD.

A story involving both Dionysos and crucifixion

Ironically, the only story we have about Dionysos that involves crucifixion is not a story which Dionysos himself is crucified, but rather a story in which he crucifies someone else. According to a myth described by the ancient Greek historian Diodoros Sikeliotes (lived c. 90 – c. 30 BC) in his Universal History 3.65.5, Dionysos crucified his enemy Lykourgos by blinding him and crucifying him. Here is what Diodoros Sikeliotes says about the crucifixion of Pentheus, as translated by C. H. Oldfather for the Loeb Classical Library:

“Consequently he sailed across secretly to his army, and then Lykourgos, they say, falling upon the Mainads in the city known as Nysion, slew them all, but Dionysos, bringing his forces over, conquered the Thracians in a battle, and taking Lykourgus alive put out his eyes and inflicted upon him every kind of outrage, and then crucified him. Thereupon, out of gratitude to Charops for the aid the man had rendered him, Dionysos made over to him the kingdom of the Thracians and instructed him in the secret rites connected with the initiations; and Oiagrus, the son of Charops, then took over both the kingdom and the initiatory rites which were handed down in the mysteries, the rites which afterwards Orpheus, the son of Oiagros, who was the superior of all men in natural gifts and education, learned from his father; Orpheus also made many changes in the practices and for that reason the rites which had been established by Dionysos were also called ‘Orphic.’”

This is the only account we have the involves both Dionysos and crucifixion, but, even in this story, Dionysos is not the one who is crucified; instead, he is the one crucifying someone else.

ABOVE: Roman fresco from the House of the Vettii in the city of Pompeii, dating to the early first century AD or thereabouts, depicting Pentheus being torn apart by the Mainads, female followers of Dionysos. In the usual version of the Pentheus story, Pentheus is torn apart, but, in one particular version told by Diodoros Sikeliotes, he is instead crucified.

The death and resurrection of Dionysos

It is fairly incontrovertible that, in some stories derived from Orphic sources, Dionysos is indeed killed and reborn in some sense. Nonetheless, the memes that you see all over the internet drastically overstate the similarities between the death and resurrection of Dionysos in the Orphic stories and the death and resurrection of Jesus in the gospels. In the Orphic story of Dionysos’s death and resurrection, he is ripped to pieces by the Titans (or, in some versions, the Gigantes). Then, some other deity rescues some parts of his body and uses them to bring him back to life.

Exactly who manages to restore Dionysos to life and how varies from one account to another. In Pseudo-Hyginus’s version that I have quoted above, Iupiter puts the pieces of Liber’s heart in a potion and gives the potion to Semele to drink, thus causing her to become pregnant with Liber. Another version of the story is told by Diodoros Sikeliotes in Book Three of his Universal History. Here is Diodoros’s version of the story, as translated by C. H. Oldfather:

“And though the writers of myths have handed down the account of a third birth as well, at which, as they say, the Sons of Gaia tore to pieces the god, who was a son of Zeus and Demeter, and boiled him, but his members were brought together again by Demeter and he experienced a new birth as if for the first time, such accounts as this they trace back to certain causes found in nature.”

In this version, then, Dionysos is torn apart and boiled by the Titans, but his body parts are rescued and reassembled by Demeter. In no known version of the story is Dionysos ever described as being crucified and in no known version of the story is his rebirth specified to have taken place three days after his death.

None of the stories of Dionysos’s death and rebirth really bear any significant resemblance to the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus other than the mere fact that both stories involve a death and a rebirth of some kind. The mere fact that both stories involve a deity dying and being reborn in some way does not by any means mean that the Christian story is copied from the Orphic story. Tales of deaths and rebirths are common throughout the world and you need more than just that to establish a relationship between two stories.

The katabasis of Dionysos

One of the memes I showed above claims that Dionysos descended to the Underworld. This is correct. There is well-known a myth in which Dionysos descends into the Underworld to bring back his mother Semele. It is attested in multiple sources, although none of them relate the story in particularly great detail. The travel writer Pausanias (lived c. 110 – c. 180 AD) records in Book Two of his travel guide The Guide to Greece that the site where Dionysos descended to the Underworld to rescue Semele was said to have been the Spring of Amphiaraos at Lerna.

In any case, the story of Dionysos’s katabasis, or descent into the Underworld, does not really resemble any story in the Bible particularly well. There is no story in any of the gospels in which Jesus descends to the Underworld to bring back his mother Mary. You could perhaps relate the story of Dionysos’s descent into the Underworld to the post-Biblical myth of the Harrowing of Hell. The only possible reference to the Harrowing of Hell in the New Testament, though, is the First Epistle of Peter 4:6, which does not actually mention Jesus descending to the Underworld, but instead only states “the gospel was proclaimed even to the dead.”

It is also worth noting that stories about heroes descending into the Underworld are extremely common throughout mythologies from all around the world. In Greek mythology alone, the heroes Herakles, Theseus, Peirithous, Orpheus, and Odysseus all make journeys to the Underworld. In the Aeneid, an ancient Roman epic poem written in Latin by the poet Vergil (lived 70 – 19 BC), the hero Aeneas also makes a descent into the Underworld. The ancient fairy tale “Cupid and Psyche” also involves the heroine Psyche making a descent into the Underworld. Descending into the Underworld is not a trait unique to Dionysos.

ABOVE: Fresco of the Harrowing of Hell by the Italian Renaissance painter Fra Angelico, painted in around the 1430s

The ascension of Dionysos

The memes I showed at the beginning of this article claim that Dionysos “ascended to Heaven.” This is mostly correct. Technically Dionysos ascended to Mount Olympos, but I am willing to count that as “ascending to Heaven.” Before I even go on, I should point out that Dionysos’s ascension has nothing to do with his resurrection. Dionysos’s death and rebirth only occur in Orphic stories; whereas his ascension occurs in the mainstream, Olympian stories. In stories where Dionysos ascends to Mount Olympos, he is not reborn and, in the stories where Dionysos is reborn, he does not ascend to Heaven.

Furthermore, there is no clear connection between the stories of the ascension of Dionysos to Mount Olympos and the story of the ascension of Jesus described in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles 1:6–11. All the sources about Dionysos’s ascension basically just say that he ascended; none of them give any extremely detailed accounts about how he ascended. The Book of the Acts of the Apostles, on the other hand, gives a detailed account of Jesus being lifted up by a cloud while being watching by the twelve apostles. Afterwards, two men in white robes are described as appearing to the disciples to tell them that Jesus has ascended to Heaven.

This story in the Book of Acts about Jesus ascending on a cloud with the apostles watching seems more deeply rooted in Jewish mythology than anything in Greek mythology. In the Second Book of the Kings 2:1–12, there is a detailed description of the prophet Elijah being taken up into Heaven by a “chariot of fire and horses of fire” while being watched by the younger prophet Elisha, who becomes his successor.

The parallels between the story of the ascension of Elijah and the story of the ascension of Jesus are far, far more striking than the vague similarities between the ascension of Dionysos and the ascension of Jesus. For one thing, both Jesus and Elijah make their ascension while being watched by their closest followers. In Elijah’s case, it is Elisha watching him; in Jesus’s case, it is the twelve apostles. For another thing, both Elijah and Jesus are described as being taken up into Heaven as though by someone else. Neither of these elements are to be found in the stories about Dionysos.

ABOVE: Illustration from 1866 by the French illustrator Gustave Doré depicting the ascension of the prophet Elijah into Heaven on a chariot of fire, while being watched by the younger prophet Elisha. The story of Elijah’s ascension is a far more likely source for the story of Jesus’s ascension than any story about Dionysos.

Conclusion

There are a few genuine parallels between Jesus and Dionysos. The story of Jesus turning water into wine from the Gospel of John 2:1–11 has an unmistakably Dionysian flavor. Meanwhile, although the meme-makers seem to have bizarrely overlooked it, the Parable of the True Vine from the Gospel of John 15:1–17 has some imagery in it that smells strongly of Dionysos. In this passage, Jesus says “I am the true vine.” Since we know that the grapevine was apparently seen as an embodiment of Dionysos going back as far as Euripides, it seems plausible that the author of gospel meant to imply something along the lines of, “Jesus is the true vine; Dionysos is the false vine.”

The scholar Mark W. G. Stibbe has written extensively about the ways in which the Gospel of John parallels Euripides’s Bacchae. For instance, both the Gospel of John and the Bacchae are about a deity in human form visiting a land where he should be recognized. In both accounts, the deity has an essentially philanthropic goal. In both accounts, instead of being recognized by everyone, the deity faces various forms of hardship and persecution.

Finally, both stories end with a person being dressed in humiliating garb, led out of the city to a hill, and killed there in a horrible and gruesome way. (In the Gospel of John, it is Jesus himself who dies the gruesome death; in the Bacchae, it is Dionysos’s enemy, the stuck-up King Pentheus, who denies that Dionysos is a god and refuses to tolerate his subjects worshipping Dionysos.)

Stibbe, however, is careful to emphasize that he only thinks the Gospel of John was indirectly influenced by the Bacchae; he doesn’t think the author of the Gospel of John was deliberately imitating Euripides. The parallels he picks out are also relatively vague. In any case, the major parallels between Jesus and Dionysos are largely confined to the Gospel of John, which was the last of the canonical gospels to be written. The earlier gospels contain very little as far as overt Dionysian imagery is concerned.

It seems safe to conclude here that, although similarities between Jesus and Dionysos do exist, Mythicists on the internet massively exaggerate the similarities in effort to support their untenable position that Jesus was copied directly off Dionysos, when, in reality, Dionysian influences seem to have come at a relatively late stage in the development of the Christian conception of Jesus.

As I have said before, there was probably a historical Jesus who really preached in Galilee and Judaea in the early first century AD and was crucified outside Jerusalem under the orders of Pontius Pilate. The historical Jesus probably did not perform miracles, turn water into wine, walk on water, or rise from the dead, but he was probably a real person who taught at least some of the teachings that are attributed to him in the gospels. I wrote an article about the evidence for the existence of the historical Jesus back in March 2018. Although I maybe overstate my case a little bit in that article and make a few dubious arguments, most of the arguments I make in that article still hold.

ABOVE: Sixteenth-century Greek icon illustrating the Parable of the True Vine from the Gospel of John. How is it the meme-makers could make up obvious nonsense about Dionysos being born on December 25th and yet failed to notice the Dionysian parallels in the part from the Gospel of John where Jesus literally calls himself a grapevine?