From "Reading Dionysus: Euripides’ Bacchae and the Cultural Contestations of Greeks, Jews, Romans, and Christians" by Courtney Friesen:
From "Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life" by By Karl Kerenyi:A juxtaposition of Jesus and Dionysus is also invited in the New Testament Gospel of John, in which the former is credited with a distinctively Dionysiac miracle in the wedding at Cana: the transformation of water into wine (2:1-11). In the Hellenistic world, there were many myths of Dionysus' miraculous production of wine, and thus, for a polytheistic Greek audience, a Dionysiac resonance in Jesus' wine miracle would have been unmistakable. To be sure, scholars are divided as to whether John's account is inspired by a polytheistic legend; some emphasize rather it's affinity with the Jewish biblical tradition. In view of the pervasiveness of Hellenism, however, such a distinction is likely not sustainable. Moreover, John's Gospel employs further Dionysiac imagery when Jesus later declares, "I am the true vine". John's Jesus, thus,presents himself not merely as a "New Dionysus," but one who supplants and replaces him.
On the island of Andros, after the introduction of the Julian calendar, the same date[January 5th] was set for a Dionysian miracle, the transformation of the water from a certain spring into wine...It seems strange however--and was already thought strange in antiquity--that the Athenians should have chosen so cold a month as their Gamelion[January] for marriages...The marriage performed between the two festivals of Dionysos, the Leneaia and the Antheesteria, permitted the wives to participate in the second festival in a different way from the virgins. In that night Dionysos appeared as the woman's higher husband, the embodiment of indestructible zoe, and for this their marriage was a preparatory phase.
