Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysus

I have no idea whether Dionysus did say that, but I just purchased a book by NT professor Dennis MacDonald

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B06Y5ZTGNQ

Dennis R. MacDonald, The Dionysian Gospel: The Fourth Gospel and Euripides

A few quotes from Wikipedia:

Dionysus (/daɪ.əˈnaɪsəs/; Greek: Διόνυσος) is the god of the grape-harvest, winemaking and wine, of fertility, orchards and fruit, vegetation, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, festivity and theatre in ancient Greek religion and myth

His thyrsus, sometimes wound with ivy and dripping with honey, is both a beneficent wand and a weapon used to destroy those who oppose his cult and the freedoms he represents

In his religion, identical with or closely related to Orphism, Dionysus was believed to have been born from the union of Zeus and Persephone, and to have himself represented a chthonic or underworld aspect of Zeus. Many believed that he had been born twice, having been killed and reborn as the son of Zeus and the mortal Semele.

Though most accounts say he was born in Thrace, traveled abroad, and arrived in Greece as a foreigner, evidence from the Mycenaean period of Greek history shows that he is one of Greece's oldest attested gods. His attribute of "foreignness" as an arriving outsider-god may be inherent and essential to his cults, as he is a god of epiphany, sometimes called "the god that comes"

The cult of Dionysus is also a "cult of the souls"; his maenads feed the dead through blood-offerings, and he acts as a divine communicant between the living and the dead.[15] He is sometimes categorised as a dying-and-rising god.[16]

Dionysus is an agriculture and vegetation deity. His connection to wine, grape-harvest, orchards,[17] and vegetation displays his role as a nature god. As the god of viticulture and grapes, he is connected to the growth and harvest of the fruit. In myth, he teaches the art of growing and cultivating the plant

At Knossos in Minoan Crete, men were often given the name "Pentheus", who is a figure in later Dionysian myth and which also means "suffering". Kerényi argued that to give such a name to one's child implies a strong religious connection, potentially not the separate character of Pentheus who suffers at the hands of Dionysus' followers in later myths, but as an epithet of Dionysus himself, whose mythology describes a god who must endure suffering before triumphing over it. According to Kerényi, the title of "man who suffers" likely originally referred to the god himself, only being applied to distinct characters as the myth developed

Epithets, one of dozens: Bromios Βρόμιος ("roaring", as of the wind, primarily relating to the central death/resurrection element of the myth,[50] but also the god's transformations into lion and bull,[51] and the boisterousness of those who drink alcohol. Also cognate with the "roar of thunder", which refers to Dionysus' father, Zeus "the thunderer".

Several ancient sources record an apparently widespread belief in the classical world that the god worshiped by the Jewish people, Yahweh, was identifiable as Dionysus or Liber via his identification with Sabazios. Tacitus, Lydus, Cornelius Labeo, and Plutarch all either made this association, or discussed it as an extant belief (though some, like Tacitus, specifically brought it up in order to reject it)

The Greek poet Nonnus gives a birth narrative for Dionysus in his late fourth or early fifth century AD epic Dionysiaca. In it, he described how Zeus "intended to make a new Dionysos grow up, a bullshaped copy of the older Dionysos" who was the Egyptian god Osiris. (Dionysiaca 4)[213] Zeus took the shape of a serpent ("drakon"), and "ravished the maidenhood of unwedded Persephoneia." According to Nonnus, though Persephone was "the consort of the blackrobed king of the underworld", she remained a virgin, and had been hidden in a cave by her mother to avoid the many gods who were her suitors, because "all that dwelt in Olympos were bewitched by this one girl, rivals in love for the marriageable maid." (Dionysiaca 5)[214] After her union with Zeus, Perseophone's womb "swelled with living fruit", and she gave birth to a horned baby, named Zagreus.

The mortal princess Semele then had a dream, in which Zeus destroyed a fruit tree with a bolt of lightning, but did not harm the fruit.

Zeus then spoke to Semele, revealing his true identity, and telling her to be happy: "you bring forth a son who shall not die, and you I will call immortal. Happy woman! you have conceived a son who will make mortals forget their troubles, you shall bring forth joy for gods and men." (Dionysiaca 7).[224]

Many of the Dionysus myths involve the god, whose birth was secret, defending his godhead against skeptics. Malcolm Bull notes that "It is a measure of Bacchus's ambiguous position in classical mythology that he, unlike the other Olympians, had to use a boat to travel to and from the islands with which he is associated

Needless to say, this explains why the Coptic Nag Hammadi writings all have a sti-ro-gram versus a staurogram.
And why they have those in abundance, versus a dozen in all of all Christian writings ever

Sa-ti-ros

https://www.academia.edu/49455506/How_t ... stirhogram

The Samaritan woman at the well in John, versus a scene from Bacchae by Euripides

Bacchae (A) - John 4:1–42 (B)

A Dionysus arrives in Thebes and drives the women into the hills to worship him at Mount Cithaeron. (216–23)

B Jesus arrives in Samaria and meets a woman at a well outside the city near Mount Gerazim, where Samaritans worshiped.

A Pentheus supposes that the women are conducting orgies in the wild. (222–23)

B The woman has been sexually promiscuous.

A Dionysus miraculously provides water to the maenads outside the city. (704–5)

B Jesus offers the woman living water, though he has no bucket.

A Dionysus promises his initiates eternal life.

B Jesus: “The water I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up into eternal life.”

A After the punishment of Pentheus, even the men of Thebes recognize the power of the god. Dionysus is a σωτήρ.

B After Jesus teaches the Samaritans who come out to him, they praise him as “the savior of the world.”

Same book by MacDonald:

Kobel: By consuming the animal’s raw flesh along with wine, both of which represent the deity, followers shared in the vital forces of their god. They substantially ingested the god. . . .

Reading John 6:56–58, which contains strikingly peculiar and graphic vocabulary, in light of these traditions proves to be allusive of these motifs. Whoever chews Jesus’s flesh and drinks his blood and therein demonstrates belief in Jesus, is said to attain eternal life. . . .

The allusions of theophagy as known from Dionysian tradition may well function as a means of reasserting to believers that Jesus is present among them, even within them, and provides life for them even after his own death.[65] Jesus’s final words to his disciples, the discourse on the true vine, again emphasizes his intimacy with his followers. “I am the true [ἡ ἀληθινή] grapevine. . . .
4 Abide in me, as I abide in you [μείνατε ἐν ἐμοί, κἀγὼ ἐν ὑμῖν]” (15:1a and 4a). The same sentiment appears here in chapter 6: “For my flesh is true [ἀληθής] food, and my blood is true [ἀληθής] drink. 56 The one chewing [τρώγων] my flesh and drinking my blood abides in me, and I in him [ἐν ἐμοὶ μένει κἀγὼ ἐν αὐτῷ]” (55–56). The emphasis on the “true grapevine,” the “true food,” and the “true drink” rivals claims made by Dionysian religion, according to which omophagia resulted in intimacy with the god. “[T]he Johannine use of τρώγειν here is not just a variant [word for ingesting food], but a deliberate emphasis on the reality of physical eating.”[66] Furthermore, the notion of drinking Jesus’s blood would have horrified any observant Jew, and for this reason the discourse gains its rhetorical power. “Then, when many of his disciples heard it, they said, ‘This saying is hard! Who can listen to it?’ . . .
66 From this point on, many of his disciples went back and no longer traveled with him” (6:60 and 66).

The distinctive qualities of the bread of life discourse make it difficult to interpret it in any light other than its reference to Dionysian religious imagery and practice.

I could go on, but the book is full of parallels, and most of them very compelling. It is interesting to see the similarities being drawn between Luke and John, and many verbatim parallels between Euripides and John are also found in Coptic (!) Thomas

MacDonald misses the painful irony of having a "Passer-by" doing the "carrying of the cross" of "Jesus" in the Synoptics and how John changes this into Jesus doing his own carrying.
Following my discovery of the stirogram and the tremendous implications of that, what Thomas meant with the phrase was to hold on to your (figurative, I hope) phallus, and most importantly to have it erect all the time, continuously focused on the process of creation: "coming out", "throw-sowing" (ejaculate), "filling-hand" (!!!) and "casting" - that is the exact order in the parable of the sower. And in the end, the produce is measured in "arrows"

What we have here is, first of all, a painful example of overlooking something that is right in front of your nose. I have studied Thomas in detail for 2 to 3 years now, and it never dawned me that the sower is exactly that: a sower!
It is all meant metaphysically, even though people like Davies can't wrestle themselves free from their xtian programming, and only take it literally - but the parable is a clear demonstration of a penis that "comes", and ejaculates.
The first verb is the same verb that Simon uses in the last logion when he asks that Marian "come (forth) in our belly" because "women aren't worthy of life" - and people even get outraged over the alleged misogyny of it, whereas someone should stand up for the poor pathetic disciples LOL. But I digress.
The sower comes in his hands, that apparently are empty - and then he casts; a movement that displaces something far away from himself, just like the fisher does, and it is used in 7 other logia. And only the good earth produces Fruit, and logion 20 will teach us that only earth that is worked upon returns on the investment.
And that is the main process in Thomas, that of creation, of showing seeds, as a way to find fertile ground - the Sowing is a mere means to the goal of locating fertile ground, and then that ground has to be worked upon. It is a repetitive process, a continuous one, and that is why Thomas calls to "Carry your satyros in my way", and that can only mean that he has a permanently erect penis - metaphysically speaking

The passer-by is a careless translation, even though the canonicals copy the Thomasine Greek loanword parage: to lead aside. But again, it's the most that John could do, with the other 3 having preceded him: leave out the dumb Passer-by and have Jesus hold on to his own dick - or, in Christian terms; carry his own cross

##########

All this will seem fantastic and wild and crazy to the casual and average visitor of this forum, and even to the hard-core minority that curates most of its content.
But it is fairly common Hellenic material for that time, nothing unusual. When you juxtapose it to Christianity and then look at it, the only conclusion can be that it is impossible that Thomas came second or last - and it is, he was prior to anything xtian, this is a one-way street at best.
It is impossible that Thomas turned xtian writings into what I now propose that he meant with it, and that leaves us with 2 choices: either refute my interpretation, or concede that the canonicals copied him

I'll tell you that the by far easiest way is the second, and I have travelled it already, in depth, and the material amounts to 1,500 pages, all of it freely available, on academia.edu as well as ResearchGate

If you want to travel that path backwards, well then there are 5 peculiar cases for you to solve as a first trial, before you may enter the maze:

search.php?keywords=Peculiar+case&terms ... mit=Search

Needless to say, I have to link to the 2014 discussion here involving the 37 BCE Herod coin depicting a staurogram

viewtopic.php?p=9489#p9489

I know of its existence since a few days - and really don't know what to make of it, let alone in combination with what I claim with regards to Thomas

mlinssen wrote: ↑Wed Jun 30, 2021 10:23 am https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysus

I have no idea whether Dionysius did say that, but I just purchased a book by NT professor Dennis MacDonald

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B06Y5ZTGNQ

Dennis R. MacDonald, The Dionysian Gospel: The Fourth Gospel and Euripides

A few quotes from Wikipedia:

Dionysus (/daɪ.əˈnaɪsəs/; Greek: Διόνυσος) is the god of the grape-harvest, winemaking and wine, of fertility, orchards and fruit, vegetation, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, festivity and theatre in ancient Greek religion and myth

His thyrsus, sometimes wound with ivy and dripping with honey, is both a beneficent wand and a weapon used to destroy those who oppose his cult and the freedoms he represents

In his religion, identical with or closely related to Orphism, Dionysus was believed to have been born from the union of Zeus and Persephone, and to have himself represented a chthonic or underworld aspect of Zeus. Many believed that he had been born twice, having been killed and reborn as the son of Zeus and the mortal Semele.

Though most accounts say he was born in Thrace, traveled abroad, and arrived in Greece as a foreigner, evidence from the Mycenaean period of Greek history shows that he is one of Greece's oldest attested gods. His attribute of "foreignness" as an arriving outsider-god may be inherent and essential to his cults, as he is a god of epiphany, sometimes called "the god that comes"

The cult of Dionysus is also a "cult of the souls"; his maenads feed the dead through blood-offerings, and he acts as a divine communicant between the living and the dead.[15] He is sometimes categorised as a dying-and-rising god.[16]

Dionysus is an agriculture and vegetation deity. His connection to wine, grape-harvest, orchards,[17] and vegetation displays his role as a nature god. As the god of viticulture and grapes, he is connected to the growth and harvest of the fruit. In myth, he teaches the art of growing and cultivating the plant

At Knossos in Minoan Crete, men were often given the name "Pentheus", who is a figure in later Dionysian myth and which also means "suffering". Kerényi argued that to give such a name to one's child implies a strong religious connection, potentially not the separate character of Pentheus who suffers at the hands of Dionysus' followers in later myths, but as an epithet of Dionysus himself, whose mythology describes a god who must endure suffering before triumphing over it. According to Kerényi, the title of "man who suffers" likely originally referred to the god himself, only being applied to distinct characters as the myth developed

Epithets, one of dozens: Bromios Βρόμιος ("roaring", as of the wind, primarily relating to the central death/resurrection element of the myth,[50] but also the god's transformations into lion and bull,[51] and the boisterousness of those who drink alcohol. Also cognate with the "roar of thunder", which refers to Dionysus' father, Zeus "the thunderer".

Several ancient sources record an apparently widespread belief in the classical world that the god worshiped by the Jewish people, Yahweh, was identifiable as Dionysus or Liber via his identification with Sabazios. Tacitus, Lydus, Cornelius Labeo, and Plutarch all either made this association, or discussed it as an extant belief (though some, like Tacitus, specifically brought it up in order to reject it)

The Greek poet Nonnus gives a birth narrative for Dionysus in his late fourth or early fifth century AD epic Dionysiaca. In it, he described how Zeus "intended to make a new Dionysos grow up, a bullshaped copy of the older Dionysos" who was the Egyptian god Osiris. (Dionysiaca 4)[213] Zeus took the shape of a serpent ("drakon"), and "ravished the maidenhood of unwedded Persephoneia." According to Nonnus, though Persephone was "the consort of the blackrobed king of the underworld", she remained a virgin, and had been hidden in a cave by her mother to avoid the many gods who were her suitors, because "all that dwelt in Olympos were bewitched by this one girl, rivals in love for the marriageable maid." (Dionysiaca 5)[214] After her union with Zeus, Perseophone's womb "swelled with living fruit", and she gave birth to a horned baby, named Zagreus.

The mortal princess Semele then had a dream, in which Zeus destroyed a fruit tree with a bolt of lightning, but did not harm the fruit.

Zeus then spoke to Semele, revealing his true identity, and telling her to be happy: "you bring forth a son who shall not die, and you I will call immortal. Happy woman! you have conceived a son who will make mortals forget their troubles, you shall bring forth joy for gods and men." (Dionysiaca 7).[224]

Many of the Dionysus myths involve the god, whose birth was secret, defending his godhead against skeptics. Malcolm Bull notes that "It is a measure of Bacchus's ambiguous position in classical mythology that he, unlike the other Olympians, had to use a boat to travel to and from the islands with which he is associated

One should note that Nonnus was a Christian who also wrote a paraphrase of John's Gospel. This may potentially account for some parallels between the Dionysiaca and the story of Jesus.

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle wrote: ↑Thu Jul 01, 2021 8:07 pm One should note that Nonnus was a Christian who also wrote a paraphrase of John's Gospel. This may potentially account for some parallels between the Dionysiaca and the story of Jesus.

Andrew Criddle

I can assure you that John Wesley Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at the Claremont School of Theology, Dennis MacDonald, knows (his Greek pretty well and) how to quote dozens of verses from John that have parallels with the Bacchae by Euripides

From http://www.usu.edu/markdamen/ClasDram/c ... ygkcom.htm

Satyr plays, another genre of humorous theatre, were part and parcel of the Greek tragedians' work as far back as the evidence allows us to see. At some point before or during the early Classical Age, the custom developed that a playwright competing at the Dionysia presented a trilogy of tragedies rounded off with a light-hearted satyr play. And even though only one such play (Euripides' Cyclops; see Reading 3) has survived from antiquity complete, there is much information extant about satyr plays. For instance, all evidence points to their following a predictable scenario: the rowdy satyrs intrude upon a standard myth, stir up comic havoc, nearly disrupt its set course, but in the end the traditional resolution of the myth is preserved and the satyrs head off for another jolly adventure. With that, the reason why these plays became popular seems obvious; the bigger question is how and when.

Though no pre-classical satyr play has survived to our day, there is sound evidence they existed before 480 BCE, as did the tradition of satyrs themselves, Greek mythological figures of great antiquity. Hesiod, for example, an epic poet who lived around 700 BCE, calls these half-man, half-beast divinities "brothers of wood nymphs" and "good-for-nothing and mischievous." On Greek vases, they have a long history, too, both before and after the Classical Age.

For instance, the satyrs had a leader named Silenus, sometimes called their "father," who can at times be wise, philosophical or ironical

after the Classical Age the satyr play was no longer a vehicle for original creative expression. While some evidence exists that Romans as late as the second-century CE composed satyr plays, these were probably only antiquarian exercises, not innovative nor even intended as viable theatrical pieces

This is no surprise, either, since satyr plays had two obvious strikes against them. First, their humor rested largely on a limited gimmick—the satyrs intrude upon and disrupt a conventional myth—which, while giving the play a clear structure, left less than ample room for the type of genius which comic theatre at its best can foster. Second, because of this, the attraction of these plays depended on the audience's understanding and appreciation of the myth being ridiculed, often in a dramatic form, and with the decline of tragedy after the Classical Age anything which depended on it naturally declined, too

The earliest known playwright of satyr plays is Pratinas—also a tragic poet as discussed above (see Chapter 7)—whom some scholars have suggested was, in fact, the inventor of the satyr play, at least in the form it was popularized later in the fifth century.

Traditionally, the philanthropic Titan arrives as a savior on earth to give his great gift to humans but in the satyr play he lands instead amidst a band of satyrs who steal the fire, and then proceed to do what satyrs do best, that is, eat it and kiss it—perhaps worse!

The one complete surviving satyr play written in the Classical Age comes from the hand of Euripides, who we know from his work in tragedy was quite proficient at comedy on stage. Thus, we are fortunate to have a satyr play of his, which, as it turns out, is quite entertaining. Called Cyclops, this play has a setting typical of the genre. The satyrs, as usual, find themselves embroiled in a traditional myth, in this case, trapped in the cave of the Cyclops Polyphemus with Odysseus, a famous passage from Homer's Odyssey

There were other important differences between comedy and tragedy in the Classical Age. Primarily, comic plots were considerably looser than those of tragedy. To wit, scenes do not necessarily follow each other logically, showing that it was more important for early comic playwrights to be funny than tell a coherent story. Even Aristophanes, who worked towards the end of the fifth century, constructed plots which are not always particularly well integrated, often taking unexpected and inexplicable turns in the story wherever and however humor was best served.

Another, and perhaps more telling, feature of Old Comedy is a distinctive section of the play called the parabasis ("step-aside"), a choral ode addressed directly to the audience and voiced through the author and not the characters as such. That is, in the parabasis the playwright takes the opportunity at a break in the stage action to discourse at liberty on whatever subject he wishes, not necessarily having to do with the play as such: the condition of the city at that moment, why he and not the other competitors should win the first prize, or anything else the author feels the need to say. The obvious para-theatrical nature of the parabasis—it constitutes a clear disruption in the dramatic illusion—is not out of line with Old Comedy in general, which often toyed with the fact that the story was, in fact, a show being presented before an audience

Wiki - been busy lately, sorry

From the earliest records, the ancient Sumerians had very relaxed attitudes toward sex.[2] The Sumerians widely believed that masturbation enhanced sexual potency, both for men and for women,[2] and they frequently engaged in it, both alone and with their partners.[2] Men would often use puru-oil, a special oil probably mixed with pulverized iron ore intended to enhance friction.[2] Masturbation was also an act of creation and, in Sumerian mythology, the god Enki was believed to have created the Tigris and Euphrates rivers by masturbating and ejaculating into their empty riverbeds.[3]

Male masturbation was an even more important image in ancient Egypt: when performed by a god it could be considered a creative or magical act: the god Atum was believed to have created the universe by masturbating to ejaculation.
The ancient Greeks also regarded masturbation as a normal and healthy substitute for other forms of sexual pleasure.[6][better source needed] Most information about masturbation in ancient Greece comes from surviving works of ancient Greek comedy and pottery.[4] Masturbation is frequently referenced in the surviving comedies of Aristophanes, which are the most important sources of information on ancient Greek views on the subject.[4] In ancient Greek pottery, satyrs are often depicted masturbating.[4][5]

It is highly interesting that the parable of the sower is the first in Thomas (if we consider the sobering parable of the net, even though it has multiple layers of metamorphosis, to belong to the introduction - yes I'm making that up as I go, apologies) as well as Mark and Matthew.
Not really, but when Matthew drops the word parable for the first time, it is to introduce the Sower. When Mark does, it is to introduce the Sower (there's a funny one in Mark 3:23 when he uses the word for the very first time, in the Beelzebul scene). Oddly, Luke doesn't play along at all?!

A process of creation, central to all of Thomas, and it shows where fertile ground is.
The question is what the Zizanion then stands for that his enemy, the slaveowner / Ego, is masturbating as well - even among his seed!

Thomas started it all - all of it - and it got copied and eventually turned into Christianity.
He invented the s(a)ti-rho-gram, the symbol for the satyr, the permanent erection - pointing to this right here, this perpetual process of creation in search for fertile ground to ideas in order to Find. Fertile ground that needs to be worked upon, just as the rather Dionysian vineyard is outsourced to be worked upon, which naturally miserably fails.
To Find - that there is nothing to Seek for, as the parable of the net showed already, portraying the hyperbolic Good Great Fish in a net drawn up from a Sea that is filled only with insignificantly trivial little fish.
To Seek - in order to Protect oneself from birds of the sky; the religious scouts that frequent the Proverbial Path with the sole goal of gathering you and leading you nowhere

You heard it here first, guys and gals.
One little letter - actually two, combined into one - is what did it