A Short History of Christianity: Second Edition, Revised, With AdditionsRobertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
History
A Short History of Christianity: Second Edition, Revised, With Additions
Robertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Church history
Of kindred character and equivalent range with the cults of Attis and
Adonis was that of Dionysos, the most many-sided of the divinities
adopted by the Greeks from Asia. Figuring first as Bacchus, a Thracian
God of beer, [17] and later as the God of wine, he seems to have made
way in early Greece partly by virtue of the sheer frenzy set up in his
women worshippers by unwonted potations. But such phenomena caused
their own correction; and the adoption of the cult by the cities
brought it within the restraining sway of Greek culture. Of all the
older Greek worships, the most popular was that (perhaps oriental in
origin) of Dêmêtêr and Persephonê, the Mourning Mother and the Virgin
Daughter, who had primarily signified mother earth and the seed corn;
and with their worship in the great Eleusinian mysteries was bound up
that of Dionysos. Son of Zeus and the Virgin Goddess Persephonê or
the mortal virgin Semelê--for the myths were legion--he was carried
in effigy as a new-born babe in a manger-basket on the eve of the
winter solstice. In this capacity he was pre-eminently the Babe-God,
Iacchos, "the suckling." Further, he figures in one myth as being
torn to pieces by the Titans, [18] and as restored to life or reborn
(after Zeus has terribly avenged him) by his mother Semelê (really
an old Earth-Goddess) or by the Mother-Goddess, Dêmêtêr; wherefore
he is represented as a suckling at Dêmêtêr's breast. In the triennial
dramatic mysteries in his honour an eating of raw flesh by the devotees
was held to commemorate his sacrificial death, which was, however,
mystically conceived to mean the making of wine from grapes. In other
and commoner forms of the sacred banquet, the wine figured specially
as his blood, and the bread as Dêmêtêr=Ceres; and in this transparent
form the symbolism of "body and blood" was a household word among the
Romans. In their popular religion, being assimilated to an ancient
Roman God, the Wine-God was known as Liber, "the child," as "Father
Liber," and as Bacchus, while Ceres or Proserpine was paired with him
as Libera. The doctrine, found among the Manichæans in the fourth
century, that "Jesus hangs on every tree," is in all likelihood a
development from this worship, in which Dionysos was God of the vine
in particular, but of all vegetation besides. For such mystics as
wrote and conned the Orphic hymns, however, he was a God of manifold
potency; and there centred round him a whole theosophy of ascetic
ethic, in which the ideal of the worshipper was to strive, suffer,
and conquer in common with the God, who was the giver of immortality.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account