In a very savage form of religion there appears the notion that men could partake of the divine nature by actually eating the god. For example, in the worship of Dionysus, the worshipers in the height of religious frenzy tore in pieces the sacred bull and devoured the raw flesh. Here the bull apparently represented the god himself. This savage practice stands in external parallel with certain passages in the New Testament, not only with the references in John vi to the eating of the flesh and drinking of the blood of Christ, but also (though less clearly) with the Pauline teaching about the Lord's Supper. In 1 Cor. x. 16 Paul speaks of the "cup of blessing" as being communion of the blood of Christ, and of the bread as being communion of the body of Christ. Have we not here a sublimated form of the pagan notion of eating the god? The supposition might seem to be strengthened by the parallel which Paul draws a few verses further on between the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons, and between the table of the Lord and the table of demons (verse 21), the demons, it is said, being regarded by Paul as identical with the heathen gods. But the trouble is that the savage notion of eating the god does not seem to have survived in the Hellenistic mystery religions. At this point, therefore, the student of comparative religion is faced with a difficulty exactly opposite to that which appears in most of the parallels which have been set up between the teaching of Paul and pagan religion. In most cases the difficulty is that the pagan parallels are too late; here, on the contrary, they are too early. If Paul is dependent upon the pagan notion of eating the god, he must have deserted the religious practice which prevailed in his own day in order to have recourse to a savage custom which had long since been abandoned. The suggestion does not seem to be very natural. It is generally admitted that even where Christianity is dependent upon Hellenistic religion it represents a spiritualizing modification of the pagan practice. But at this point it would have to be supposed that the Christian modification proceeded in exactly the opposite direction; far from marking a greater spiritualization of pagan practice, it meant a return to a savage stage of religion which even paganism had abandoned. Efforts are sometimes made to overcome this objection. "We observe in the history of religion," says Heitmüller, "that tendencies connected with low stages of religious development, which in the higher stages were quiescent or extinct, suddenly spring up again--of course in a modified form adapted to the changed circumstances."[220] Such general observations, even if they are based upon fact, will hardly serve to render the present hypothesis any more plausible. Dependence of the Pauline teaching about the Lord's Supper upon the savage notion of eating the god, when even paganism had come to abandon that notion, will always seem very unnatural.