Is Jesus a copy of Dionysus?
Every so often someone lines up Jesus beside Bacchus — the Greek Dionysus — and says the story looks recycled: a god who dies, a god who rises, a cup of wine. The question is worth facing honestly, and the commentators do face it, asking both where such resemblances come from and whether the Gospel accounts behave like myths at all.
The claim stated plainly
The comparison is not new. One writer quotes a verse used in a modern initiation ceremony that strings the dying-and-rising gods together — "Bacchus died and rose again on the golden Syrian plain, Osiris rose from out the grave..." — and then answers the argument head-on:
A. J. PollockIn time the worship of Bacchus was sternly prohibited by the Romans, apparently not without recourse to military force, and finally completely stamped out. If the pagan power of Rome was driven to take action against this disgusting and obscene worship, and wiped it off the face of the earth, how is it that Christians can respond to the invitation to "join hands" with such? Look at the claim made for Bacchus, that he died and rose again. Is this not an attempt to put the death of our adorable Lord on a level with the imaginary and revolting god of the heathen? We may well ask, "What accord has Christ with Belial?"
Why the resemblance exists
The parallels are not denied. They are explained. One writer gives two causes: real events remembered in garbled form, and deliberate imitation.
A. J. PollockWe are told there were virgin births, sacrificial deaths, and the like, before ever the Bible story was known... We are not surprised at this... The reason why they have come to us in the Bible so vividly, so full of detail and so true to life, in such contrast to the stories of the heathen, where fable is plainly mixed up with fact, is because the account the Bible gives is God-inspired. And as to the virgin births and sacrificial deaths before the Bible story came, we know that the devil is a great imitator, and doubtless started these things so as to bring the gospel story into discredit. They were foretold in the Old Testament Scriptures, and Satan could anticipate them for his own evil ends.
Imitation is described elsewhere as a settled method rather than a coincidence. Where open attack fails, a copy is produced instead:
C. H. MackintoshIn marking the forms of Satan's opposition to the truth of God, we find that his method has always been, first, to oppose it by open violence; and then, if that did not succeed, to corrupt it by producing a counterfeit.
What the pagan gods were actually made of
A copy can be tested by its content. The gods of the nations, one writer argues, were built out of the men who worshipped them:
The Bible TreasuryThe wisest among the old heathen could not go beyond himself; that is, he could not conceive of any attributes other than the ones nature displayed. These were developed to perfection in his gods, but it was the perfection of sin... The portraits of man's deities were sketched in his heart, and painted in the colours of a degraded imagination. Thus man is known from the character of his gods. His gods are the impersonation of his sin, his vices raised to the rank of gods.
Measured by that standard, Jesus runs the wrong way. He is unlike the gods men make and unlike the heroes men write:
James BoydThe gods of the heathen are given passions like the ones men have; they are morally like men, but with greater strength. And if I take the heroes of the novelist, pride and self-reliance are the prominent features, for these are the qualities men delight in — but not one of them is like Jesus... If those fishermen of Galilee invented Him, how is it that no one has been able to invent another who can be compared with Him?
Dated history, not "once upon a time"
Myths float free of dates and officials. The account of Jesus does not, and the fixed points can be checked against writers outside the Bible:
A. J. PollockWe must destroy the Annals of Tacitus, the Biographies of Suetonius, the Letters of Pliny, if we wish to get rid of the testimony to the fact that in the reign of the Emperor Tiberius there lived one called Christ, that Judea and Galilee were the places of His teaching, that He was put to death by the command of Pontius Pilate, that after His death His doctrines and teaching spread rapidly through Greek-speaking and Roman-speaking lands, that multitudes of converts were made, who worshipped Jesus as God, and for His sake suffered bitter persecution.
Witnesses who could be questioned
The resurrection was published while the people who claimed to have seen it were still available:
William Kelly"After that he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep." Never was a truth better attested. The greater part of these five hundred united witnesses still survived if anyone doubted. Even if a person were prejudiced enough to accuse the twelve of a plot, what unreasonable folly to think such a thing of so large a body of ordinary disciples, above all suspicion of motive or position?
Summary
- Copy — The charge is old, and the answer given is that imitation runs the other way: the counterfeit is Satan's standard method once open attack fails.
- Source — Resemblances are not denied; they are traced to real events dimly remembered and to a spoiler who could read the Old Testament predictions in advance.
- Substance — Man-made gods are man enlarged, his own vices promoted to divinity; Jesus resembles nobody that men invent, and nobody has managed a second like Him.
- Record — Legends avoid dates; this account names Tiberius and Pontius Pilate, and secular historians would have to be destroyed to erase it.
- Result — More than five hundred living witnesses could have been cross-examined, so the story stands as testimony, not as fable.