What specific problems do you have with it, Faith1960? Dionysius was just one of many gods.
Jesus was the Son of God but also God, one of the three Persons of the Trinity, pre-existent and uncreated, sharing in the Divine Substance. Dionysius doesn’t match up well with that. His father was Zeus, who had sex with and impregnated Semele. Zeus sewed the infant Dionysus into his thigh to hide the illegitimate child from his jealous wife, Hera, so he was “twice born,” being born from the bodies of both a man and a woman. (Dionysus was frequently associated with sexual role reversal and homoeroticism, so his birth legend may be associated with those connections.) Other legends describe him as giving birth to himself, or as the child of incestuous sex between Zeus and his own daughter, Persephone, or Zeus and his own sister, Demeter. Unlike some claims by those who claim Jesus was a myth, there is no original textual evidence or traditions that he was associated with a December 25 birth or a March 27th death. Like most claims by the mythicists, someone made up those claims and they are uncritically cut and pasted on atheist sites, ad infinitum.
Almost all of the gods of ancient Greece and Rome were sons or daughters of other gods, and all were created beings. None were eternal, like God. None were virgin births, they were the offspring of sexual intercourse between two gods, or between a god and a human who is seduced, tricked by subterfuge, or raped by a god (and no longer a virgin). This bears no similarity to Jesus, who was conceived without sexual intercourse, by a young woman who was and remained a virgin, who was offered a choice to become the Mother of God, and who consented of her own free will.
Dionysus (also known as Bacchus) was the head of a fertility cult, which sought sexual and sensual abandon.
What miracles was Dionysius said to have performed? Every pagan god is said to have performed supernatural miracles. Jesus performed miracles as a Man, walking the earth, that were described as to person, place of occurrence, and approximate time in history, from the context of the Bible. Jesus’ miracles were acts of charity - healing the sick and lame, raising the dead to life. Dionysus’s miracles, by contrast, included driving the women of Thebes insane, after which they ran off into the woods, because he is peeved that the people of Thebes and their king refused to honor him. Dionysus is arrested, tricks the king into cross-dressing so he can spy on all the crazy women, and the king is then torn apart by the wild women, including his own deranged mother, who keeps his head as a trophy, thinking it is the head of an animal. He also drove women to devour their own children.
Okay, I missed that part of the New Testament.
Pliny the Elder, whose nephew provided some of the first extra-Biblical textual evidence for the Christian Church, wrote that a spring sacred to Dionysus produced wine, or at least water that was scented like wine. Pausanias wrote that the priests of Dionysus would put casks of water in a sealed vault, allow people to put their marks on the seals (sounds like a modern magic trick), and in the morning, then in the morning, abracadabra, the water would have been transformed into wine. Wow. There aren’t many more references to miracles.
In what sense was Dionysius “possibly” resurrected? In Jesus’ example, we have a specific place for the events of the Crucifixion and Resurrection, which was a one-time event, with numerous named witnesses who are known to be real historical figures. There were many mythological gods who died and were resurrected again and again, because they were symbols for the cycle of the harvest. There is one short reference in classical literature that describes Dionysus as participating in this kind of agricultural cycle. Thasos described Dionysus as a “god who renews himself and returns every year rejuvenated.” Diodorus Siculus tells a similar story, based on the cycle of grape harvest. This folk agricultural mythos was clearly not the case with Jesus. Dionysus was never said to have been crucified, but was torn apart as an infant by the Titans, and recreated by Zeus after he made a drink out of his crushed heart.
Hope this is helpful to you. If there are specific points that you have problems with, or think that this all still has some connection with the Gospels. let me know and I’ll try to point you towards the original textual sources.
