Eat My Flesh, Drink My Blood: Jesus or Dionysus?

---

In this final installment of our three-part series on the Greek god Dionysus, we journey to the influential city of Ephesus—home to the community John was writing to—to examine just how prominent Dionysus worship was in the cultural fabric of this Greek world.

John's audience knew Dionysus well.

From there, we head north to Pergamum—one of the seven churches mentioned in the Book of Revelation—where the Temple of Dionysus stood in connection with a grand 10,000-seat theater.

Each year, worshipers would gather to celebrate Dionysus, the god of wine, transformation, and resurrection.

We then explore one of the most striking elements of this worship: the ritual consumption of meat and wine—the symbolic flesh and blood of Dionysus—believed to unite the participant mystically with the god.

This ritual provides a powerful backdrop to Jesus’ radical statement in John 6: “Eat my flesh and drink my blood.”

The Gospel of John presents Jesus turning water into wine—not as a random miracle, but as a deliberate theological claim: Jesus is greater than Dionysus.

​He offers the true transformation—the kind that leads us back to the image in which we were created. For those seeking authentic change, John points to the one who is the visible image of the invisible God.

---

Lesson Handout:

CLICK HERE

---

Plutarch on Jews Worshiping Dionysus

CLICK HERE