Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Dionysian Gospel: The Fourth Gospel and Euripides

Dionysian Gospel: The Fourth Gospel and Euripides

MacDonald, Dennis R.

Hardcover

Bible Studies

ISBN10: 1506423450
ISBN13: 9781506423456
Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Publishing
Published: Apr 1 2017
Pages: 268
Weight: 1.20
Height: 0.90 Width: 5.90 Depth: 9.10
Language: English

Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Dennis R. MacDonald offers a provocative explanation of those scandalous words of Christ from the Fourth Gospelan explanation that he argues would hardly have surprised some of the Gospel's early readers. John sounds themes that would have instantly been recognized as proper to the Greek god Dionysos (the Roman Bacchus), not least as he was depicted in Euripides's play The Bacchae. A divine figure, the offspring of a divine father and human mother, takes on flesh to live among mortals but is rejected by his own. He miraculously provides wine and offers it as a sacred gift to his devotees, women prominent among them, dies a violent deathand returns to life. Yet John takes his drama in a dramatically different direction: while Euripides's Dionysos exacts vengeance on the Theban throne, the Johannine Christ offers life to his followers. MacDonald employs mimesis criticism to argue that the earliest evangelist not only imitated Euripides but expected his readers to recognize Jesus as greater than Dionysos.

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