Bacchus.
Bacchus was a Roman god, or rather a Roman modification of the Greek god, Dionysos. He was the god of wine. He cultivated the vine, made wine, and encouraged its use. His worship extended over nearly the whole of the ancient world. It consisted largely of protracted festivals, where wine flowed freely, and joyous and noisy ceremonies were indulged in.
This god and his worship have survived in Christ and Christianity. Christ was called a “winebibber” ([Luke vii, 34]); he made wine—his first miracle was the conversion of water into wine ([John ii, 1–10]); he blessed the winecup, and commanded his disciples to drink in remembrance of him ([Luke xxii, 17]), just as the devotees of Bacchus drank in remembrance of their god. Christianity, more than all other religions combined, has contributed to keep alive the Bacchanalian feasts and revelries.
“Bacchus,” says Volney, “in the history of his whole life, and even of his death, brings to mind the history of the god of Christians” (Ruins, p. 169). The cabalistic names of Bacchus and Jesus, Volney says, were the same.
United with the worship of Bacchus, and similar to it, was the worship of the goddess Ceres (Demeter). Her rites were known as the Eleusinian mysteries. Cakes were eaten in her honor. And thus in the bread of Ceres and the wine of Bacchus we have the bread and wine of the Christian Eucharist. “It is well known,” says Dr. Westbrook, “that the Athenians celebrated the allegorical giving of the flesh to eat of Ceres, the goddess of corn, and in like manner the giving his blood to drink by Bacchus, the god of wine.” This worship, like the Mithraic worship, which also included the communion, had its origin in the East, and was one of the first, as well as one of the last, of the religions of ancient Greece and Rome.
Another rite connected with the mysteries was the use of holy water. Lempriere, in his “Classical Dictionary,” describing the Eleusinian mysteries as they existed in Greece centuries before the Christian era, says: “As the candidates for initiation entered the temple, they purified themselves by washing their hands in holy water.”
The mysteries comprehended the origin of life, and nature worship was included in the ceremonies. At the festivals women carried the phallus in their processions. Regarding the worship of Bacchus and Ceres at Rome, “Chambers’ Encyclopedia” says: “These rites degenerated, and came to be celebrated with a licentiousness that threatened the destruction of morality and of society itself. They were made the occasion of the most unnatural excesses. At first, only women took part in these mysterious Bacchic rites, but latterly men also were admitted.”
The Roman government suppressed the later Bacchanalian and Eleusinian feasts, together with the Christian Agapae, because of their debaucheries, obscenities, and supposed infant sacrifices. Meredith, in “The Prophet of Nazareth” (pp. 225–231), institutes an examination to ascertain “how far the Eleusinian and Bacchanalian feasts resembled the Christian Agapae.” His conclusion is that the facts “show clearly that the Christian Agapae were of pagan origin—were identically the same as the pagan feasts.” Gibbon says: “The language of that great historian [Tacitus, in his allusion to Christians] is almost similar to the style employed by Livy, when he relates the introduction and the suppression of the rites of Bacchus” (Rome, vol. 1, P. 579).
Referring to the Agapae, Dr. Cave says it was commonly charged that Christians “exercised lust and filthiness under a pretense of religion, promiscuously calling themselves brothers and sisters, that by the help of so sacred a name their common adulteries might become incestuous” (Primitive Christianity, Part II, chap. v). Describing the Carpocratians, an early Christian sect, Dr. Cave says: “Both men and women used to meet at supper (which was called their love-feast), when after they had loaded themselves with a plentiful meal, to prevent all shame, if they had any remaining, they put out the lights, and then promiscuously mixed in filthiness with one another” (Ibid).
The “International Cyclopedia” says: “With the increase of wealth and the decay of religious earnestness and purity in the Christian church, the Agapae became occasions of great riotousness and debaucheries.”