john76  October 2, 2017
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I have recently finished Dr. Dennis MacDonald’s new book “The Dionysian Gospel: The Fourth Gospel And Euripides (2017).”  It is another superb job by Dr. Dennis MacDonald, who this time turns his critical eye to the relationship between Euripides’ “Bacchae” and The Gospel of John. There can no longer be any doubt about the mimesis relationship between The Gospel of John and the “Bacchae.”

Dr. Dennis MacDonald’s analysis also leaves open plenty of room to ask why the Fourth Gospel and Luke may have been imitating the “Bacchae,” beyond the point that the author of The Fourth Gospel was trying to present Jesus as greater than Dionysus. If the goal of the first Christians was to replace the corrupt, Roman loving temple cult with faith in Jesus, perhaps in imitating the “Bacchae” The Fourth Gospel was poking fun at a literal understanding of Jesus’ miracles and resurrection.

When considering the “Bacchae” and what is essential in it to the ancient ear, we must always turn to the provocative speech by Cadmus where he says, regarding Dionysus, that: “Even though he (Dionysus) be no God, as you say, still say that he is. Be guilty of a splendid fraud, declaring him to be the son of Semele, for this will make it seem that she is the mother of a God, and will confer honor on all our race.” This is reminiscent of the argument to put forth a Noble Lie in Plato’s “Republic” to help encourage people to care more for each other and the Polis. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy characterizes it in the following way:

“For Plato we should live according to what reason is able to deduce from what we regard as reliable evidence. This is what real philosophers, like Socrates, do. But the non-philosophers are reluctant to ground their lives on logic and arguments. They have to be persuaded. One means of persuasion is myth. Myth inculcates beliefs. It is efficient in making the less philosophically inclined, as well as children (cf. Republic 377a ff.), believe noble things. In the Republic the Noble Lie is supposed to make the citizens of Callipolis care more for their city. For instance, Schofield (2009) argues that the guards, having to do philosophy from their youth, may eventually find philosophizing “more attractive than doing their patriotic duty” (115). Philosophy, claims Schofield, provides the guards with knowledge, not with love and devotion for their city. The Noble Lie is supposed to engender in them devotion for their city and instill in them the belief that they should “invest their best energies into promoting what they judge to be the city’s best interests” (113). The preambles to a number of laws in the Laws that are meant to be taken as exhortations to the laws in question and that contain elements of traditional mythology (see 790c3, 812a2, 841c6) may also be taken as “noble lies”.”

Lying about Jesus’ resurrection appearances/miracle stories might have been a cause the original Christians may have been willing to die for (if you believe the martyr stories, which most critical scholars don’t). In any case, maybe the author of the Fourth Gospel wanted us as a society to eventually see through the miracle/resurrection stories once enough time had passed and we had been baptized in Jesus’ ethical philosophy of loving your enemy and neighbor, and the world had become a better place. Maybe what the author of the Fourth Gospel wanted was for us as a society to grow up, and subsequently leave Jesus behind when we realize he had been modelled around the Noble Lie about Dionysus – fictions told to encourage loving behavior..

Dr. Dennis MacDonald’s fine new book “The Dionysian Gospel: The Fourth Gospel And Euripides (2017)” should be read along with John Shelby Spong’s recent book “The Fourth Gospel: Tales Of A Jewish Mystic,” the latter of which argues against the historicity of much of the material that is presented in The Fourth Gospel.

Nota Bene: If anyone is interested, I wrote a short blog post about “Noble Lies” in the Judeo Christian tradition here: ** you do not have permission to see this link **