Dionysos, Pater Liber and the Jews
Dionysos and his rough Roman equivalent Pater Liber is one of the lesser known of the Greco-Roman pantheon. This in part because Dionysos only figures once in Homer and then is labelled as a cowardly god, but that august poet. It also doesn't help that throughout classical sources Dionysos - as well as Pater Liber - are regarded as the patrons of effeminacy and immorality. (1) It also isn't helpful that Dionysus was considered - as Pater Liber was after him (notably by Plutarch and Tacitus) - (2) to be an inherently subversive deity who always tried to break the defined boundaries of the community, (3) inspired the killing of kin (4) and broke down sexual boundaries between the sexes as well as between species. (5)
Yet Dionysos was also a devoutly heterosexual Greek god (6) who saved his followers before they died (7) and who was the patron of most - if not all - of what was truly enjoyable in the Greek world. (8) This meant that the cult of Dionysos had a strong and universal appeal (9) much as the cult of Pater Liber was to have later in ancient Rome in the form of the Bacchanalia.
We should further add that like Jesus: Dionysus was stretched out on a tree to die in some of the stories that tell of him. (10) This had lead to at least one suggestion (that I know of) which argues that Jesus was in fact a jewish corruption of the Greek cult of Dionysus and was then transmogrified through the cult of Pater Liber into the figure of Jesus. (11)
This resemblance is however probably more coincidental than anything else: (12) especially as if one was taken this to logical extension. Then one could argue that the creation of Adam and Eve - as well as a good part of the book of Genesis in the (Written) Torah was based off the stories attached to Prometheus where Zeus flooded the world in anger, which then precipitated Prometheus to create man (i.e. Adam) from mixing earth and water, (13) causing Zeus to create woman (in the shape of Pandora [= Eve]) who was to trick man into opening up Pandora's box (= eating the fruit of the forbidden tree) and unleash evil upon the world. (14)
However while early Christians certainly had a close relationship (more accurately: a deep-seated hatred for) Dionysos/Pater Liber (15) and Prometheus both [who actually probably deeply influenced some of their ideas]: (16) they were not the first monotheists to do so. We know that jews minted coins that had representations of Dionysos on them (17) and that the Romans in the Republican era associated Yahweh with Dionysos/Pater Liber as is suggested by Valerius Maximus. (18)
That the jews were expelled from the city of Rome for trying to pass the cult of Yahweh off as being the worship of a god equivalent to Dionysos/Pater Liber is superficially surprising and often leads to simple dismissals of it is Roman anti-jewish hype. (19) However as Gruen points out this makes little to no sense and even trying to explain it in terms of the arrival of a jewish embassy to Rome simply doesn't work. (20)
The solution - perhaps obvious to a student of Judaism - is rather simple: Purim.
It is the jewish holiday of revenge when jews believe (then as now) that they are divinely-commanded to get very drunk and anti-gentile violence often occurs (since the celebration is actually throwing a party for the jews committing mass murder against non-jews they disliked). (21) Further we know that jews had been celebrating this holiday for some time as the rules around its celebration were laid down in the Babylonian Talmud and the book of Esther itself is stated to have been known at the time of the jewish expulsion from Rome and its association with Dionysos/Pater Liber. (22)
By masking their own religious beliefs in terms of a well-established but controversial deity Dionysos/Pater Liber; it allowed the jews to escape the charge of atheism (such as Horace charged them a-la 'worshiping air') and thus prevented Judaism - with its omnipotent, omnipresent invisible god - being viewed as a subversive threat by the Roman authorities by linking it with the subversive but yet institutionalized and socially acceptable cult of Dionysos/Pater Liber. This then allowed jews to begin - as Maximus tells us - to try and control Rome by trying to convert influential Romans to their new 'cult' (a-la an 'Ancient Israel Lobby').
Like Maximus: Plutarch also believed that the worship of Yahweh was related to the worship of Dionysos/Pater Liber. (23) Since he suggested that like the Dionysiac festivals: the Sabbath included riotous festivities. This isn't that far fetched either considering that the jews are commanded to be joyous on the Sabbath and it isn't difficult to imagine some jews taking this too far or a sub-sect of jews deciding that the forbidding of work meant that one indulged in the opposite: absolute revelry until the end of the weekly celebration.
Tacitus however is more pointed in his denial that the festivals of Yahweh are in any way associated with those of Dionysos/Pater Liber. (24) Since as he says: the festivals of Dionysos/Pater Liber are joyous affairs designed to celebrate life and its blessings, while the festivals of Yahweh are torpid and morose affairs designed to remind the jews of the responsibilities of their enslavement to Yahweh.
This is in itself a reasonable position considering that the majority of jewish worshipers of Yahweh in Rome and its Empire would not have behaved riotously during the Sabbath, but as I have said in relation to Plutarch: it is eminently possible that some did and this is the origin of Plutarch's comment on the association of Dionysos/Pater Liber and Yahweh (it is also possible that Plutarch became confused with the most common and ancient of jewish prayers the 'Our Father' and associated Father/Pater in this context [Yahweh] with Pater Liber [the 'Free Father'] on the basis of phonetic similarity).
However from the jewish coins and the assertions of Maximus it is clear that jews really did associate with Dionysos/Pater Liber whether it be a political stratagem or not. This is given further weight to the fact that the fictional narrative in the books of the Maccabees includes a passage where the jews are threated with enslavement under the Greeks unless they agree to convert to the worship of Dionysos upon which they will receive the same civic privileges as the Alexandrians. (25)
The fact that the pious jewish authors we associate with the books of the Maccabees include such a story - even if it is clearly a flight of fantasy (since the 'campaign' this event supposedly occurred during never actually happened) - (26) suggests that for the jews there was a very real problem presented to them in the cult of Dionysos. If it was merely symbolic of degeneracy then the jews could have picked any number of other common local deities with similar 'degenerate' associations for jews - such as Isis or Hathor - but yet they picked Dionysos.
The answer to that question is again relatively simple in my view. We already know that at a similar time to the Maccabees: the jews were associating their worship of Yahweh with Dionysos/Pater Liber in Rome and that there was a great Hellenizing trend within the jewish community (both in Palestine and elsewhere). This would naturally mean that there were numerous jews desperate to be seen to be worshiping Dionysos in the communities spread out across the Mediterranean sea (as it was then fashionable), which would account for the coins being minted by jews with the images of Dionysos on them as well as where the jews in Rome got the idea of associating Judaism with the worship of Dionysos/Pater Liber from.
The perception of the worship of Dionysos being the destruction of boundaries and giving oneself up to the pleasures of the here and now (while being saved by the god before you die): would have greatly appealed to the jews in large part, because Judaism (then as now) is a remarkably restrictive, punitive and often plain boring religious system for practitioners. The cult of Dionysos was the very opposite: it allowed you to release yourself from the 'yoke of the Torah' and be a debauched libertine instead (while gaining access to a creditable afterlife situation).
Naturally there were those jews who remained devoutly attached to their perpetual slavery to Yahweh and conceived a deep and fanatical aversion to both the Hellenizing jews and their worship of other gods. (27) This probably crystalized for them in Dionysus since he was the proverbial anti-God force among their 'fallen kin': representing the temptations of everything that was forbidden to religious jews by their covenant with Yahweh. (28)
This only lead (predictably) to massacres by both sides and the Hellenizers calling in foreign troops to deal with the demented jewish religious fanatics (think Taliban but with a Torah rather than a Qu'ran). However it does inform us that the jewish relationship with Dionysos is born out of an almost unique tension in jewish culture: the total suppression of all 'evil urges' in Judaism or the unchecked release and indulgence in them as exemplified by Sigmund Freud and his 'Psychoanalysis'.
The jewish involvement with Dionysus/Pater Liber is not related to the worship of Dionysos/Pater Liber per se, but rather what the jews perceived the consequences of their worship of Dionysos/Pater Liber to be (i.e. being part of the jewish nation waiting for the Messiah to turn up and conquer the world or not bothering to wait and starting to conquer the world by engaging with it and shaping it in your image).
References
(1) Richard Seaford, 2006, 'Dionysos', 1st Edition, Routledge: New York, p. 53
(2) Harry Leon, 1960, 'The Jews of Ancient Rome', 1st Edition, Jewish Publication Society of America: Philadelphia, pp. 40-41; Martin Goodman, 2011, 'Rome & Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations', 1st Edition, Penguin: New York, p. 494
(3) Seaford, Op. Cit., pp. 60; 95-97
(4) Ibid, p. 96
(5) Ibid, pp. 75; 89; 96-97
(6) Ibid, p. 88
(7) Ibid, p. 81
(8) Stephen Halliwell, 2008, 'Greek Laughter: A Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early Christianity', 1st Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York, pp. 45-46; 105; 110-113; 126-139; 178-191
(9) John Boardman, N. Hammond (Eds.), 1982, 'The Cambridge Ancient History', Vol. 3, Part 3, 2nd Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York, p. 349
(10) Seaford, Op. Cit., p. 121
(11) Cf. Timothy Freke, Peter Gandy, 1999, 'The Jesus Mysteries: Was the Original Jesus a Pagan God?', 1st Edition, Thorsons: New York
(12) Seaford, Op. Cit., p. 121
(13) Carol Dougherty, 2006, 'Prometheus', 1st Edition, Routledge: New York, p. 5
(14) Ibid, p. 40
(15) Seaford, Op. Cit., p. 103
(16) Dougherty, Op. Cit., pp. 17-19
(17) Seaford, Op. Cit., p. 121
(18) Henry John Walker, 2004, 'Valerius Maximus: Memorable Deeds and Sayings', 1st Edition, Hackett: Indianapolis, p. 14; I have specifically commented on Maximus in the following article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/valerius-maximus-on-the-expulsion
(19) Erich Gruen, 2002, 'Diaspora: Jews amidst Greeks and Romans', 1st Edition, Harvard University Press: Cambridge, pp. 16-17
(20) Ibid, p. 17
(21) On this see Elliot Horowitz, 2007, 'Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence', 1st Edition, Princeton University Press: Princeton
(22) Babylonian Talmud, Bava Basra 15a
(23) Gruen, Op. Cit., p. 47
(24) Tac. Hist. 5:5
(25) Gruen, Op. Cit., pp. 76-77
(26) Ibid, p. 76
(27) Ibid, pp. 227-231
(28) Ibid, p. 217