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This Is My Flesh
John’s Eucharist and the Dionysus Cult
John 6 and the Dionysiac Model
In John 6:51-59, John describes the Eucharist of Jesus by modeling Dionysus. In particular, John 6:53, "unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you" is one of the most difficult verses found anywhere in the Bible.
To explain this, a new approach is needed when one consistently contemplates why John uses flesh (σάρξ) instead of body (σῶμα), and "This is my flesh", instead of "This is my body". The Dionysiac ritual of eating and tearing raw flesh shows cannibalistic elements.
Unlike other negative descriptions of cannibalism in ancient literature, Dionysus is described as both an eater and a giver of raw flesh. By reevaluating the negative term of cannibalism, John positively applies this Dionysiac cannibalism to the Eucharistic words in 6:51-59.
Because emphatically and slightly ironically, scholars' arguments show that John 6 is still a "hard teaching" of Jesus, Jesus' hard saying (6:60) is a consequence of this cannibalistic language and the ambiguous features of Dionysus.
