One
of Plutarch's friends, an otherwise unknown Athenian named
Moeragenes, equates the Jewish god with Adonis and Dionysus,
thereby presenting what to a Greek reader would have been
considered a complimentary account of Judaism.
At
this, all did urge him and beg him to go on. "First," he
said, "the time and character of the greatest, most sacred
holiday of the Jews clearly befit Dionysus.
When they celebrate their so-called Fast,
at the height of the vintage, they set out tables of all
sorts of fruit under tents and huts plaited for the most
part of vines and ivy. They call the first of the days of
the feast Tabernacles. A
few days later they celebrate another festival, this
time identified with Bacchus not through obscure hints but
plainly called by his name, a festival that is a sort of
'Procession of Brancha' or 'Thyrsus Procession,' in which
they enter the temple each carrying a thyrsus.
What they do after entering we do not know, but it is probable
that the rite is a Bacchic revelry, for in fact they use
little trumpets to invoke their god as do the Argives at
their Dionysia. Others of them advance playing harps; these
players are called in their language Levites, either from
Lysios ("Releaser") or, better, from Evius
("God of the Cry"). I believe that even the feast of the
Sabbath is not completely unrelated to Dionysus. Many even
now call the Bacchants Sabi and utter that cry when celebrating
the god. Testimony to this can be found in Demosthenes and
Menander. You would not be far off the track if you attributed
the use of this name Sabi to the strange excitement
(sobesis) that possesses the celebrants. The Jews
themselves testify to a connection with Dionysus when they
keep the Sabbath by inviting each other to drink and to
enjoy wine; when more important business interferes with
this custom, they regularly take at least a sip of neat
wine.
Now thus far one might call the argument only probable;
but the opposition is quite demolished, in the first place
by the High Priest, who leads the procession at their festival
wearing a mitre and clad in a gold-embroidered fawnskin,
a robe reaching to the ankles, and buskins, with many bells
attached to his clothes and ringing below him as he walks.
All this corresponds to our custom. In the second place,
they also have noise as an element in their nocturnal festivals,
and call the nurses of the god 'bronze rattlers.' The carved
thyrsus in the relief on the pediment of the Temple and
the drums (provide other parallels). All this surely befits
(they might say) no divinity but Dionysus. Further, the
Jews use no honey in their religious services because they
believe that honey spoils the wine with which it is mixed;
and they used honey as libation and in place of wine before
the vine was discovered. Even up to the present time those
of the barbarians who do not make wine drink mead, counteracting
the sweetness somewhat by the use of winelike bitter roots.
The Greeks, on the other hand, offer the same libations
as 'sober libations' and meli-sponda
on the principle that there is a particular opposition between
honey and wine. To show that what I have said is the practice
of the Jews we may find no slight confirmation in the fact
that among many penalties employed among them the one most
disliked is the exclusion of a convicted offender from the
use of wine for such a period as the sentencing judge may
prescribe."
