The left-wing apologists have come out of the woodwork to excuse away that “gayest ever” Paris Olympics opening ceremony by claiming to rely on historical analysis to explain the debacle. Still, they are often garbling and mixing up history in the process.
The Daily Mail, for instance, claims that people are “getting it wrong” when they are criticizing the opening ceremony, especially the satirical depiction of Christianity and “The Last Supper.”
“The opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics sparked outrage for the so-called blasphemous depiction of the Last Supper, but a new theory has emerged about what the bizarre performance was really about.,” the paper attempted to explain.
The interpretation of the Greek God Dionysus makes us aware of the absurdity of violence between human beings. #Paris2024 #OpeningCeremony pic.twitter.com/FBlQNNUmvV
— The Olympic Games (@Olympics) July 26, 2024
“It was a representation of the event called the Feast of Dionysus. Greek God of festivity and feasting and ritual and theater,” said Reverend Benjamin Cremer.
“The Olympics are from Greek culture and tradition. French culture is deeply rooted in feasting, festivity, and performing arts,” Cremer added.
This, though, is misleading.
Firstly, Dionysus, the Greek God of Wine, had practically nothing to do with the Greek traditions of the Olympic Games. Indeed, Dionysus isn’t even mentioned among the Greek Gods listed on the Olympics’ own history webpage.
The webpage explaining the Greek traditions of the Olympic Games properly mentions Zeus, Hera, Athena, and Apollo. However, Dionysus is not mentioned because that particular God was not part of the group of Gods that the Games were originally created to honor.
Further, there are a lot of liberals on social media claiming that the opening ceremony is not an attack on Christianity because it is a depiction of the “ancient Greek Bacchanalia festivals.”
This is also a garbled history. Bacchus is a Roman God, not a Greek God, and there is no such thing as an “ancient Greek Bacchanalia festival.”
Bacchus was the Roman god of agriculture, wine, and fertility. He was the “equivalent” to Dionysus, but not the same as Dionysus.
While the Bacchanalia cult was influenced by the Greeks and their God, Dionysus, it mainly was a Roman tradition, not a Greek one. Bacchus was undoubtedly influenced by the Greek’s Dionysus, but the festivals the Greeks had differed from that the Romans later created
Unfortunately, many social media users are positing as axiomatic that Bacchus and Dionysus are one and the same and that all practices of one are present in the traditions of the other. But it is not so neat and tidy as that.
Not only is Bacchanal a Roman term, but historians think that the original Bacchanalia ceremonies were only open to female participants. It was also not associated initially with sexual indulgence but was a celebration of music, wine, and drunkenness. It is not exactly clear if sexual orgies were ever a part of the Bacchanal rites in Rome. Still, Roman critics of the cult’s activities portrayed them as libidinous, and later eras of history often depicted them in such a manner.
It seems likely that Roman officials were often displeased with the Bacchanal cults because they allowed lowborn and highborn citizens, both male and female, to freely associate and mingle, something that Roman officials tried to discourage. Eventually, the “Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus” was passed to bring Bacchanalia under the control of the Roman Senate so that its practices could be regulated and squelched as much as possible.
Again, none of this had anything whatever to do with the Olympics.
In the end, if today’s apologists want to cite history as a way to excuse away the excess of the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony, using the Roman Bacchanal and Greek history of the god Dionysus is a very weak way to go about it all.
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