¹ Scholem, Gershom, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken Books, 1961) 22 Google Scholar.

² Plutarch, Crass. 33.3–5; cf. Euripides, Bacch. 1169–1171 (1169: ὀρέων; 1171: θήραν).

³ Plutarch, Crass. 33.7: εἰς τοιο τόν φασιν ἐξόδιον τὴν Κράσσου στρατηγίαν ὥσπερ τραγῳδίαν τελευτ σαι.

⁴ Plutarch, Crass. 33.2: ν γὰρ οὔτε φων ς οὔτε γραμμάτων Ὑρώδης Ἑλληνικ ν ἄπειρος, ὁ δ᾿ Ἀρταουάσδης καὶ τραγῳδίας ἐποίει καὶ λόγους ἔγραφε καὶ ἱστορίας, ν ἔνιαι διασώζονται.

⁵ See Larsen, Matthew David, “Listening with the Body, Seeing through the Ears: Contextualizing Philo's Lecture Event in On the Contemplative Life ,” JSJ 47 (2016) 447–74Google Scholar, esp. 471 n. 116: “Contrapuntal reading seeks to show the hidden impact of imperialism in literature both in the form of accommodation, or mimicry, and resistance. Said proposes that literature written during the context of imperialism may insightfully be read with an eye to both adoption of imperial perspective as well as resistance.”

⁶ On the reading of the Bacchae even by the indocti, see Lucian, Ind. 19. For more on this, see section one below.

⁷ Weaver, John B., Plots of Epiphany: Prison-Escape in Acts of the Apostles (BZNW 131; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Seaford, Richard, “Thunder, Lightning, and Earthquakes in the Bacchae and the Acts of the Apostles,” in What is a God? Studies in the Nature of Greek Divinity (ed. Lloyd, A. B.; London: Duckworth, 1997) 139–51Google Scholar; Moles, John, “Jesus and Dionysus in The Acts of the Apostles and Early Christianity,” Hermathena 180 (2006) 65–104 Google Scholar; Lee, Doohee, Luke-Acts and ‘Tragic History’ (WUNT 2.346; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013)Google Scholar; and Friesen, Courtney, Reading Dionysus (STAC 95; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015)Google Scholar. For a study of Dionysus's later Christian reception history, see Massa, Francesco, Tra la vigna e la croce: Dioniso nei discorsi letterari e figurativi cristiani (II-IV s.) (Potsdamer Altertumswissenschaftliche Beiträge 47; Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2014)Google Scholar.

⁸ Stowers, Stanley K., “Romans 7.7–25 as a Speech-in-Character (προσωποποιία),” in Paul in His Hellenistic Context (ed. Engberg-Petersen, Troels; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995) 180–202 Google Scholar, esp. 199. On 1 Corinthians, see Friesen, Courtney, “ Paulus Tragicus: Staging Apostolic Adversity in 1 Corinthians,” JBL 134 (2015) 813–32Google Scholar. On Philippians, see Müller, Ulrich B., Der Brief des Paulus an die Philipper (THNT 11.1; Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1993) 93–95 Google Scholar; idem, Die Menschwerdung des Gottessohnes: frühchristliche Inkarnationsvorstellungen und die Anfänge des Doketismus (SBS 140; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1990) 20–26; idem, “Der Christushymnus Phil 2:6–11,” ZNW 79 (1988) 17–44, esp. 23–27; Samuel Vollenweider, “Die Metamorphose des Gottessohns: Zum epiphanialen Motivfeld in Phil 2, 6–8,” in idem, Horizonte neutestamentlicher Christologie: Studien zu Paulus und zur früchristlichen Theologie (WUNT 1.144; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002) 285–306.

⁹ In his most detailed assessment of the similarities between the Bacchae and Phil 2:6–8, Müller (Menschwerdung, 24) barely touches on the particular “fit” between Dionysus and Christ but merely lists the former as one example among many Greek and Roman gods in human form. Here, I argue for the particular echo of Euripides's Dionysus. Friesen's work on 1 Cor has rightly refocused attention on the importance of Dionysus and the Bacchae in Paul's thought more generally. He and I differ, however, in several points of emphasis: first, my test case is Philippi, not Corinth—a location that is particularly suited to an extended Dionysian reading. Second, I have focused particularly on the political and para-imperial importance of this tragedy in Paul's thought. Third, whereas Friesen's work focuses on Paul and his interlocutors as tragic figures, this study looks rather to the Dionysian (and tragic) Christ. Finally, and most importantly, as I will spell out in the course of this article, these differences lead Friesen and me to different understandings of the tragic inflection or “modality” of Paul's thought. In short, whereas Friesen focuses on the persistence of the tragic, I look toward its sublimation through eucatastrophe. The Paul I discover, at the end of his life in Philippians, is no longer only Paulus tragicus but also Paulus comicus (see Michael Benjamin Cover, “The Divine Comedy at Corinth: Paul, Menander, and the Rhetoric of Resurrection” NTS [forthcoming, October 2018]). Paul's citation of the Thais by the new-comic poet Menander in 1 Cor 15:33—particularly in a chapter on the resurrection—suggests that the “comic Paul” is present in the canonical 1 Cor as well. The “tragic” emphasis of Friesen's study of 1 Cor could thus be complemented by an appreciation of the comic dimension of Paul's thought, which I establish here. For further discussion, see section five below.

¹⁰ Nor does courtesy, as to do so unnecessarily would be, as Bockmuehl, Markus (“‘The Form of God’ [Phil 2:6]: Variations on a Theme of Jewish Mysticism,” JTS 48 [1997] 1–23)CrossRefGoogle Scholar puts it, both “conceited and dull.”

¹¹ So, e.g., Lohmeyer, Ernst, Kyrios Jesus: eine Untersuchung zu Phil. 2, 5–11 (SHAW 18; Heidelberg: Carl Winters Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1928)Google Scholar; Günther Bornkamm, “Zum Verständnis des Christus-Hymnus: Phil 2, 6–11,” in idem, Studien zu Antike und Urchristentum (BEvT 28; Münich: Kaiser, 1963) 177–87, esp. 178; Martin, Ralph P., A Hymn of Christ: Philippians 2:5–11 in Recent Interpretation & in the Setting of Early Christian Worship (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1997 [1967]) 40–41 Google Scholar, who suggests an Aramaic Vorlage; cf. Deichgräber, Reinhard, Gotteshymnus und Christushymnus in der frühen Christenheit: Untersuchungen zu Form, Sprache und Stil der frühchristlichen Hymnen (SUNT 5; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967) 129 Google Scholar, who concluded the opposite (“Der Hymnus erweist sich in seiner Sprache als gut griechisch.”); Hurtado, Larry, How on Earth Did Jesus Become God? Historical Questions about Earliest Devotion to Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005) 84–85 Google Scholar; Martin Hengel, “Hymns and Christology,” in idem, Between Jesus and Paul (London: SCM, 1983) 78–96; “The Song about Christ in Earliest Worship,” in idem, Studies in Early Christology (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1995) 227–91. For a variety of arguments against the classification of this pericope as “pre-Pauline” and a “hymn,” see Edsall, Benjamin and Strawbridge, Jennifer R., “The Songs We Used to Sing? Hymn ‘Traditions’ and Reception in Pauline Letters,” JSNT 37 (2015) 290–311 Google Scholar; Peppard, Michael, “‘Poetry’, ‘Hymns’ and ‘Traditional Material’ in New Testament Epistles or How to Do Things with Indentations,” JSNT 30 (2008) 319–42Google Scholar; Adela Yarbro Collins, “Psalms, Philippians 2:6–11, and the Origins of Christology,” BibInt 11 (2003) 361–72; Samuel Vollenweider, “Der ‘Raub’ der Gottgleichheit: ein religionsgeschichtlicher Vorschlag zu Phil 2.6(–11),” in Horizonte neutestamentlicher Christologie, 263–84, esp. 263–64; and Fee, Gordon, Paul's Letter to the Philippians (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995) 192–93Google Scholar. Bockmuehl (“Form of God,” 2), presents a mediating position: Paul is responsible for this material, whether he has composed it or not.

¹² On the exegesis of Isaiah in the hymn, see Hurtado, How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God, 91–93.

¹³ Bockmuehl, “Form of God,” 2.

¹⁴ Martin (“Hymn of Christ,” 26) suggests (following Lohmeyer, Kyrios Jesus) that “even death on a cross” is a Pauline addition.

¹⁵ In fact, my position in this study is the inverse of Vollenweider's (“Die Metamorphose des Gottessohns”), with whom I nonetheless share many instincts and critical judgments. Vollenweider notes, on the one hand, that “In Euripides’ [sic] Bakchen finden sich die engsten Berührungen mit Phil 2,6–8” (“Die Metamorphose des Gottessohns,” 288); but, on the other hand, that “[Epiphaniale Vorstellungen] spielen für unser Christuslob Phil 2,6–8 aber deshalb kaum eine Rolle” (ibid., 293). Suggesting the primary influence of Jewish apocalyptic tradition in the hymn, Vollenweider then offers a synthetic or blended reading, in which an angelomorphic christology is superimposed onto the backdrop of the pagan epiphanic metamorphic tradition (“im Vorstellungshorizont hellenistischer Götterepiphanien”; ibid., 296). Inversely, this present study takes the Hellenistic apocalyptic tradition as “given” and then asks what happens when a Bacchic mask is superimposed upon Christ by the hymn's composer(s), Paul, or an ancient reader.

¹⁶ Dunn, James D. G., “Adam, Christ, and Preexistence,” in Where Christology Began: Essays on Philippians 2 (ed. Martin, R. P. and Dodd, Brian J.; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998) 74–83 Google Scholar; cf. Hurtado, How on Earth did Jesus Become a God, 97–102.

¹⁷ Wright, N. T., “The Lion and the Eagle: Paul in Caesar's Empire,” in Paul and the Faithfulness of God (2 vols.; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013) 2:1271–1319 Google Scholar; Oakes, Peter, Philippians: From People to Letter (SNTSMS 110; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 129–74Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Barclay, John M. G., “Paul, Roman Religion, and the Emperor: Mapping the Point of Conflict,” in idem, Pauline Churches and Diaspora Jews (WUNT 1.275; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011) 345–62Google Scholar; and idem, “Why the Roman Empire Was Insignificant to Paul,” in Pauline Churches, 363–87. Petersen, Anders Klostergaard (“Imperial Politics in Paul: Scholarly Phantom or Actual Textual Phenomenon?” in People Under Power: Early Jewish and Christian Responses to the Roman Empire [ed. Labahn, M. and Lehtipuu, O.; Early Christianity in the Roman World; Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015] 103–29Google Scholar, esp. 113), worries that “in some recent studies, particularly those stemming from the guild of New Testament scholars, more weight is being ascribed to the relevance of the imperial cult as an appropriate context for the interpretation of Pauline texts than it actually merits.” Klostergaard Petersen considers Phil 2:6–11 just such an overanalyzed passage (ibid., 121).

¹⁹ See Standhartinger, Angela, “Letter from Prison as Hidden Transcript: What It Tells Us about the People at Philippi,” in The People beside Paul: The Philippian Assembly and History from Below (ed. Marchal, Joseph A.; Early Christianity and its Literature; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2015) 107–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Hidden Transcripts and the Arts of Resistance: Applying the Work of James C. Scott to Jesus and Paul (ed. Richard A. Horsley; Semeia Studies 48; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2004).

²⁰ Betz, Hans Dieter, Studies in Paul's Letter to the Philippians (WUNT 1.343; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015) 20–21 Google Scholar. See Phil 1:13 and Phil 4:22.

²¹ For the suggestion that the author of Luke-Acts held a similarly ambiguous relationship to the Roman empire, see Rowe, C. Kavin, World Upside Down: Reading Acts in the Graeco-Roman Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

²² See Bultmann, Rudolf, Jesus Christ and Mythology (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958)Google Scholar. Whereas Bultmann uses many lines from Athenian tragedy to construct the contemporary human subject, I am here using tragedy to reconstruct the divine object (or better subject) of faith(fulness).

²³ The Academic Platonist and polymath, Varro (116–27 BCE), is reported by Augustine (Civ. Dei 6.5) to have divided religion into three categories: mythical (or poetic); physical (or philosophical); and civic. Clearly, there were interactions between all three, as I am proposing here (between imperial cult, Platonizing ontology, and mythological drama). In this reading, civic and mythical theology are the most important.

²⁴ Henrichs, Albert, “Full of Gods: Nietzsche on Greek Polytheism and Culture,” in Nietzsche and Antiquity: His Reaction and Response to the Classical Tradition (ed. Bishop, P.; New York: Camden House, 2004) 114–37Google Scholar, esp. 125.

²⁵ Mac Góráin, Fiachra, “Virgil's Bacchus and the Roman Republic,” in Augustan Poetry and the Roman Republic (ed. Farrell, J. and Nelis, D. P.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) 124–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁶ Mac Góráin, Fiachra, “Apollo and Dionysus in Virgil,” Incontri di Filologia Classica 12 (2012–13) 191–238 Google Scholar, esp. 195.

²⁷ Oakes, Philippians, 210. Oakes (ibid., 209) considers the μορφή language as just such a potential locus. This is suggestive in that Paul elsewhere—particularly in the Corinthian Correspondence—uses εἰκών (alongside μορφή) to speak of Christ in a Platonizing mode. One can hardly think of a less Platonizing thing to say than that God has a μορφή (cf. Philo, Opif. 69: οὔτε γὰρ ἀνθρωπόμορφος ὁ θεός), particularly one that might be ranked in continuity with the human. Paul's focus on μορφή in a mythic or apocalyptic mode here arises from the “Roman” contingency of Philippians. Cf. Philo, Mos. 1.66, and the comments by Müller, Menschwerdung, 24, and esp. Bockmuehl, “Form of God,” 15.

²⁸ For a consideration of Paul's sending city as a kind of secondary audience for his letters, see Hartwig, Charlotte and Theißen, Gerd, “Die Korinthische Gemeinde als Nebenadressat des Römerbriefs: Eigentextreferenzen des Paulus und kommunikativer Kontext des längsten Paulusbriefes.” NovT 46 (2004) 229–52Google Scholar.

²⁹ For the division of the hymn into two major sections, see Lohmeyer, Ernst, Die Briefe an die Philipper, an die Kolosser, und an Philemon (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1956) 90 Google Scholar, who traces the view back to Johannes Weiss; and Martin, Hymn of Christ, 24–25.

³⁰ Bockmuehl, “Form of God,” 19; Martin, Hymn of Christ, 40–41, who gives an Aramaic retroversion.

³¹ On the link with the Shi‘ur Qomah, see Bockmuehl, “Form of God,” 16; Scholem, Major Trends, 63–67.

³² Dunn, Theology of Paul the Apostle, 281–88. See LXX Gen 1:27; Philo, Leg. 3.96; Opif. 69.

³³ Euripides, Bacch. 1–5; Plutarch, Crass. 33 (564–65).

³⁴ There are five divine prologues in Euripides: the other four are Hippolytus (Aphrodite), Alcestis (Apollo, compelled for a while to live among mortals, despite being a god), Ion (Hermes—who is the son and λάτρις of Zeus), and Trojan Women (Poseidon); see Esposito, Stephen, Euripides’ Bacchae: Translation, Introduction, and Notes (Focus Classical Library; Newburyport, MA: Focus, 1998) 26 Google Scholar.

³⁵ Dodds, E. R., Euripides: Bacchae (2^nd ed.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1960) 62 Google Scholar [emphasis in original].

³⁶ Apollo, in the Alcestis, is not said to take human form, but remains very much a God (Euripides, Alc. 1–2: ἔτλην ἐγὼ / θ σσαν τράπεζαν αἰνέσαι θεός περ ὤν); he eats human bread only because of Zeus's punishment (Alc. 3–4) and flees at the advent of the personified Death (!) to avoid pollution (Alc. 22–23: ἐγὼ δὲ, μὴ μίασμά μ’ ἐν δόμοις κίχῃ / λείπω μελάθρων τ νδε φιλτάτην στέγην). Hermes, in the Ion, comes closer to Dionysus (in certain ways), being a willing λάτρις of Zeus (a near synonym of δο λος, though hired rather than enslaved); Hermes is, however, δαιμόνων λάτριν (Ion 4), not the servant of human beings.

³⁷ Euripides, Bacch. 53–54.

³⁸ Phil 2:6c, 7cd. Not all agree that these are synonyms. See Wright, N. T., “Jesus Christ is Lord: Philippians 2.5–11,” in idem, The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991) 56–98 Google Scholar.

^{39 46} reads ἀνθρώπου, which is an even better parallel to Bacch. 55.

⁴⁰ The Ps.-Gregorian (Nazianzen) dramatic poet of Christus patiens, a 2062-line iambic work (ca. 11^th or 12^th cent. CE), recognized these intertextual affinities and combined Philippians 2 with the Euripidean prologue. In one scene, Mary holds the corpse of Jesus and says: σὺ Θεὸς μένων, μορφῇ τε σῇ συν ψας ἀνέρος φύσιν . . . μορφῇ συνάψας το Θεο βροτ ν φύσιν. See Ps.-Gregory, Chr. pat. 1536, 1543; cited in Friesen, Reading Dionysus, 257. On the comparison of Christ and Dionysius from Nonnus to Hölderlin, Nietzsche, and Girard, see Henrichs, Albert, “Loss of Self, Suffering, and Violence: The Modern View of Dionysus from Nietzsche to Girard,” HSCP 88 (1984) 205–40Google Scholar, esp. 216–17.

⁴¹ Recognition of these intertexts does not mean insisting that Jesus's incarnation was not a novum in the history of religions. The “real presence” of Dionysus on the tragic stage remains categorically different from the historical incarnation of the son of God in the historical man Jesus. On this point, Müller (Menschwerdung, 21) notes that the language of the hymn “soll die wirkliche Menschwerdung Jesu Christi zur Sprache bringen, was angesichts der religionsgeschichtlichen Umwelt des Urchristentums deshalb Schwierigkeiten bereitet, weil die reale Inkarnation eines Gottwesens, das sich seiner Göttlichkeit radikal entäußert, ohne geeignetes Vorbild ist” [emphasis added].

⁴² For Müller's position, see n. 9 above. For Vollenweider's even more cautious acknowledgement and deployment of these echoes of the Bacchae in the carmen Christi, see n. 15 above.

⁴³ Willis, William H., “A Census of the Literary Papyri from Egypt,” GRBS 9 (1968) 205–41Google Scholar, esp. 212, 215.

⁴⁴ On the preference for Euripides (over other tragedians) in “grammatical” education, see Cribore, Raffaella, Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001) 198–99Google Scholar: “The papyri generally show that members of the cultivated public were very fond of Euripides. . . . School papyri confirm this, showing an absolute preference for Euripides. . . . Yet Euripides enjoyed such favor in school not only because he was linguistically more accessible but also because a good knowledge of his work . . . was fundamental for the student who continued to rhetorical education” [emphasis added].

⁴⁵ For the “creative redeployment” of and competition with Euripides among Latin dramatists, see Boyle, Anthony J., An Introduction to Roman Tragedy (London: Routledge, 2006) 61, 95Google Scholar, et passim. For more on Dionysus in Rome, see section three below.

⁴⁶ Scott, James M., Bacchius Iudaeus: A Denarius Commemorating Pompey's Victory over Judea (NTOA/SUNT 104; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁷ Functionally, this would have little impact on the reading offered here, given that many contend that the Bacchae simply popularizes certain elements of Dionysiac cultic initiation. On this, see Seaford, Richard, “Dionysiac Drama and the Dionysiac Mysteries,” CQ 31 (1981) 252–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁸ Phil 2:6a, 7c. Dunn's attempt to read an adamic christology here stumbles, it seems, on prepositional metaphysics; for Christ is here depicted as being “in the form of God,” (ἐν μορφῇ θεο ) rather than being made “according to his image” (κατ’ εἰκόνα θεο ), a distinction of critical import for early Platonizing interpreters of the Pentateuch. See Philo, Leg. 3.96.

⁴⁹ Euripides, Bacch. 84.

⁵⁰ Euripides, Bacch. 1–3; cf. Rom 1:3.

⁵¹ Euripides, Bacch. 42.

⁵² Euripides, Bacch. 2 reveals the name to the audience; in Bacch. 466, the stranger speaks the name to Pentheus. The wording of this latter verse actually makes the stranger's identity ambiguous and ancient readers of the Bacchae held different positions. Pacuvius (Pentheus), the first Latin translator of Euripides, identified the prisoner with the devotee of Bacchus, Acoetes. Ovid, Metam. 3.511–733, followed suit. See Friesen, Reading Dionysus, 99–100.

⁵³ Euripides, Bacch. 1378.

⁵⁴ Euripides, Bacch. 64; see Segal, Dionysiac Poetics, 10.

⁵⁵ Phil 2:9bc; Sophocles, Ant., 1115.

⁵⁶ See Rhet. Her. 1.8.13: “Id quod in negotiorum expositione positum est tres habet partes: fabulam, historiam, argumentum. Fabula est quae neque veras neque veri similes continet res, ut eae sunt quae tragoediis traditae sunt.”

⁵⁷ See Euripides, Bacch. 516: οὔτοι χρεὼν / παθε ν; 616–621, esp. 616: ὅτι με δεσμεύειν δοκ ν. A docetic reading of the Philippians hymn was, according to John Chrysostom and Tertullian, proposed by Marcion, on the basis of the word ὁμοίωμα. On this, see Müller, Menschwerdung, 21. On the contrary, in Philippians, Christ really does suffer in his human form (Phil 3:10: το γν ναι . . . τὴν κοινωνίαν τ ν παθημάτων αὐτο , συμμορφιζόμενος τ θανάτῳ αὐτο ; Cf. 2 Cor 3:18); Paul is really in δεσμο ς (Phil 1:13, 14, 17).

⁵⁸ Henrichs, “Loss of Self, Suffering, and Violence,” 217; according to Henrichs (ibid., 218) it was the Romantics who first internalized Dionysus in “a newly found inner space, that of man's own self,” even if Ovid's Bacchus provided some precedent for the Renaissance and Romantic transformations of the god.

⁵⁹ Idem., “Greek and Roman Glimpses of Dionysos,” in Hauser, Caroline, Dionysos and his Circle: Ancient Through Modern (Cambridge, MA: Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University) 1–11 Google Scholar, esp. 3; see also ibid., 5–6: “The Greeks themselves . . . were happily innocent of abstract thoughts about their gods. Whether poets, artists, or simple souls, they would perceive Dionysos visibly in clear and concrete outline, with their real eyes, not with their intellect; they would experience the god in their very limbs, when dancing or drunk.” Cf. Nisbet, Robin George Murdoch and Hubbard, Margaret, A Commentary on Horace: Odes Book 1 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970) 19 Google Scholar: “In the West, Augustus was not a praesens deus.”

⁶⁰ Mac Góráin, “Dionysus in Rome,” 2.

⁶¹ Ibid., 3.

⁶² Ibid., 13.

⁶³ Pilhofer, Peter, Philippi: Band I; Die erste christliche Gemeinde Europas (WUNT 1.87; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995) 100–107 Google Scholar, esp. 105: “Diese Inschriften zeigen, daß der Kult Dionysos sich in römischer Zeit allgemeiner Beliebheit erfreut. Unter den Mysten finden sich Thraker, Griechen und Römer, d.h. der Gott ist bei allen drei Bevölkerungsgruppen akzeptiert.”

⁶⁴ Pilhofer, Philippi: Band I, 100, 103: “Ein Zentrum der Dionysos-Verehrung schon seit der hellenistischen Zeit ist Drama.” So also Χάϊδω Κουκούλη-Χρυσανθάκη, “Ο αρχαίος οικισμός της Δράμας και το Ιερό του Διονύσου” [“The Ancient Settlement of Drama and the Temple of Dionysus”] in Η Δράμα και η Περιοχή της· Ιστορία και Πολιτισμός, Δράμα 24–25 Νοεμβρίου 1989 (Drama: 1992), 67–107, cited in Pilhofer, Philippi: Band I, 101: “Το ιερό Διονύσου οπωσδήποτε πρέπει νε έπαιξε σημαντικό ρόλο στη ζωή και στην ανάπτυξη του αρχαίου οικισμού της Δραμας από τα τέλη του 4ου π.Χ. αιώνα ως και τους ρωμαϊκούς χρόνους.”

⁶⁵ Pilhofer, Philippi: Band I, 101, 103, 105. Latin inscriptions to Liber include the following: Pilhofer, Philippi: Band IΙ: Katalog der Inschriften von Philippi (WUNT 1.119; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995), §§094, 164, 332, 338, 339, 340, 341, 342 [Pater], 408 [Pater Deus Optimus], 500, 501c [Pater], 524, 525 [Liber Pater Tasibastenus]. For the thiasus Maenad[um], see Pilhofer, Philippi: Band II, §§340 (Philippi, House with a Bath); 095 (Philippi, Eastern Cemetery); restored in 529 (Road between Φωτολίβος and Συμβολή, 1000m before the first house of the latter town; Old Bridge of Kadim Köprü).

⁶⁶ Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology, 18, 31.

⁶⁷ Scholem, Major Trends, 22; similarly, Fishbane, Michael, Biblical Myth and Rabbinic Mythmaking (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁸ Theißen, Gerd, The Religion of the Earliest Churches: Creating a Symbolic World (trans. Bowden, John; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999) 325 n. 5Google Scholar; cited by Kraftchick, Steven J., “Recast, Reclaim, Reject: Myth and Validity,” in Myth and Scripture: Contemporary Perspectives on Religion, Language, and Imagination (ed. Callender, Dexter E.; Resources for Biblical Study 78; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2014) 179–200 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 194.

⁶⁹ Tacitus (Ann., 14.14–15) and Ps.-Lucian (Nero, 2, 4, 10) bear witness to Nero's Apollonian pretentions. For an interpretation of classical Attic tragedy (and the city Dionysia) as literally and inextricably interwoven with questions of civic stability, military decorum, and political hierarchy, see Goldhill, Simon, “The Great Dionysia and Civic Ideology,” in Nothing to Do with Dionysos? Athenian Drama in Its Social Context (ed. Winkler, J. and Zeitlin, F. I.; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990) 97–129 Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ Writ large, of course, the Nietzschean polarity of Apollo-Dionysus does not hold up to scrutiny. On this, see Mac Góráin, “Apollo and Dionysus in Virgil,” 198–200; and nn. 25 and 26 above.

⁷¹ Esposito, Bacchae, 4.

⁷² Friesen, Reading Dionysus, 101.

⁷³ Pelling, Christopher, “The Triumviral Period,” in The Cambridge Ancient History (ed. Bowman, A. K., Champlin, E., and Lintott, A.; 14 vols.; 2^nd ed.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) 10:1–69 Google Scholar, esp. 43.

⁷⁴ Horace, Carm. 1.2.29–30: “cui dabit partis scelus expiandi / Iuppiter”?

⁷⁵ Horace, Carm. 1.2.44: “Caesaris ultor”; Nisbet and Hubbard, Odes, 17, suggest that Octavian is himself in view here, not Julius Caesar.

⁷⁶ Segal, Dionysiac Poetics, 8: “The poetics of the form that belongs to [Dionysus] differs radically from the poetics of his opposite, the god of epic and lyric, Apollo.”

⁷⁷ Horace, Carm. 2.7.9–14; Harrison, Stephen, “Horatian Self-Representations,” in The Cambridge Companion to Horace (ed. idem; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) 22–35, esp. 25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁸ Mac Góráin, “Apollo and Dionysus in Virgil,” 200.

⁷⁹ Horace, Carm. 1.2.41.

⁸⁰ Vergil, Georg. 498–508. See Nisbet and Hubbard, Odes, 16–17.

⁸¹ Horace did make productive and creative use of Dionysian tradition, dedicating two Odes to Bacchus (Carm. 2.19 and 3.25). On these poems and their peculiarity, see Henrichs, “Glimpses,” 10, n. 50. Horace implicitly subjugates Bacchus to the order of Jove (a figure in Augustan propaganda) and turns him primarily into a poetic muse, but not civic genius (Mac Góráin, “Dionysus in Rome,” 1: “Bacchus was not central to the public worship of the state”), whose speech is channeled by Horace to praise Augustus. This is indeed “new wine in old wineskins,” as Henrichs (“Glimpses,” 10) quips. This two-pronged Augustan response to the “problem of Dionysus” has been emphasized by Mac Góráin (“Dionysus in Rome,” 11–12; “Virgil's Bacchus and the Roman Republic,” 124). In addition to “countering” with Apollo, Octavian “managed to recuperate a benign Italian Liber, decoupling him from Dionysus's more suspicious aspects, drunken debauchery, theatricality, and foreignness.”

⁸² Friesen, Reading Dionysus, 104.

⁸³ Accius, Frg. 217 (Remains of Old Latin, Volume II: Livius Andronicus; Naevius; Pacuvius; Accius [trans. E. H. Warmington; LCL 314; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936]): “Formae figurae nitiditatem, hospes, geris.” Cf. Euripides, Bacch. 453: ἀτὰρ τὸ μὲν σ μ’ οὐκ ἄμορφος ε , ξένε.

⁸⁴ Pilhofer, Philippi: Band II, §439, 2.2; for the link with Bromius, see ibid., 2.6.

⁸⁵ Euripides, Bacch. 1; Horace, Carm. 1.2.30.

⁸⁶ Euripides, Bacch. 5; Horace, Carm. 1.2.46.

⁸⁷ Euripides, Bacch. 436–37; Accius, Frg. 216: “Praesens praesto irridens leniter / nobis stupefactis sese ultro ostentum obtulit”; Horace, Carm. 1.2.46–49: “laetus intersis . . . / neve te nostris vitiis iniquium / ocior aura / tollat.”

⁸⁸ Mercury's vengeance is to be enacted in particular against the Parthians (!), whom Plutarch places in Dionysus's train. See Horace, Carm. 1.2.18, 44, 51 (Medos).

⁸⁹ Oakes (Philippians, 206–10) suggests that the major change that occurs in Phil 2:9–11 is that “Christ has replaced the Emperor as the world's decisive power.” While this does not mean that the christology of the hymn does not engage Isa 45, Oakes notes that the original exegetical and theological content has now been demoted to a secondary status, in light of the exemplarist purpose of the hymn and its “heavy reformulat[ion]” within the letter itself. Oakes's stress on the novum of the exaltation in political terms parallels Dunn's assessment of the novum of Christ's lordship in ontological terms. See Dunn, James D. G., Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998) 252 Google Scholar: “The exaltation to lordship which the resurrection brought Jesus . . . opens up for us the still more intriguing issue of whether Paul in fact assumed that the risen Christ had been deified.” This adoptionist/exaltationist potentiality in Paul's thought has been explored further by Peppard, Michael, “Adopted and Begotten Sons of God: Paul and John on Divine Sonship,” CBQ 73 (2011) 92–110 Google Scholar, with specific reference to Rom 1; and Ehrman, Bart, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (New York: HarperOne, 2014)Google Scholar.

⁹⁰ For the significance of the Bacchae in stretching male gender norms in classical Athens (and beyond), particularly the thesis that “theater uses the feminine for the purposes of imagining a fuller model for the masculine self,” see Froma I. Zeitlin, “Playing the Other: Theater, Theatricality, and the Feminine in Greek Drama,” in Nothing to Do with Dionysos?, 63–96.

⁹¹ Phil 4:2–3; Acts 16:14–15. On Euodia and Syntyche, see Joseph A. Marchal, “Slaves as Wo/men and Unmen: Reflecting upon Euodia, Syntyche, and Epaphroditus in Philippi,” in The People beside Paul, 141–76; and Valerie Abrahamsen, “Priestesses and Other Female Cult Leaders at Philippi in the Early Christian Era,” in ibid., 25–62, esp. 51–54.

⁹² The title ἐπίσκοποι occurs only here in Paul's undisputed epistles. Might this denote a growing acknowledgement of the significance of this office among the Pauline churches toward the end of Paul's life?

⁹³ See Mitchell, Margaret M., Paul, the Corinthians, and the Birth of Christian Hermeneutics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) 97 Google Scholar, for Paul's self-interpretation of previous letters; for Philippians as Paul's “last word,” see Betz, Studies in Paul's Letter to the Philippians, 152.

⁹⁴ For a more detailed analysis, see Portefaix, Lilian, Sisters Rejoice: Paul's Letters to the Philippians and Luke-Acts as Received by First-Century Philippian Women (ConBNT 20; Uppsala, Sweden: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1988)Google Scholar; Abrahamsen, “Priestesses and Other Female Cult Leaders,” 42–46; Bremmer, Jan M., “Roman Maenads,” in Albert's Anthology (ed. Coleman, K. M.; Loeb Classical Monographs 17; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), 23–5Google Scholar.

⁹⁵ Col 3:18, 20, 22.

⁹⁶ It is worth noting that “the swapping of identities between master and slave” was not only a tragic pattern but also “a regular motif of Greek ‘New Comedy’ and Roman comedy” (Boyle, Roman Tragedy, 95–96)—a point that will be relevant in section five of the present study.

⁹⁷ Portefaix (Sisters Rejoice, 144) draws a direct connection between female and christological servitude.

⁹⁸ For the feminine form of Dionysus and Pentheus, see Euripides, Bacch. 351, and ibid., 917 (Δι. πρέπεις δὲ Κάδμου θυγατέρων μορφὴν μι .), 981, respectively.

⁹⁹ Zeitlin, “Playing the Other,” 67: “Unless there were something to learn . . . we would not need the genre of tragedy at all to call these different [gender] roles into question, and . . . to challenge the male's civic and rational view of the universe.”

¹⁰⁰ Henrichs, “Glimpses,” 2.

¹⁰¹ Fiorenza, Elizabeth Schüssler (In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins [New York: Crossroad, 1983] 170)Google Scholar suggests that Euodia and Syntyche are “Christian missionaries”; see also Abrahamsen, “Priestesses and Other Female Cult Leaders,” 51–53.

¹⁰² Philo, Contempl. 12.

¹⁰³ For Dionysus's suffering human nature but simultaneously impassible divinity, see Euripides, Bacch. 500 (suffering); ibid., 515–16 (not suffering). See further n. 57 above.

¹⁰⁴ Euripides, Bacch. 54. Dionysus does not fail to speak of μορφήν τ’ ἐμὴν, even in changing his appearance; his goal becomes the violent revelation of that form. Cf. Phil 2:6b: οὐκ ἁρπαγμὸν ἡγήσατο.

¹⁰⁵ Henrichs, “Glimpses,” 11.

¹⁰⁶ See Jeff Jay, The Tragic in Mark (HUT 66; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014) 1–24.

¹⁰⁷ Jay, The Tragic in Mark, 3–11.

¹⁰⁸ Steiner, George, The Death of Tragedy (New York: Hill and Wang, 1963)Google Scholar; Milbank, John, The Word Made Strange: Theology, Language, and Culture (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1997)Google Scholar; Hart, David Bentley, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003)Google Scholar; Murphy, Francesca Aran, The Comedy of Revelation: Paradise Lost and Regained in Biblical Narrative (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2000)Google Scholar. For a helpful assessment of these critics, see Jay, The Tragic in Mark, 6; and Ben Quash, “Four Biblical Characters: In Search of Tragedy,” in Christian Theology and Tragedy: Theologians, Tragic Literature, and Tragic Theory (ed. T. Kevin Taylor and Giles Waller; Ashgate Studies in Theology, Imagination and the Arts; Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2011) 15–34.

¹⁰⁹ Jay, The Tragic in Mark, 5.

¹¹⁰ On theological “spaces,” see O'Regan, Cyril, Theology and The Spaces of Apocalyptic (Père Marquette Lecture in Theology; Milwaukee, WI; Marquette University Press, 2009) 26–34 Google Scholar.

¹¹¹ Kevin Taylor, “Hans Urs von Balthasar and Christ as Tragic Hero,” in Christian Theology and Tragedy, 133–48, esp. 143.

¹¹² Jay (The Tragic in Mark, 21) defines mode as “an evocation or distillation of a genre's internal repertoire.” See ibid., 79–106.

¹¹³ Friesen, “Paulus Tragicus,” 820, 827. See 1 Cor 4:8.

¹¹⁴ A similar terminological difficulty, arising from confusion about the terms “apocalyptic,” “apocalypse,” and “apocalypticism,” is addressed in Collins, John J., “Apocalypse: The Morphology of a Genre” (Semeia 14; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1979)Google Scholar.

¹¹⁵ See, e.g., Aristotle, Poet. 9.9; 10.2; and esp. 13.11–13, which suggests that the homecoming (νόστος) of Odysseus derives its pleasure from a comic ending.

¹¹⁶ Jay, “A Typology of the Tragic Mode,” in idem, The Tragic in Mark, 79–106.

¹¹⁷ For this description of the Hypolydian mode, see Palisca, Claude Victor, “The Ethos of Modes during the Renaissance,” in The Emotional Power of Music: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Musical Arousal, Expression, and Social Control (ed. Cochrane, Tom, Fantini, Bernardino, and Scherer, Klaus R.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) 103–14Google Scholar, esp. 107.

¹¹⁸ Plato, Resp. 424c. For the discussion of various modes, see Plato, Resp. 398d–399c.

¹¹⁹ Palisca, “Ethos of Modes,” 105.

¹²⁰ Plato, Resp. 398cd: Τίνες ο ν θρηνώδεις ἁρμονίαι; λέγε μοι· σὺ γὰρ μουσικός. Μειξολυδιστί, ἔφη, καὶ συντονολυδιστὶ καὶ τοια ταί τινες. Οὐκο ν α ται, ν δ’ ἐγώ, ἀφαιρετέαι; ἄχρηστοι γὰρ καὶ γυναιξὶν ἃς δε ἐπιεικε ς ε ναι, μὴ ὅτι ἀνδράσι. See Palisca, “Ethos of Modes,” 104–5.

¹²¹ Plato, Resp. 399d. By contrast, Palisca, “Ethos of Modes,” 107, gives the Classical description of Plato's forbidden Hypolydian as “Bacchic, intoxicating.”

¹²² With regard to Paul's comic fabula, it is noteworthy that the only iambic trimeter that Paul cites in his letters is from Menander's (Euripidean) comedy, Thais (1 Cor 15:33b).

¹²³ Murphy, The Comedy of Revelation, 345–46 [emphasis in original].

¹²⁴ This term was coined by J. R. R. Tolkien in his Andrew Lang lecture at the University of St. Andrews, “On Fairy Stories” in idem, Tree and Leaf (London: Harper Collins, 2001 [1964]) 3–80, esp. 68–69, wherein eucatastrophe involves “joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.” See also Murphy, The Comedy of Revelation, 1–28.

¹²⁵ Phil 3:10 offers further evidence for Paul's inversion of the tragic grammar: “the power of Christ's resurrection” precedes and conditions “the communion of his sufferings.”

¹²⁶ The same principle is followed by Renaissance composers like Josquin de Prez. See Meier, Bernhard, “Rhetorical Aspects of the Renaissance Modes,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 115 (1990) 182–190 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 184: “the ending dictates the character of the whole, ‘a fine denominatur res.’”

¹²⁷ See Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy, §11–15. For Socrates and the tragic, see Plato, Phaedo, 115a.

¹²⁸ See Betz, Studies in Paul's Letter to the Philippians, 22–40; 69–89; and esp. 141, for Phil 1:20–26 as a meditatio mortis (Seneca, Ep. 54.2) or praemeditatio futurorum malorum (Cicero, Tusc. 3.29–32; 1.74), a tradition whose concepts “point back to Plato.”

¹²⁹ For Nero's Apollonian pretensions, see Tacitus, Ann. 14.14–15; Ps.-Lucian, Nero 2, 4. For Nero's alleged murder of the tragic player at the Isthmus of Corinth, see Ps.-Lucian, Nero 9–10.