jgibson000

Well, that's not quite what I asked you, is it.

In any case, in the citations I gave you and in the DS text, it means "fetus".

Jeffrey

gstafleu

I'm going by this translation. There, in Johnston's line 1227, it has "He's not born of woman's blood—". The chorus is here describing what will happen to Pentheus, who has just been tricked by Dionysos int going to spy on the maenads. The chorus announces what will happen to Pentheus, and the "he" referred to in 1227 is Pentheus, not Dionysus. Now why Pentheus is not born of a woman I don't know (his mother was Agave), but that's another issue (or is it?). Here is the relevant bit:
(My bold, line numbers in brackets are Euripides' numbers)

My guess is that the "not born of woman's blood" is there to indicate that Agave does not recognize Pentheus (she is going to tear him apart) and thinks he is some sort of demon.

Gerard Stafleu

gstafleu

That depends a bit on what you call "born of." One of Dionysos' names was Dithyrambos, "he of the double door." The two doors he went through being first his "birth" from Semele, then his "birth" from Zeus' "thigh" (euphemism for testicle afaik). In that sense it is not off the mark to think of Dionysos as (also) born from a woman.

Gerard Stafleu

gstafleu

What makes a god a savior god?

Gerard Stafleu

jgibson000

Is this meaning of this (rather infrequently aplied) epithet certain? And if it is, is it certain that the "doors" were Semele's womb and Zeus' thigh?

Do you get any sense from any of the stories of the "birth" of Semele's Dionysus that anyone in the ancient world thought that this "birth" was natural?

Jeffrey

jgibson000

Backtracking a bit ...

Can you tell me just where Dionysus is so named?

Jeffrey

gstafleu

I'm not sure how important the concept of "natural" birth is here. It seems to me we have two camps here, who are talking past each other. Camp one is looking for a fairly literal instance of "born from woman," before a god, in this case Dionysos, can be said to deserve that appellation. Camp two does not so much look at the words as at the concept. For example, given the process of Dionysos' birth, can it reasonably be described as "born from a woman." It is probably useful to separate the two, otherwise the discussion becomes disjoint.

Re Dionysos I hold no Camp 1 opinion. However I do think it is reasonable to say that he was "from woman born" in the Camp 2 sense. He clearly started life in Semele's womb. She didn't bring him to term but had a "miscarriage," after which he was implanted into Zeus testicle, who then brought him to term. For me, this is enough to say that D was from woman born--that fact that he is also "from man (or god) born" doesn't impact that. Contrast this with Aphrodite and Athena if you will, neither of whom are from woman born.

Now in the end what I think is secondary to what the Greeks of the time thought. What's more, a mode of correspondence between the thoughts of the ancient Greeks and the people of Paul's time re "from woman born" will have to be found before one can answer Ben's (implicit) question, I suspect. So we have a bit of a chicken and egg situation: we have to know what Paul meant by "from woman born" before we can say if we find the same concept elsewhere.

Lacking that, one can either look at the literal words (difficult I'd think, quite a bit of time had passed between Euripides and Paul), or we can go by the concept as we think it "naturally" applies. Also risky, of course. But the latter is what I suspect Camp 2 does, and I don't think it should be written of as invalid just because it is risky.

Gerard Stafleu

gstafleu

That is the interpretation I usually read, and it sounds reasonable to me. Of course it could be complete bogus. Do you have another interpretation?

Gerard Stafleu

gstafleu

Bacchae, Ian Johnston's translation:
I don't quite get what Dirce's place in this is, but there is a clearly stated equivalence between Dithyrambus and Bacchus (Dionysos).

Gerard Stafleu

jgibson000

It does? Why? Are you certain that the Greek word for door is actually part of, or to be found in, the name? Are you sure you are nor reading into the name what you want to see?

Yes. That of E.R. Dodds (ad Bacchae (or via: amazon.co.uk) 526) who, while noting that "Ancient scholars explained it [i.e. _Dithyrambos_ as a name of Dionysus] as _ho dis thuraze bebêkos_", follows LSJ and views this as a folk etymology, and lists some suggestions for the root meaning: "divine two-step" or "Lord of the Tomb" (the latter from Phrygian _dithetera_, "tomb"). He cites Pickard-Cambridge, _Dithyramb, Tragedy and Comedy_ (14ff) for a fuller discussion.

Jeffrey