. . (snip) . . .
You write a jail break scene. Is your literary problem so different from Luke's or Euripides'? A fine writer like Tom Wolfe will have fun with it (In his novel, A Man in Full, Jupiter assists a prison break by collapsing part of the prison building - to hell with manacles, eh?... but it is the same picture, just retold by a professional storyteller who's aware that he's retelling, and so "biggesr, faster, higher..." are the only dgrees of freedom there are.)
Before: prisoner inside, with guards at hand. After: prisoner outside, guards ineffective in pursuit. Constraint: God needs to be seen helping the prisoner.
. . . (minor snip) . . .
Here's the description of the miraculous freeing of the prisoners in
The Bacchae, Related to Pentheus by one of his soldiers bolding added):
And there's something else—
those Bacchic women you locked up, the ones
you took in chains into the public prison—
they've all escaped. They're gone—playing around
in some meadow, calling out to Bromius,
summoning their god.
Chains fell off their feet,
just dropping on their own. Keys opened doors
not turned by human hands.
Now, here's the story of Peter's supernatural release from prison in Acts (Acts 12:6 - 10, bolding added):
The very night when Herod was about to bring him out, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries before the door were guarding the prison; and behold, an angel of the Lord appeared, and a light shone in the cell; and he struck Peter on the side and woke him, saying, "Get up quickly," and
the chains fell off his hands. And the angel said to him, "Dress yourself and put on your sandals." And he did so. And he said to him, "Wrap your mantle around you and follow me." And he went out and followed him; he did not know that what was done by the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision. When they passed the first and second guard,
they came to an iron gate leading to the city It opened to them of its own accord, and they went out and passed through one street and immediately the angel left him.
And here's the description of the supernatural release of Paul and Silas from prison (Acts 16:26, 27, bolding added):
. . . and suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken;
and immediately all the doors opened and everyones fetters were unfastened.
So, you're saying the similarity between the miraculous releases from prison in
The Bacchae and Acts are just coincidence?
Oh, give me a break. Is the saying "No man is a hero to his valet" ripped off from Euripides, too? "Familiarity breeds contempt?" Any constant irony of human experience will recur in literature. In human history, too.
You will also recall that Mark has a little twist on the trope: Jesus is rejected in his home town, so he goes to the big city, where he is crucified. Marcan Jesus is rejected everywhere. Dude can't even get figs from a fig tree. Mary probably had to tie a chicken wing around little Jesus' neck so that the family dog would play with him.
Of course Mark doesn't say that. In Mark Jesus says specifically (Mk. 6:4),
"A prophet is not without honor except in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house." The following verses say (Mk. 6:5, 6a):
And he could do no mighty work there except that he laid his hands upon a few sick people and healed them. And he marveled at their unbelief.
As Randel Helms points out in
Gospel Fictions, in the Synoptic Gospels faith causes miracles. Time after time, Jesus tells some one he has healed that their faith has made them free. For example, in Mk. 5:25 - 34, a bit before his rejection in his home town, a woman with "an issue of blood" is healed by touching the hem of Jesus' garment. He tells her in v. 34, "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed of your disease."
The fact that, in the Gospel of Mark, everywhere he goes crowds throng around him and people beg him to heal them directly contradicts your assertion: "Marcan Jesus is rejected
everywhere. "
BTW, the many comparisons of Jesus to Dionysus weren't made to liken him to that Greek god so much as to say he was
better than Dionysus. For example, in
The Bacchae, the women possessed by Dionysus go mad. In Acts, when the disciples are possessed by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, they gain enlightenment and are able to speak languages they never knew. Remember also Justin Martyr's famous assertion in chapter 21 of his
First Apology that Christians propose nothing new and his citing of various gods and heroes from Greek myth as parallels to Jesus.
