But the politics and legality were only part of the concern. At stake was the entire social order. Jesus and Dionysus were two peas in a pod. They both stood for the revolutionary principle that everybody deserved the nectar of the gods, regardless of class. While the Greeks and southern Italians had many centuries to manage the uncomfortable balancing act between the 1 percent and the 99 percent, Jesus’s open invitation to an immortality potion like the Eucharist would have shocked the wealthy pagans of Galilee, as well as the influential Jewish families of Jerusalem. Magical wine was
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