Untitled - Memorial University of Newfoundland

which he turned water in to wine at the wedding at Cam (SL John 2:2-1 1).47
Soyinka hasthe Chri st figure drink first fro m the cup with the water turn ed into win e
and passes it to the character represen ting his mother who had alerted him to the lack
of wine; she then passes it to Mary in the manner of the communion rite instituted
after the celebrated last supper with Jesus and his discip les. As this scene fades
slowly, Dionysos is holding the cup of wine and passingit on to Pentheu.s (69).
Soyinkasucceeds in transferring the western rite, which symbolizes Chris t's broken
body and shed blood as a sacrifice , back to the earlier god , Dionyso s, and earlier still
to the African god . Ogun . Emerging from the tableaux , Dionysos warns Pentheus not
to take shadows too seriously and to "continue to reject illusion- (69) . It is as
shadows, illusions and distortions that Soyi.nka is definin g curocentric ideologies as he
continues to insist that the Dionysian cull, like Christianity, bas non-European roots:
I see Christianity merely as another expression of nature religion. I
cannot accept, I do not regard the principle of sacrifice as belonging to
the European world. I completely reject the idea that the notion of the
scapegoatis a Christian idea. This scapegoatidea is very much rooted
in African religion (Gates . 36).
In interrogating eurocentri c views of the primacy of western religion, Soyi.nkarejects
Christianity's doctrine of the pre-existence of the incarnate Christ and comparesbim in
his humanity with Dionysos or Ogun who took on mortal fOnDs. 48
Opposing the hierarc hical. linear nature of western philosophical tradition and
culture. Soyinka explains in Myth that -the world of the unborn. in the Yoruba
worldview, is evidently older than the world of the living as the world of the living is
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