One Dionysos, now and forever!
You are great, O Successor of Zeus,
and greatly to be praised. It is joy
to worship you; thrice-joyous to become drunk
on your miraculous wine. Our heart is restless
until it rests in you, Savior of men upon the Earth,
Guide and goal of the souls who walk the labyrinth-like
path through the Underworld to Mount Nysa,
where your wild ones abide with you forever.
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The House of Vines 
By what margin does Big D predate Ye Olde Jeebus?
There seems to be a movement to monotheise Dionysus. I can see it, but not sure i like it.
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The earliest reference to Dionysos that we presently have is an inscription in Linear B from Pylos dating to the Mycenaean era (circa 1,500 BCE) though Linear A is still in the process of being deciphered so there’s every chance that he was known during the even earlier Minoan period. Of course most scholars assume his origins are much older than that and lie elsewhere, though the specifics are hotly debated.
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Of course. Everything’s a debate.
That’s something. I heard on a podcast that Dionysus was Mycenaean which would make the claim of his being a foreign deity ironic for all the yes please reasons. But, I wasn’t sure. The claim was also that Dionysus predates Apollo, who himself can be said is imported.
I know even less of Apollo because I have a creative grudge against Mark Brahmin. (Probably great in person.) But we don’t need to go there.
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Dionysos is always a Stranger/foreign God, no matter how long or how central he is to the cultus of a particular location. That has more to do with his nature than the vagaries of history.
Apollon (and several other major Classical Greek Gods) are absent from Minoan-Mycenaean God lists, so it’s very probable that Dionysos arrived in the Mediterranean well before them.
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Now that’s an interesting take. And it makes sense. I wonder if this applied to others. I felt this way of Odin.
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There were some late groups (circa 4th or 5th century CE) that worshipped Dionysos either in a monotheistic or monolatrist form, but this is fairly unique and probably the result of Judeo-Christian influence. Some (though not all) sects of Orphism believed that Dionysos would succeed Zeus as the supreme God of the Greek pantheon. More often what you find are groups which formed around the veneration of Dionysos, but also honored the Gods and Spirits who were part of Dionysos’ circle (i.e. major Gods who had close relationships with him, personified abstractions, nature spirits, etc.) Then you’ve got more mainstream groups which just treated Dionysos as an important member of the standard Greek or Roman pantheon, and sometimes he was even treated as a minor, insignificant deity.
There’s similar diversity among contemporary Hellenic polytheists. Most treat him as one among many, though often he’s their favorite and the focus of most of their devotion. Almost none are monotheistic, or even accept the Orphic succession theory however.
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Of course, it’s really impossible to say. The first part of Dionysos’ name is inseparable from Zeus, which means he can’t be dated before the Indo-European invasion. If Dionysos was venerated in Hellas (or neighboring lands) before then it would have to have been under a different name, which leads us into the realm of pure speculation. Now there are divinities who share symbols and functions with him from that prehistoric era but their relationship to Dionysos is unknown.
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