The mythical Theban king Pentheus refused to worship Dionysus when the god returned to his birthplace, and as a result Dionysus destroyed him, making Pentheus to be torn limb from limb by an insane group of Theban women led by his own mother, Agave.

Euripides recounts the story in the Bacchae, where Dionysus (in disguise as a foreign worshiper of…well, of himself, i.e., in disguise as a man) gives Pentheus ample opportunity to quit his low-down ways. At one point (794-95), Dionysus says this:

θύοιμ’ ἂν αὐτῶι μᾶλλον ἢ θυμούμενος
πρὸς κέντρα λακτίζοιμι θνητὸς ὢν θεῶι.

I would sacrifice to him rather than kicking against the goads

In a rage–you are a mortal in conflict with a god.^[1]  

Pentheus replies:

θύσω, φόνον γε θῆλυν, ὥσπερ ἄξιαι, 
πολὺν ταράξας ἐν Κιθαιρῶνος πτυχαῖς.

Oh, I’ll sacrifice all right: by rousing much murder of the women

In the glens of Kithairon, just as they deserve.

An echo of this passage has sometimes been heard in the Apostle Paul’s second conversion narrative in Acts 26, where Jesus addresses Paul by saying:

Σαοὺλ Σαούλ, τί με διώκεις; σκληρόν σοι πρὸς κέντρα λακτίζειν.

Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.

The suggestion is sound. πρὸς κέντρα (pros kentra, “Against the goads”) is an extremely rare phrase in Greek.^[2] In fact, before Acts we have evidence of only three occurrences: once in a fragment that survives from Euripides’s Peliades (fr. 604 Nauck); once in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon (1624, where the tyrannical Aegisthus says it to the Chorus of old men); and in the passage from the Bacchae quoted above.

Note that all three instances come from tragedy, which was (in my view) the chief way that fifth century Athenians dealt with questions of theology. Note also that the expression is always found with the same verb, λακτίζω (laktizō), “to kick at,” just as in Acts 26. (One interesting additional wrinkle in Acts is that Paul says that Jesus addressed him in Hebrew–which Paul then reports in Greek–which seems to allude to Euripides.)

But note also how appropriate the situation from the Bacchae is to the situation in Acts, in which a mortal is warned against persecuting a divinity he does not acknowledge to be a divinity.

Again, most, or perhaps all, of what I just said has been previously observed. But the allusion in Acts 26 might be strengthened by an element of Paul’s first conversion narrative in Acts 9. There, Luke writes:

Ὁ δὲ Σαῦλος ἔτι ἐμπνέων ἀπειλῆς καὶ φόνου εἰς τοὺς μαθητὰς τοῦ κυρίου, προσελθὼν τῷ ἀρχιερεῖ  ᾐτήσατο παρ’ αὐτοῦ ἐπιστολὰς εἰς Δαμασκὸν πρὸς τὰς συναγωγάς, ὅπως ἐάν τινας εὕρῃ τῆς ὁδοῦ ὄντας, ἄνδρας τε καὶ γυναῖκας, δεδεμένους ἀγάγῃ εἰς Ἰερουσαλήμ.

But Saul, still breathing of threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, having come to the high priest asked him for letters to Damascus, for the synagogues, so that, if he were to find any who belonged to the Way, both men and women, he might lead them bound to Jerusalem.

I draw your attention to the bolded phrase, a metaphorical use of “breathing.” The verb ἐμπνέω (empneō) occurs in tragedy (though most instances are in Euripides alone) and in Homer, but its metaphorical sense (as here) seems rare. Even in Homer, it’s often used for a quasi-physical process in which a divinity breathes some quality into a mortal rather than of something that comes forth from within the mortal himself.

But a somewhat similar phrase occurs in the Bacchae, once again of Pentheus. As Dionysus reports the beginning of his manipulation of Pentheus, in which he drives him out of his mind in order to take vengeance on him, he says that Pentheus was “breathing out rage” (θυμὸν ἐκπνέων [thumon ekpneōn]). What’s more, Euripides uses both of the other words used of Paul, “threats” and “murder,” of Pentheus. (For “murder,” see the passage quoted near the beginning of this post. For “threats,” see Bacchae 856, where Dionysus describes the punishment he will inflict on Pentheus for them.)

Given all of that–given, that is, the possible modeling of Paul on Pentheus–Luke’s statement that Paul wanted to persecute men and women is suggestive, since the female worshipers of Dionysus are Pentheus’s main target in the Bacchae.

Perhaps you are persuaded, then, then Luke wants us to think of Paul through the pattern of Pentheus.

Yet the ends of Paul and Pentheus are not the same. Pentheus is torn limb from limb. His end is tragedy. Paul is saved. His end is comedy. There is laughter in the Bacchae, true; but it is dark laughter, the laughter of the macabre. The outcome for Paul, on the other hand, is genuine rejoicing. He is forgiven, converted, and, after his blindness, becomes a messenger for the previously spurned God. Pentheus’s body is broken through the rage of Dionysus, a god disguised as a man. Paul is redeemed by the broken body of Jesus, the God-Man.

If Paul begins as Pentheus, then, he does not remain as Pentheus. Jesus, unlike Dionysus, is a God of mercy.

Update 10/24/24 (4:04 p.m.): The post has been edited and lightly modified for clarity and consistency, but nothing of substance has been changed.