Tablet of Dancers to Dionysos

This tablet of a dancer (menead) worshipping Dionysos comes from the 1st century AD.  Dionysos worship included dancing, theatre and lots of alcohol; this dancing was ecstatic, however, designed to lift the worshipper out of their everyday experience.

As the Thayer Greek lexicon describes the perception of ecstasy in Greek culture:

“The man who by some sudden emotion is transported as it were out of himself, so that in this rapt condition, although he is awake, his mind is so drawn off from all surrounding objects and wholly fixed on things divine that he sees nothing but the forms and images lying within, and thinks that he perceives with his bodily eyes and ears realities shown him by God.”

Furthermore, in Dionysos worship, the ritual concludes with the ecstatic destruction of the sacrifices and orgies.

As Professor Hansen of College of New York had on his website: 

"In mythology and art, and perhaps also in cult, Dionysos was notable for the ecstatic worship which he inspired in his women worshippers, who--in myth at least--abandoned their homes and roamed the mountains dressed in animal skins ripping animals to bits and eating their raw flesh."

The historian Livy, writing around the birth of Christ, describes the practices of Dionysos' worshippers:

"From the time when the rites were held promiscuously, with men and women mixed together, and when the license offered by darkness had been added, no sort of crime, no kind of immortality, was left unattempted. There were more obscenities practiced between men than between men and women. Anyone refusing to submit to outrage or reluctant to commit crimes was slaughtered as a sacrificial victim. To regard nothing as forbidden was among these people the summit of religious achievement. Men, apparently out of their wits, would utter prophesies with frenzied bodily convulsions: matrons, attired as Bacchantes, with their hair disheveled and carrying blazing torches, would run down to the Tiber, plunge their torches into the water and bring them out still alight - because they contained a mixture of live sulfur and calcium. Men were said to have been carried off by the gods - because they had been attached to a machine and whisked way out of sight to hidden caves; or to submit to violation." - Titus Livy, History of Rome, Book 39.13

How is ecstatic worship and Dionysos significant for understanding the world of Paul?

Dionysos worship was extremely popular in the time of Paul.  In almost every city one can find ancient mosaics of Dionysos.  For an example, click here.  The concept of ecstatic worship was familiar to Christians, however, Paul plays very carefully with the idea, putting clear limits on it.

How is Paul remixing his culture?

Paul obviously rejects orgies in worship. The associations between ecstatic worship, loose hair and orgies, may be that part of Paul's reaction to women having their hair down in worship:

but any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled disgraces her head -- it is one and the same thing as having her head shaved.  (First letter to the Corinthians, chapter 11:5)

Paul also wants to be careful about how people in the church use tongues (a spirit-given language only decipherable through interpreters) saying:

Tongues, then, are a sign not for believers but for unbelievers, while prophecy is not for unbelievers but for believers. If, therefore, the whole church comes together and all speak in tongues, and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are out of your mind?  (Chapter 14:25)

Worship is not simply for the intent of lifting an individual to an ecstatic state but also about reaching out to other people.

Paul, however, does not seem to rejected the category of ecstatic worship. Indeed, he says:

So, my friends, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues (14:39). 

And furthermore, Luke records Paul saying:

After I had returned to Jerusalem and while I was praying in the temple, I was ecstatic and saw Jesus saying to me, "Hurry and get out of Jerusalem quickly, because they will not accept your testimony about me."  And I said, "Lord, they themselves know that in every synagogue I imprisoned and beat those who believed in you. And while the blood of your witness Stephen was shed, I myself was standing by, approving and keeping the coats of those who killed him"'  Then he said to me, "Go, for I will send you far away to the Gentiles."  (Acts, Chapter 22:17-24).

Paul does not seem to want to limit ecstasy, tongues and visions in worship, but subordinates the individual's worship experience to the health of the whole group. He also removes any sexual connotations in worship.

sources:
info on ecstatis:  Thayer Greek Lexicon, available through Bible Works 6; accessed July 2006.
info on dionysos worship:  http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/classics/hansen/dionfest.htm
Livy citation:  http://www.mystae.com/restricted/streams/gnosis/dionysos.html