Reconstructing Early Christian Worship

Paul F. Bradshaw, Paul Bradshaw

• Publisher: SPCK Publishing
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780281062973
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Historia del cristianismo

The book should be seen in the context of Paul Bradshaw's earlier works: The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship and Eucharistic Origins. In this book he updates his thinking in this area, focussing on the origins of the Eucharist, Baptism and Daily Prayer. The controversial introductory chapter is entitled: Did Jesus Institute the Eucharist at the Last Supper?

Part 1

EUCHARIST

1

Did Jesus institute the eucharist at the Last Supper?

The answer to the question posed in my title might seem obvious: ‘Of course he did; we have the evidence of the Synoptic Gospels to prove it.’ But as you may well have guessed already, I do not think it is as simple as that. Otherwise, this would turn out to be a very short chapter.¹

The Fourth Gospel

Let us start with St John’s Gospel, where there is no account of the institution of the eucharist within the narrative of the Last Supper. Commentators usually say that John has deliberately missed it out and for his own reasons replaced it with the account of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet. But that is to assume that the Evangelist – and every Christian of the time – knew that the account of the institution of the eucharist really did belong with the Last Supper, and he chose not to put it there. But that is precisely to beg the question. We do not actually know whether anyone in the first century other than the writers of the Synoptic Gospels and St Paul thought it took place on the night before Jesus died – and even St Paul does not say that occasion was a Passover meal as the others do. So if we suppose for the sake of argument that the writer of the Fourth Gospel did not know of a tradition that Jesus said that bread and wine were his body and blood at the Last Supper, is there anywhere else in that Gospel that might look like an institution narrative?

What about chapter 6? Here we have the account of the feeding of the five thousand by Jesus, in which twelve baskets are filled with the leftovers from five barley loaves. And then, referring back to it on the following day, Jesus says that it was not Moses who gave them the bread from heaven; ‘my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world’ (John 6.32–3). And he goes on to say, ‘I am the bread of life . . . I am the living bread that came down from heaven . . . and the bread that I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh’ (John 6.48, 51). Several scholars have already suggested that this latter statement is John’s version of the saying over the bread at the Last Supper,² and some have claimed that this form could in one way at least be closer to the original, as neither Hebrew nor Aramaic have a word for ‘body’ as we understand the term, and so what Jesus would have said at the Last Supper would have been the Aramaic equivalent of ‘This is my flesh’.³

There is, however, a difference of opinion among scholars as to whether what follows (and some would say even verse 51c itself) is an integral part of the material or a subsequent interpolation, either by the original author or by a later redactor.⁴ This section includes the saying, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life in you . . .’ (John 6.53). Many who would excise these verses would do so on the ground that the earlier sayings are sapiential in nature, while the later verses have a more decidedly sacramental character. But there is another reason why at least part of this later material may be an addition to the original core. While the concept of eating flesh might have been difficult for a Jew to comprehend, the concept of drinking blood would have been an abomination. Thus it seems more likely that this part of the discourse would have been appended later, in a Gentile environment, and would not have formed part of the earlier Jewish stratum.

It seems possible, therefore, that the writer of the Fourth Gospel knew of a primitive tradition in which Jesus associated bread with his flesh, and this in the context of a feeding miracle rather than the Last Supper. But did any other early Christians know of such a tradition, or is it a peculiarity of this Gospel? Let us take a look.

The Didache

The Didache or ‘Teaching of the Twelve Apostles’ is commonly thought to be a very early Christian text, perhaps as old as the canonical Gospels themselves. Chapters 9 and 10 contain what appear to be prayers for use at a eucharistic meal, accompanied by brief directions.⁵ This meal includes a cup (apparently of wine rather than water,⁶ as the accompanying prayer refers to ‘the holy vine of David’) as well as bread. The bread and wine are not described here as being either the body and blood of Christ or the flesh and blood of Christ but simply as spiritual food and drink, and so offer us little help in this regard. It is to be noted, however, that this material does not associate the meal with the Last Supper or with Jesus’ death in any way. Instead, the prayers speak of Jesus as bringing life, knowledge, and eternal life – themes that are also characteristic of the Fourth Gospel.⁷ And to this we may add that Chapter 9 also uses the word ‘fragment’ when speaking of the bread rather than the normal Greek word for a loaf – and fragments are explicitly mentioned in the various feeding stories in the Gospels but not in the Last Supper narratives. Could it be that behind the text in the Didache is a remembrance of spiritual food and drink being associated with one of those stories? That suggestion may not be very convincing on its own, but let us go on to other early Christian writers.

Ignatius of Antioch

When Ignatius of Antioch mentions the eucharist, writing in the early second century, it is Christ’s flesh that he speaks of and not his body. He says, ‘Take care, therefore, to have one eucharist, for there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ and one cup for union in his blood’ (Philadelphians 4). Notice that, while he includes a cup along with the reference to flesh, he does not describe the contents (which may have been wine or water – he is not explicit about this) directly as blood. In another letter he also criticizes some because ‘they abstain from eucharist and prayer, because they do not confess the eucharist to be flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, which the Father by his goodness raised up’ (Smyrnaeans 7.1). His choice of the word ‘flesh’ rather than ‘body’ suggests an affinity with the eucharistic tradition behind the Fourth Gospel rather than that of the Synoptics or Paul, which he shows no sign of knowing.

Justin Martyr

Similar language is also used by Justin Martyr in the middle of the second century: ‘not as common bread or common drink do we receive these things; but just as our Saviour Jesus Christ, being incarnate through [the] word of God, took both flesh and blood for our salvation, so too we have been taught that the food over which thanks have been given through [a] word of prayer which is from him, from which our blood and flesh are fed by transformation, is both the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus’ (First Apology 66.2). Here Justin is more explicit in his association of the contents of the cup with the blood of Jesus than was Ignatius, but shares the same tradition, reflected in the Fourth Gospel, that remembered Jesus speaking about his flesh rather than body.

Justin, however, is the first writer outside the New Testament to reveal knowledge of another tradition that did speak about body and blood. For, in addition to the words I have just cited, he goes on to say: ‘the apostles in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have handed down what was commanded them: that Jesus having taken bread, having given thanks, said, “Do this in my remembrance; this is my body”; and similarly having taken the cup and having given thanks, said, “This is my blood”; and gave to them alone’ (First Apology 66.3). Justin here claims to be quoting from ‘the Gospels’, by which it might seem that he was familiar with the Synoptic texts themselves. But none of them record as the words of Jesus, ‘Do this in my remembrance; this is my body’ – at least not in that order; and the only one of them to contain the words ‘Do this in my remembrance’ at all is the Gospel of Luke, and then only in the manuscripts that contain the longer version of the Last Supper narrative, and they do not record Jesus’ words over the cup as ‘This is my blood’, but as ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood . . .’ Yet in the one place in his writings where it is certain that Justin is quoting Luke’s Gospel, it is the so-called Western Text that he knows, the manuscript tradition that contains the shorter version of the institution narrative lacking the command to ‘do this in my remembrance’.⁸ So it is almost certainly not from the Gospels as known to us that Justin has actually drawn this saying, but from some other source, most likely a collection of sayings of Jesus that had these words in a somewhat different form. This would help explain why so many of the other features of the Synoptic Last Supper narrative fail to make an appearance in Justin’s writings. There is, for example, no mention of the words having been said on the night before he died, or of any of the interpretative phrases that form part of the sayings in the New Testament versions, such as ‘body given for you’ or ‘blood poured out for you’.

Perhaps even more significant than these omissions is that there is no reference to the action of the breaking of the bread, which is recorded in all of the Synoptic texts and in Paul’s account of the Last Supper in 1 Corinthians 11. Not only is this missing from Justin’s recollection of Jesus here but it is also not explicitly mentioned in Justin’s two accounts of actual Christian eucharistic practice in this same section of his work, although it can be said to be implied there (First Apology 65, 67). Now the one place in the New Testament where breaking is not mentioned in relation to Jesus giving thanks over bread is in the account of the miraculous feeding of the multitude with loaves and fishes in John 6. Could it be that the tradition which Justin knows links Jesus’ saying with a version of that story rather than the Last Supper? There is also another similarity between that story and Justin’s vocabulary. When Justin recalls that Jesus ‘similarly’ took the cup, the Greek word that he uses is not homoios, found in the Last Supper accounts of Luke and Paul, but hosautos, used in John 6.11 of Jesus ‘similarly’ taking the fish.⁹ Admittedly, this variation could be just a coincidence, but the omission of a reference to breaking the bread looks more significant, especially when we add to it the fact that Irenaeus, writing later in the second century, appears to have been familiar with a similar tradition.

Irenaeus

Like Justin, Irenaeus makes no mention of the context of the eucharistic sayings when he quotes them, neither of the Last Supper nor of the impending passion. He simply says: ‘He took that created thing, bread, and gave thanks, saying, “This is my body.” And the cup likewise, which is part of that creation to which we belong, he declared his blood . . .’ (Adversus haereses 4.17.5). Not only, like Justin, does his version of the sayings lack any of the interpretative phrases attached to them in the New Testament accounts, but there is again no mention of the breaking of the bread. True, Irenaeus shows no knowledge of the use of ‘flesh’ rather than ‘body’, but the close parallels between his account of Jesus’ words and Justin’s suggest that both are drawing on a catechetical tradition as to the origin of the eucharist that has come down independently of the Gospel texts themselves and that did not link it with the narrative of the Last Supper.

Unlike Justin, however, Irenaeus is definitely also familiar with at least one of the Gospel accounts of the Last Supper themselves, as he quotes part of the Matthean version elsewhere in the same work.¹⁰ Nevertheless, it is upon its eschatological statement about drinking in the kingdom that he comments, passing over in silence the reference to the ‘blood of the new covenant, which will be poured out for many for forgiveness of sins’ and not making any explicit connection to the eucharist. Indeed, although at one point in his writing Irenaeus does move from mention of redemption with the blood of the Lord to the cup of the eucharist as being communion in his blood,¹¹ he does not dev...

Table of contents

• Cover page
• About the author
• Dedication
• Title page
• Imprint
• Table of contents
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part 1 EUCHARIST
• Part 2 BAPTISM
• Part 3 PRAYER
• Search items for modern authors
• Search items for names and subjects