Origin of the Eucharist: Difference between revisions

Main article: Eucharist

"Eucharist" (noun). One of the names associated with a common Christian rite or ritual of worship involving sacred food and drink. The word is derived from Greek "εὐχαριστία" (transliterated as "eucharistia"), which means thankfulness, gratitude, giving of thanks.It is not a common word, appearing 30 times among the nearly 5 million words in Greek texts studied by Liddell and Scott, and seven times outside the Christian literature.

Though the New Testament never applies this term to a regular Christian function, traditionally the origin of the rite was at the final meal of Jesus of Nazareth before his execution by Roman colonial authority. For centuries, and even now, Christian Doctrine teaches that the Messiah explicitly instituted a formal thanksgiving ceremony that he intended to be replicated on some regular basis by his followers.

No formula of Words of Institution is claimed to be an exact reproduction of words that Jesus used, presumably in the Aramaic language, at his Last Supper. The formulas generally combine words from the Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke and the Pauline account in 1 Corinthians 11:24–25. They may even insert other words, such as the phrase "Mysterium fidei" which for many centuries was found within the Roman Rite Words of Institution, until removed in 1970.

Beginning in the Age of Enlightenment, and continuing to this century, skepticism arose among the intelligencia within and without various ecumenical bodies. The Search for the Historical Jesus in the last century intensified criticism of traditional views, and today, religious scholarship, inspired by the post-war discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammadi library, have subjected other aspects of the rite to heightened historical scrutiny (see below).

History

Jewish origins

In the beginning was the Passover Seder meal, (Exodus 12.1-11), one of the earliest examples of Jewish common or corporate worship. The Passover meal was a family occasion, something like a Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner but with a much stronger religious emphasis. The service began with the sanctification of the day as at other festivals, hence with a cup of wine (See Qiddush); another cup followed the after-supper grace as on other festive occasions. But to mark the evening as the most joyous in the year, two other cups were added: one after the "story" and before the meal, and one at the conclusion of the whole service. The Mishnah says (Pes. x. 1) that even the poorest man in Israel should not drink less than four cups of wine on this occasion. The Passover itself was celebrated only once a year but to some extent all meals and especially those on sabbaths and great festivals became 'little Passovers.' The three Synoptic Gospels refer to the Last Supper as a Passover meal.

The Johannine Supper, it has been suggested, was the Jewish ordinance known as Qiddush, the details of which involved the leader of the ceremony taking a cup of wine, sanctifying it by reciting a thanksgiving blessing, and passing it around. There was a similar blessing and breaking of bread. Qiddush is the "Jewish benediction and prayer recited over a cup of wine immediately before the meal on the eve of the sabbath or of a festival. After reciting the Ḳiddush the master of the house sips from the cup, and then passes it to his wife and to the others at the table; then all wash their hands, and the master of the house blesses the bread, cuts it, and passes a morsel to each person at the table.(worshippers of Bacchus, a synonym for Dionysus), the Athenian playwright Euripides (c. 485–406 BC) has the prophet Tiresias observe that Demeter and Dionysus, respectively, gave humanity two indispensable gifts: grain or bread to sustain life and wine to make life bearable. Harris claimed, in line with Academy Award nominated Greek screenwriter and director Michael Cacoyannis's free translation of the play, that Tiresias urges his hearers to see in Dionysus's gift of wine a beverage that brings into communion with the divine.

The following is Cacoyannis's text, as quoted by Harris:

Next came the son of the virgin, Dionysus,

bringing the counterpart to bread, wine

and the blessings of life's flowing juices. . . .

His blood, the blood of grape,

lightens the burden of our mortal misery.

it is his blood we pour out

to offer thanks to the gods. And through him.

we are blessed.

The phrases, "the son of the virgin", "his blood", "the blessings of life's flowing juices", "offer thanks" (the meaning of the Greek word from which "Eucharist" is derived), and "communion with the divine", are not found in the fifth-century-BC original:

Original text of Euripides
δύο γάρ, ὦ νεανία,
τὰ πρῶτ᾽ ἐν ἀνθρώποισι• Δημήτηρ θεά -
γῆ δ᾽ ἐστίν, ὄνομα δ᾽ ὁπότερον βούλῃ κάλει•
αὕτη μὲν ἐν ξηροῖσιν ἐκτρέφει βροτούς•
ὃς δ᾽ ἦλθ᾽ ἔπειτ᾽, ἀντίπαλον ὁ Σεμέλης γόνος
βότρυος ὑγρὸν πῶμ᾽ ηὗρε κεἰσηνέγκατο

θνητοῖς, ὃ παύει τοὺς ταλαιπώρους βροτοὺς
λύπης, ὅταν πλησθῶσιν ἀμπέλου ῥοῆς,
ὕπνον τε λήθην τῶν καθ᾽ ἡμέραν κακῶν
δίδωσιν, οὐδ᾽ ἔστ᾽ ἄλλο φάρμακον πόνων.
οὗτος θεοῖσι σπένδεται θεὸς γεγώς,
ὥστε διὰ τοῦτον τἀγάθ᾽ ἀνθρώπους ἔχειν.

Translation
For two things, young man,
[275] are first among men: the goddess Demeter--
she is the earth, but call her whatever name you wish;
she nourishes mortals with dry food;
but he who came afterwards, the offspring of Semele,
discovered a match to it,
the liquid drink of the grape, and introduced it
[280] to mortals. It releases wretched mortals from grief,
whenever they are filled with the stream of the vine,
and gives them sleep, a means of forgetting their daily troubles,
nor is there another cure for hardships.
He who is a god is poured out in offerings to the gods,
[285] so that by his means men may have good things.

Theophagy theory

Others have declared that an idea of theophagy (eating one's god), or at least of feeding on the life-force of a mystical entity, was characteristic of the central rites of some Greco-Roman and Near-Eastern mystery religions and have claimed that the "acts and ordinances" of Jesus and his apostles were "memorialized" in that context. According to them, the Eucharist conveyed the purported mystical benefits of flesh-eating and blood-drinking that were proclaimed by the proponents of animal sacrifices and of cannibalism, and can be seen to translate the vestiges of ancient animal sacrifice and/or ritualistic cannibalism into the current age.

Mushroom theory

Another theory that attributes a pre-Christian connection to the Eucharist is that of John Allegro and Carl Ruck, who claim that Jesus was seen as a vegetation god incarnated, like Dionysus and Osiris, as an entheogenic plant or fungus or both.

PrePauline Confluence of Greek and Hebrew Traditions

"Thanksgiving" (in Greek, "εὐχαριστία"[eucharistia]) and "blessing" (in Hebrew, "ברכה" [berakhah, berakah]; in Greek, "εὐλογία" [eulogia]) are words used of a prayer "addressed to God at meals for and over the food and drink. It is in this sense that the term was originally used in connection with the common meal of the early Christian community, at which the 'blessing' or 'thanksgiving' had special reference to Jesus Christ."

The eucharistia was the berakhah without the chaburah supper, and the agape is the chaburah meal without the berakhah.

By the time the Roman conquest, Jews practiced festive dining in essentially the same form as the Greeks, with a dinner (deipnon) followed by the symposium proper, where guests drank wine and enjoyed entertainment or conversation. There were, to be sure, cultic differences, such as a berachah over the wine cup instead of the Greeks' libation to Dionysus. But eating together was a central activity for Jewish religious groups such as Pharisees and Essenes.

The Agape feast

File:TheosAgape.jpg

"ὁ θεòς ἀγάπη ἐστίν" God Is Love on a stele in Mount Nebo.

The Eucharistic celebrations of the early Christians were embedded in, or simply took the form of, a meal. While centered on the ritual of the bread and wine, it also included various other actions, including sometimes elements of the Passover seder and of Mediterranean banquets, funerary and otherwise. These were often called Agape Feasts, although terminology varied in the first few centuries along with other aspects of practice. Agape is one of the Greek words for love, specifically meaning selfless love, or God's love for mankind, and so "agape feasts" are also referred to in English as "love-feasts".

This ritual was apparently a full meal, with each participant bringing a contribution to the meal according to their means. Perhaps predictably enough, it could at times deteriorate into merely an occasion for eating and drinking, or for ostentatious displays by the wealthier members of the community. This was criticized by Saint Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:20–22.

Soon after the year 100, Ignatius of Antioch refers to the agape or love-feast: "Let that eucharist alone be considered valid which is celebrated in the presence of the bishop, or of him to whom he shall have entrusted it. ... It is not lawful either to baptize, or to hold a love-feast without the consent of the bishop." Letter 96 from Pliny the Younger to Trajan in about 112 suggests that a meal was common among early Christian celebrants. Tertullian too writes of these meals. Clement of Alexandria (c.150-211/216) distinguished so-called "Agape" meals of luxurious character from the agape (love) "which the food that comes from Christ shows that we ought to partake of". Accusations of gross indecency were sometimes made against the form that these meals sometimes took. Referring to Clement of Alexandria, Stromata III,2, Philip Schaff commented: "The early disappearance of the Christian agapæ may probably be attributed to the terrible abuse of the word here referred to, by the licentious Carpocratians. The genuine agapæ were of apostolic origin (2 Pet. ii. 13; Jude 12), but were often abused by hypocrites, even under the apostolic eye (1 Corinthians 11:21). In the Gallican Church, a survival or relic of these feasts of charity is seen in the pain béni; and, in the Greek churches. in the ἀντίδωρον or eulogiæ distributed to non-communicants at the close of the Eucharist, from the loaf out of which the bread of oblation is supposed to have been cut."

Augustine of Hippo also objected to the continuance in his native North Africa of the custom of such meals, in which some indulged to the point of drunkenness, and he distinguished them from proper celebration of the Eucharist: "Let us take the body of Christ in communion with those with whom we are forbidden to eat even the bread which sustains our bodies." He reports that even before the time of his stay in Milan, the custom had already been forbidden there.

Canons 27 and 28 of the Council of Laodicea (364) restricted the abuses. The Third Council of Carthage (393) and the Second Council of Orleans (541) reiterated this legislation, which prohibited feasting in churches, and the Trullan Council of 692 decreed that honey and milk were not to be offered on the altar (Canon 57), and that those who held love feasts in churches should be excommunicated (Canon 74).

There have been various survivals and revivals, however. In the 18th century, Pietist Christians began to hold Love Feasts that looked back to the ancient Agape. Many Christians today after celebrating the Eucharist or another liturgy, now routinely participate in an informal sharing of light refreshments and conversation. This post-Eucharistic gathering is often called "fellowship hour" or "coffee hour" and is regarded by many clergy as a particularly opportune time for engaging adults in Christian education. Others hold ritual Agape meals.

See also Agape feast.

Allusions to the Eucharist in the New Testament

Although the phrase "the Eucharist" does not appear in the New Testament, it gives witness to a number of different practices of religious table fellowship that can be called eucharistic. Paul the Apostle wrote in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, usually dated to A.D. 52–57 about behavior at a meal that the Corinthian Christians had at their meetings that he did not deem worthy to be called a "Lord's Supper." (κυριακὸν δεῖπνον). Pauls letters are more likely to have been read at meals than at "business meetings." The earliest Christians worshiped at table in their hosts' dining rooms, and that they shaped the traditions about Jesus to fit that setting. The symposium after the meal was the time for teaching and conversation, for the singing of hymns, for the contributions of those who prophesied or spoke in tongues.

Criticizing the way the Corinthians celebrated their meals, he informed them about what he asserted he had "received from the Lord" and had "passed on" about Jesus' actions and directives at his Last Supper, though clearly the religious table fellowship tradition had been going on in the Early Christian Church antedating Paul's conversion, unless the contention is made that Paul invented it. The purpose, Paul declared, of eating "this bread" and drinking "the cup" was to "proclaim the Lord's death until he comes" and, if they partook of them unworthily, Paul warned, they were guilty of an offence against the body and blood of Jesus. In these statements, Paul the Apostle links only "this bread" and "the cup", and no other food and drink (such as other cups of wine) consumed at the meal, with proclaiming the Lord's death. In the same letter Paul speaks of "the cup of blessing which we bless" as "a participation in the blood of Christ", and of "the bread which we break" as "a participation in the body of Christ"; and in support of his prohibition of drinking blood or eating food from pagan sacrifices, he says: "You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons."

"The eucharist, therefore, for Paul was in some way a re-presentation of the crucifixion, ordained by Christ himself to assure to His followers the enjoyment, until his proximate return, of the blessings which the crucifixion, as a covenant sacrifice, had secured. This interpretation, however, cannot be taken as current outside the Pauline sphere influence; Paul himself fails to cite the general assent of Christians in confirmation of the tradition which he asserts."

Jesus' Last Supper is an event so significant that all four Gospels include a version, asserting different traditions A passage found only in Luke records a command, echoing Paul, that the breaking of the bread be done "in remembrance of [Jesus]". A minority of commentators conclude that passage, i.e., the second half of 22:19 and all of 22:20 are later interpolations. The Rev. E.C. Radcliffe, the Canon of St. Mary's, Ely, writing in the Encyclopaedia Britannica 13th Edition Eucharist article, declared: "The textus receptus indeed includes the command, but the passage in which it occurs is an interpolation of the Pauline account; and whatever view be taken of the Lucan text, the command is no part of the original. The evidence, therefore, does not warrant the attribution to Jesus of the words 'This do in memory of Me'." Jeremias says "Do this in remembrance of me " would better be translated "That God may remember me."

Acts 2:42 and 2:46 tell of the very first Christians "continuing steadfastly in the breaking of bread", interpreted by some as a pre-Pauline reference to Eucharist.

Chapters 13-17 of the Gospel of John attribute to Jesus a series of teachings and prayers at his Last Supper, but does not mention any meal rituals. On the other hand, John 6, in particular verses such as 6:55–56 ("For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him"), is widely interpreted as an allusion to the Eucharist. Peculiarities in phrasing as compared to the Synoptics are thought to reflect the liturgical tradition of the Johannine community.

The term "Agape" or "Love-feast" appears in the New Testament epistle dated to the turn of the second century, in Jude 12: "These are blemishes on your love feasts, as they boldly carouse together, looking after themselves". The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, stated that the general opinion when it was published in 1915 [1] was that, though held together, the Agape and the Eucharist were distinct, the Eucharist coming at the end of the Agape, as the special rite instituted by Jesus followed a celebration of a Passover meal.

Development of the concept of Eucharist

The historical record is too sparse in original texts to put a date upon the first use of the term "eucharistia" as referring to the name of an ecclesiatical ritual and not ordinary thanksgiving for a common meal.

The epistles of Apostolic Father and traditional second pope Clement of Rome makes no explicit reference to Eucharist. The Didache contains, among its components, the earliest surviving written church order. It is usually dated from sometime after the First Apostolic Council in 48 C.E. to the third century. A composite of several documents, it includes ritual prayers and a mention of what it calls the εὐχαριστία (Thanksgiving or Eucharist). According to the overwheling consensus among scholars, the section beginning at 10.1 is a reworking of the Birkat hamazon the prayer that ends the Jewish ritual meal. (see The Didache: Its Jewish Sources and Its Place in Early Judaism and Christianity by Hubertus Waltherus Maria van de Sandt, David Flusser pp 311-2)

Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, writing circa 107-110 CE referred to Eucharist three times in his Letter to the Smyrnaeans and once in his Letter to the Philadelphians, though they contain no reference to bread and wine. A Glossary of Eastern Orthodox Terms quoted in Father Symeon Ioannovskij, Orthodox Publishing Society. concludes that for Ignatius as well as Saint Hippolytus of Tome the two terms, "eucharist" and "love-feast" were synonymous.

Justin Martyr, writing around 150, is generally credited with the first explicit mention of the Eucharist as rite. He gave a detailed description of a baptismal rite, and stated that "Eucharist" was the name that Christians used for the bread and wine shared by the participants at the baptism: "And this food is called among us eὐχαριστία" [eucharist] ... "

Modern theories

Jesus Seminar

“The purely symbolic meal of modern Christianity, restricted to a bit of bread and a sip of wine or juice, is tacitly presupposed for the early church, an assumption so preposterous that it is never articulated or acknowledged.” This quotation reflects the iconoclastic view of an inter-denominational group of contemporary scholars, led by the Jesus Seminar, "a research team of about 200 New Testament scholars founded in 1985 by the late Robert Funk and John Dominic Crossan under the auspices of the Westar Institute", which has analyzed the historical record of the Eucharist. They reached consensus among themselves that, based on the deeply ingrained Jewish prohibition against drinking blood, and the pervasive history of Greek memorial dining societies, the rite of the last supper "had its origins in a pagan context." They also reached consensus among themselves that the Last Supper, as it is depicted in Mark, was not a historical event. And since Matthew and Luke copy Mark in some sections (though Luke draws on other sources at this point), adding what the Seminar called a mere touch here and there, Luke even adding a second cup, they declared that the accounts of Matthew and Luke also cannot be held to be historical. Other reasons the Seminar thought the tradition ahistorical: the earliest collection of Jesus' teachings, the Q Gospel and the recently rediscovered Gospel of Thomas make no mention of any last supper.

Crossan suggests that there are two traditions "as old as we can trace them" of the eucharist, that of Paul, reflecting the Antioch Church's tradition, and that of the Didache, the first document to give explicit instruction regarding prayers to be said at a celebration that it called the Eucharist.

The cup/bread liturgy of the Didache, from the Jerusalem tradition, does not mention Passover, or Last Supper, or Death of Jesus/blood/body, and the sequence is meal + thanksgiving ritual, For Crossan, it is dispositive that

even late in the first century C.E., at least some (southern?) Syrian Christians could celebrate a Eucharist of bread and wine with absolutely no hint of Passover meal, Last Supper or passion symbolism built into its origins or development. I cannot believe that they knew about those elements and studiously avoided them. I can only presume that they were not there for everyone from the beginning, that is, from solemn formal and final institution by Jesus himself.

The Western Catholic Church itself in 2001 controversially validated an ancient East Syrian Eucharist liturgy without any literal Pauline words of institution, known as the Anaphora or Holy Qurbana of Addai and Mari, on the basis that "the words of the institution of the Eucharist are in fact present in the anaphora of Addai and Mari, not in the form of a coherent narration and in a literal way but in a euchological and disseminated manner, that is to say they are integrated in the prayers of thanksgiving, praise and intercession which follow."

Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, in the context of correcting the eating habits of the Corinthians serves to reestablish "the Pre-Pauline tradition, ritual of bread/body + meal + ritual of cup/blood." Hellenized Jew Paul references a Greek Lord's Supper which is not a Passover meal, and does not have the participants giving thanks ("Eucharistia"), rather the purpose is to proclaim Jesus' death until he comes again, in the manner of Hellenic societies formed "to hold meals in remembrance of those who had died and to drink a cup in honor of some god."

Both sequences underline the primary importance of the Shared Meal to historical First Century Christian ritual. In the Jerusalem tradition, of James and Peter, the meal is of higher importance than blood and body since the Didache fails to mention them. Both traditions reflect the pitfalls of a shared meal among social unequals, namely freeloading. The Didache says in 12:3-4, if you work, you eat. Paul, in 2 Thessalonians 3:10 says if you don't work, you don't eat. "Both stipulations must presume a communal share-meal or they make no sense." The administrative difficulties of communal meals, easily glossed over in a small congregation of Jewish peasants, become more intractable as the church succeeds and grows and adds Gentile adherents, foreshadowing the eventual reduction to symbolism over substance. Crossan asks "why symbolize divinity through a medium of food that is non-food? Maybe non-food symbolizes a non-Jesus and a non-God?"

Five Preliminary stages to "2000 years of eucharistic theology" and "Last Supper iconography", according to Crossan

1. Graeco-Roman formal meal	2. Jesus' practice	3a. Didache 10	3b. Didache 9	4. 1 Corinthians	5. Mark (copied by Matthew & Luke)
deipnon (supper, main meal), then symposion	a meal that later and in retrospect was recognized as having been their last one together	Give thanks, no reference to Passover, Last Supper, or Death of Jesus	Eucharist, no reference to Passover, Last Supper, or Death of Jesus	Lord's Supper	Passover Meal
Bread course followed by ritual libation followed by wine course	Open Commensality - radical social egalitarianism in seating for meal	Common Meal followed by Thanks to the Father, no ritual with bread or cup	Common meal, ritual with Cup (thanks for the Holy Vine of David) and Bread (thanks for the life and knowledge of Jesus)	Bread/body, Thanks, Common Meal, Cup/blood	During meal, first Bread/body, then Cup/blood and Thanks
	No ritual	No mention of the death of Jesus	No mention of the death of Jesus	Passion Remembrance in both cup and bread	No command for repetition and remembrance

Survey of views on blood-drinking in the Eucharist

In a 10,000 word analysis in the Biblical Theology Bulletin of 2002, Michael J. Cahill surveys the state of scholarly literature from some seventy cited sources, dating from the 1950s to the present, on the question of the liklihood of Jews drinking blood in the Eucharist.

After examining these various theories that have been put forward, he concluded:

The survey of opinion, old and new, reveals wide disagreement with a fundamental divide between those who can accept that the notion of drinking blood could have a Jewish origin and those who insist that this is a later development to be located in the Hellenistic world. What both sides share is an inability to proffer a rationally convincing argument that can provide a historical explanation for the presence of this particular component of the Eucharistic rite. Those who hold for the literal institution by Jesus have not been able to explain plausibly how the drinking of blood could have arisen in a Jewish setting. In fact, this difficulty has been turned into an argument for authenticity. For example, Jeremiah [sic] quotes Dalman: "Exactly that which seems scandalous will be historical" (170-71). W. D. Davies draws attention to the fact that Dalman also argued that the Pauline version of the institution arose in a gentile environment to eliminate the difficulties presented by the more direct Markan form (246). It would appear to be obvious that the difficulties would have been greater in a Jewish environment. Davies' conclusion is apt: "When such divergent conclusons [sic] have been based upon the same evidence any dogmatism would be foolish" (246). On the other hand, I have earlier argued that previous suggestions supporting the non-Jewish source have been vitiated by vague generalities or by association with inappropriate pagan rituals.