Amaleq13

It was my understanding the there was an existing (ie pre-Christian) eucharist tradition in Judaism. If that is the case, was it associated with Passover?

Also, IIRC, Crossan suggests a connection with communal meals instituted by Jesus.

Jesus-instituted communal meals + Jewish eucharist --> reinterpreted as remembrance of the teachings of Jesus (Didache) + sin-atoning significance attributed to death --> re-reinterpreted as remembrance of the significance of the sacrifice?

Ben C Smith

To what are you referring? I think there were precedents, but I am unaware of anything quite like the eucharist in Jewish tradition alone.

Aye, that he does.

When did it get placed on the lips of Jesus, then? Before Paul, presumably. That is a lot of development in only a few years.

Ben.

Malachi151

Its certainly possible that it was Paul himself that put the ritual words on the lips of Jesus. Without a real Jesus, the ritual has all the time in the world to have developed up to the point of Paul, and what Paul says is basically what we see in the Gospels.

Amaleq13

I'll have to check my notes at home but I seem to recall reading about a Jewish "thanksgiving" meal of some sort.

Meanwhile, I found the following online:

"One or the other of the many Jewish meals has often been suggested as the possible precursor of the Eucharist. Hans Lietzmann, [3] for example, first suggested that Jesus and his disciples formed haburoth and the Eucharist was eventually modelled on their haburah meals. G.H.C. Box argues that the Last Supper was a Sabbath Kiddush, which gradually evolved into a distinctly Christian rite, the Eucharist.[4]Similar to this is the theory that the Last Supper was a special Passover Kiddush, [5] or probably another Jewish religious meal, the 'pure dinner' (Cena pura) [6] which like the Kiddush was also a weekly occasion. Recently Hartmut Gese has drawn attention to some fascinating parallels between the Eucharist and the OT Zebah-todah sacrifice. He argues that this OT ritual, which was current at the time of Christ, provided the actual matrix for the practice of the Eucharist. He identifies the Last Supper as Christ's todah sacrifice offered as a prayer for delivery from his imminent death. The subsequent shared meals became for his followers a means of participation in his death and resurrection." (http://www.martynmission.cam.ac.uk/CEucharistpage1.htm)

This one requires a subscription, I think:

http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/co.../os-III/11/357

It would think it would have to be around the alleged re-reinterpretation.

Ben C Smith

Yes, those were the precedents I had in mind. The meal would have had to have either lost or gained something over and against the Jewish versions, since the Jewish meals seem to be regular meals (once a week, for example), whereas the eucharist or love feast seems to have been very flexible (breaking bread daily in Acts, as often as you eat of it in Paul, prophetically announcing an impromptu feast in the Didache). But I have no theoretical objection to finding such antecedents in these Jewish meals (nor even in some Greco-Roman meals, for that matter). As usual, the devil will be in the details.

There are so many other complications, too. Does Paul know about the Passover setting (1 Corinthians 5.7)? What about the relative chronologies of the synoptics and John? A good case can be made that the Johannine chronology (in which the last supper is not an official Passover meal) preceded the synoptic chronology (in which it is).

I wonder whether perhaps Jesus really did utter something like Mark 14.25 during his last meal, and it was later combined with elements of other meal traditions to form what we think of as the last supper, with full eucharist.

Just scattershooting.

Ben.

Amaleq13

How about a Jesus who, fully intending to get himself killed in Jerusalem, asks his followers to remember him whenever they carried out their meal tradition but without the explicit symbology of blood-wine and bread-flesh?

That's the kind of fellow that attracts rather fanatical followers I would think.

Ben C Smith

If there is anything at all to the gospel records of his last few months, yes, I think that he intended to get killed.

Quite possible. How would you go about making it historically probable?

Indeed.

Ben.

robto

Something I'd like to see, too, Ben. Here's my take on it.

What Jesus instituted in his lifetime was a practice of share-meals, undoubtedly accompanied by some sort of prayer, but without any body/blood symbolism. (This is Crossan's suggestion in Birth of Christianity.)

In the Didache we see a stage where the meal has become ritualised and symbolised: the bread represents the community of believers that will one day be gathered together.

For Paul, I consider 1 Cor 11:23-27 to be an interpolation. (This is not a commonly held view, but Richardson argues cogently for it in his commentary on Lietzmann's Mass and the Lord's Supper.) For Paul, it is still a share-meal, but it has picked up the body/blood symbolism.

Where this symbolism came from is a mystery to me. The closest parallel seems to be the Dionysus cult. Possibly the equation (bread = community of believers) and the Pauline (community of believers = body of Christ) were combined to create (bread = body of Christ)?

At some point the foundation myth was added to the meal practice. Possibly Mark created the story himself: Mark speaks of "a cup", rather than "the cup" which makes the story more of a narrative and less of a ritual. But probably the foundation myth began before Mark, and the versions in Mark, Luke, and 1 Cor 11:23-27 are all developments.

In this hypothesis the universality is explained by the fact that there was a practice of eating together that dates from Jesus's lifetime. The diversity of forms arises from the application of differing theologies/christologies to the practice.

One of the interesting points is that John's community knows the body/blood symbolism (Jn 6:32-58) but doesn't connect it with the Last Supper (Jn 13-17). In fact, the fourth gospel implicitly rejects the connection: Judas is the ONLY ONE who is mentioned as eating the bread (Jn13:26). I don't see how the theory that Jesus originated the whole Eucharist tradition can be reconciled with the evidence of John.

Amaleq13

Creepy.

I suspect that too much subsequent mythologizing has taken place to accomplish that. I'm happy with "quite possible".

The common denominator of the eucharist traditions is "remembering Jesus" while what he is remembered for differs as does the notion that it was his idea. But it seems to me to make no sense to suggest that whoever was behind the Didache eucharist deliberately ignored (and, thereby, tacitly denied) the sacrificial symbology of "Paul's" eucharist. Unfortunately for my suggestion, it also makes no sense for the author(s) of the Didache to ignore that Jesus specifically instructed his followers to remember him with the meal tradition. That they would reminisce about Jesus seems to me to be inevitable regardless of any specific instruction given that the meal was a particular tradition for Jesus' group.

gstafleu

This runs into the same problems as the "historical core:" take away difficult parts and define the remaining bit as what happened. If the remaining bit is sufficiently common place you now have an irrefutable proposition. You say yourself:
The important bits of a rite are the ones that reflect the important bits of the mythology, which are usually things that stand out from the everyday. Jesus asking to be remembered via eating bits of his body is such a thing, having a common meal is not. The habit of the common meal may have provided the social background and schedule for the rite, it did not provide the rite itself.

I gather from this thread that deriving the symbolism from pre-existing Jewish myths and rites is difficult. That may make it worthwhile to look at my thread A theme from food-plant origin-myths as an element of the Eucharist. Of course you'll have to be prepared to think a bit outside of the usual box of OT/NT to do that .

Gerard Stafleu