Ben C Smith

It looks like spin was playing a heads I win, tails you lose game on that thread with his unqualified Lord argument. If Layman finds a line in Paul that says: Jesus is Lord, spin says that Jesus qualifies Lord. If Layman finds a line in Paul that says: The Lord himself will descend from heaven, spin says that this unqualified use of Lord refers to Yahweh, not to Jesus.*

The argument is fallacious on its face.

Ben.

* Never mind that it is the son of God that the Thessalonians are awaiting from heaven in 1 Thessalonians 1.10.

Ben C Smith

I guess I am not understanding you. Both scenarios I mentioned, my own tentative try and that of Crossan, were formulated precisely in order to account for the Didache version of the eucharist.

Ben.

Julian

That's because I'm an idiot. I completely misunderstood that last part of your post. Having re-read it, I agree that your idea is possible, although I still consider 11:23 non-Pauline. Placing the Didache pre-Paul is pretty aggressive.

Julian

Ben C Smith

Actually, not even Crossan places the Didache as a whole before Paul; what matters is that the tradition ensconced in it predates Paul. (There is a difference between saying that the text itself is early and saying that the text is late but contains early tradition.)

Ben.

Julian

But then the logical question becomes, why put down an old tradition when a new one has come along? The Didache is not a history book so it seems strange to me that they would record their version over Paul's. Unless you are saying that Paul's version was not common practice yet, by the time Didache was penned. Sort of like this:

1) Old Jewish-Christian eucharist
2) Paul writes new one about Jesus
3) Didache is written
4) Paul's version gets popular

???

I am still not buying 2) above so don't think I am softening. :devil:

Julian

Ben C Smith

Because the Didache might have been written in some backwater Syrian town where the Pauline version had not yet penetrated.

Yes, in my experimental scenario that is what I am saying.

For number 4 you could also say that his version gets noticed (wherever the Didache happens to have been penned). But, even if the Didache did know the Pauline version, it may have resisted it on grounds of principle. Liturgies can be famously conservative. (Try introducing a new version of the Ave Maria in a conservative Catholic church on the strength of a vision you saw; see where it gets you. )

Oh, I am not so deluded as to imagine that I have convinced you of a position of which I have not even yet convinced myself! :grin:

Ben.

Ben C Smith

I tend to agree. And the form of church government likewise argues for a date before monarchical bishops became the absolute norm.

Ben.

Diogenes the Cynic

This would go along with Burton Macks theory (and actually one of Crossan's as well) that the earliest communities of the Jesus movement used communal meals as a centerpiece of their religious practice. Mack believes that different communities developed in their own idiosynchratic ways- that the communal dining ritual (which eventually became the Eucharist) was not exactly codified or unified for all communities. If this was the case, we could have in Paul and the Didache two variant Eucharistic formulas which both orginated in a ritual practice of communal dining. I think Paul's formula is more "developed" than the Didache but that doesn't mean it's dependent on the Didache. They could both be two independent branches from the same trunk.

Amaleq13

It is my understanding that a "thanksgiving meal" tradition already existed in Judaism and that it is this, rather than just a "communal meal", that has likely been reinterpreted.

Clivedurdle

http://www.didache-garrow.info/dated...larifydate.htm