On the Lord's Supper
Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 9:50 am
Hello! I’m posting this informal essay out of a recent discussion of the eucharist (aka “the Lord’s Supper”) on this forum. In my earlier posting, I remarked on the difficulty posed by the conventional understanding of eucharistic imagery, and I alluded to an alternate understanding that might more accurately represent Jesus’ own intention for the meaning of the ritual. Please allow me to present an overview of the construct in stages:
First, the difficulty posed by the traditional understanding must be appreciated. In the conventional understanding, the bread of the Lord’s Supper represents Jesus’ body, and the wine represents Jesus’ blood. Modern Christians don’t think twice about this familiar imagery, but it would have been quite difficult for Jesus’ Jewish audience at his last supper. The imagery is, after all, cannibalistic. It must be appreciated that in the wake of the Maccabean crisis (when the faithful were ferreted out for persecution by the litmus test of whether or not they would eat non-kosher food), one’s dietary scrupulosity became a hallmark of patriotism and of faithfulness to God. The biblical prohibition against eating blood was especially important, because both Gentiles and Jews were beholden to it, and because breaking that commandment resulted in being cut off from the community. In the Second temple period, the prohibition was taken seriously, and one major text of the period even correlated the eating of blood with the depravity that prompted the flood at the time of Noah. Beyond this, there was a scurrilous rumor about Jews around the time of Jesus, claiming that they participated in ritual cannibalism. So for theological and social reasons, the imagery of the traditional eucharist would have been problematic for Jesus’ Jewish disciples.
Moving on, then, when we examine the evidence in the New Testament for the institution of the eucharist, it is easy to discern a line of evolutionary development. The Matthean and Markan versions are a great deal simpler than those found in Luke and I Corinthians, and the variations in those Pauline sources are precisely those which underscore a body/blood interpretation. By contrast, the Matthean and Markan sources can be interpreted in a way that makes no reference to Jesus’ body or blood.
To take the blood issue first, the Matthean/Markan versions refer to “my blood of the covenant,” whereas the Pauline sources refer to “the covenant in my blood.” The latter statement explicitly makes the blood out to be Jesus’, but the former can be understood as simply the blood which Jesus is using to mark his covenant – i.e., “my covenantal blood.” What blood would this be? A quick reference to the Hebrew bible makes the situation clear. The language of wine as “the blood of the grape” is used very sparingly in the Hebrew bible, but it does allow for “blood” that could be consumed by the Jewish disciples without qualms. Even more remarkably, the most noteworthy instance of the “blood of the grape” language in the Hebrew bible, Genesis 49, supplies a passage which is ripe with messianic themes – and indeed it was interpreted in such a way by the early church. The passage speaks of binding Judah’s donkey to the vine, and washing his garment in the blood of grapes. When this passage is correlated with the donkey imagery in Zechariah 9 – as was indeed done in the early church – it may be understood as foretelling Judah’s binding his kingly vehicle to the vine, etc. The vine, then, is an image that is associated with lineage in the Hebrew bible, and so the touchstone-passage in Genesis 49 could be construed as Judah binding their kingship to a lineage, then washing in the blood of grapes. Now, this “six degrees of Kevin Bacon” approach may seem superficial at first, but in fact such interpretation was germane to both early Christian thought and to rabbinic interpretation. Different passages and images would be correlated and connected based on tangential points of commonality – say, a vine or a donkey - to yield a novel understanding not necessarily related to the passages' original contexts. Although we as modern interpreters might blanch at such a methodology, people in the early Christian era used it with rather less concern.
In the Last Supper, then, this construct would be of deep significance. Jesus would be asking his disciples to partake of the blood of grapes, forming a covenant with him – binding their messianic allegiance to him, paralleling and participating in Judah’s binding his kingship to a lineage (i.e., the Davidic lineage, abetted by the messianic “branch” imagery in the Hebrew bible). One may also extrapolate from this that the disciples were to be cleansed in their partaking in this covenant, just as Judah washing his garment in the blood of grapes. (Of course, the Matthean account actually refers to the blood being poured out for the remission of sins.) Such a messianic covenant would have been very appropriate in light of the coming crisis – it would have created a concrete bond between Jesus and his disciples, and its cleansing imagery would have been a fitting precursor to preparing them for ministry, in light of ritual precedents in both testaments (viz., the washing of the temple implements, and baptism).
Turning, then, to the body imagery, we find a curious potential to requalify the difficulty found in this quarter. In the Matthean/Markan accounts, Jesus simply says “Take, eat – this is my body.” Recognizing that the gospel writers do not always restrict themselves to verbatim quotes, this brief formula may be reduced to a comment that could be interpreted in two different ways, depending upon whether the audience took it as a Hebrew remark or an Aramaic remark. The comment would have been identical, and while in Hebrew it would have meant “this is my rainshower,” in Aramaic it would have meant “this is my body.” Being familiar with the Aramaic thought, it bears exploring the Hebrew alternate. Given the Passover setting, the meaning of bread/rainshower imagery would have been obvious: the manna, which explicitly said to have rained down in the Hebrew bible. And interestingly, we find in Deuteronomy that the manna was given that Israel might know that man does not live upon bread alone, but by every word that come forth from the mouth of God. So this correlates the manna with life, and with knowledge and revelation; all of this significance would have been readily apparent to a Jewish audience, who celebrated the events of the exodus as their primary faith experience, much as Christians regularly celebrate the Passion of Christ.
In the Last Supper, then, the disciples accepting such a “rainshower” would have been a ritual metaphor for accepting the life and knowledge or revelation of God through Jesus. Such imagery could have been all the more poignant in retrospect, given that Jewish liturgy at the time of Passover switches from prayers involving “rainshowers” to prayers involving lesser hydration – an acknowledgment of the passing of the rainy season. For the disciples, then, the acceptance of Jesus’ rainshower could be a seal upon their time in the rain of his revelation, before the drought of his departure from their regular company.
So, by dint of the “blood of the grape” and a manna-shower, we may arrive at a recasting of the eucharist that poses no challenge to the sacred imagery already in place for Jesus’ Jewish audience, and one that would have carried significant meaning to that audience in its historical context. On the eve of being deprived of their master’s company, the disciples would have sealed their sojourn with him by covenanting with him as their messiah, being cleansed in that relationship, and receiving his revelation as life and knowledge.
Yet, all of this might seem very speculative and impractical – were it not for the fact that we have evidence of such a very interpretation in the earliest years of the Christian movement. In one of the earliest Christian documents remaining to us, the Didache, we find extensive prayers for the eucharist that make no mention of the body/blood imagery. Rather, we find prayers that thank God for the vine of David, made known through Jesus, and for the life and knowledge made known through Jesus – each associated with the cup and the bread respectively. So it is apparent that such an interpretation did exist in the early church.
What is also apparent in early church writings is that the body and blood of Jesus were interpreted in many different ways, which suggests that the meaning of the elements was not altogether simple or obvious for early Christian generations, and also demonstrates that early Christians were willing to engage the eucharistic imagery with creativity. In light of how egregiously obscene the corporeal imagery would have been to Jesus’ Jewish audience, it raises the question of whether the early church did not derail in its embrace of the body/blood imagery, perhaps under the influence of Hellenistic philosophy and mystery religion. But that is a second discussion.
First, the difficulty posed by the traditional understanding must be appreciated. In the conventional understanding, the bread of the Lord’s Supper represents Jesus’ body, and the wine represents Jesus’ blood. Modern Christians don’t think twice about this familiar imagery, but it would have been quite difficult for Jesus’ Jewish audience at his last supper. The imagery is, after all, cannibalistic. It must be appreciated that in the wake of the Maccabean crisis (when the faithful were ferreted out for persecution by the litmus test of whether or not they would eat non-kosher food), one’s dietary scrupulosity became a hallmark of patriotism and of faithfulness to God. The biblical prohibition against eating blood was especially important, because both Gentiles and Jews were beholden to it, and because breaking that commandment resulted in being cut off from the community. In the Second temple period, the prohibition was taken seriously, and one major text of the period even correlated the eating of blood with the depravity that prompted the flood at the time of Noah. Beyond this, there was a scurrilous rumor about Jews around the time of Jesus, claiming that they participated in ritual cannibalism. So for theological and social reasons, the imagery of the traditional eucharist would have been problematic for Jesus’ Jewish disciples.
Moving on, then, when we examine the evidence in the New Testament for the institution of the eucharist, it is easy to discern a line of evolutionary development. The Matthean and Markan versions are a great deal simpler than those found in Luke and I Corinthians, and the variations in those Pauline sources are precisely those which underscore a body/blood interpretation. By contrast, the Matthean and Markan sources can be interpreted in a way that makes no reference to Jesus’ body or blood.
To take the blood issue first, the Matthean/Markan versions refer to “my blood of the covenant,” whereas the Pauline sources refer to “the covenant in my blood.” The latter statement explicitly makes the blood out to be Jesus’, but the former can be understood as simply the blood which Jesus is using to mark his covenant – i.e., “my covenantal blood.” What blood would this be? A quick reference to the Hebrew bible makes the situation clear. The language of wine as “the blood of the grape” is used very sparingly in the Hebrew bible, but it does allow for “blood” that could be consumed by the Jewish disciples without qualms. Even more remarkably, the most noteworthy instance of the “blood of the grape” language in the Hebrew bible, Genesis 49, supplies a passage which is ripe with messianic themes – and indeed it was interpreted in such a way by the early church. The passage speaks of binding Judah’s donkey to the vine, and washing his garment in the blood of grapes. When this passage is correlated with the donkey imagery in Zechariah 9 – as was indeed done in the early church – it may be understood as foretelling Judah’s binding his kingly vehicle to the vine, etc. The vine, then, is an image that is associated with lineage in the Hebrew bible, and so the touchstone-passage in Genesis 49 could be construed as Judah binding their kingship to a lineage, then washing in the blood of grapes. Now, this “six degrees of Kevin Bacon” approach may seem superficial at first, but in fact such interpretation was germane to both early Christian thought and to rabbinic interpretation. Different passages and images would be correlated and connected based on tangential points of commonality – say, a vine or a donkey - to yield a novel understanding not necessarily related to the passages' original contexts. Although we as modern interpreters might blanch at such a methodology, people in the early Christian era used it with rather less concern.
In the Last Supper, then, this construct would be of deep significance. Jesus would be asking his disciples to partake of the blood of grapes, forming a covenant with him – binding their messianic allegiance to him, paralleling and participating in Judah’s binding his kingship to a lineage (i.e., the Davidic lineage, abetted by the messianic “branch” imagery in the Hebrew bible). One may also extrapolate from this that the disciples were to be cleansed in their partaking in this covenant, just as Judah washing his garment in the blood of grapes. (Of course, the Matthean account actually refers to the blood being poured out for the remission of sins.) Such a messianic covenant would have been very appropriate in light of the coming crisis – it would have created a concrete bond between Jesus and his disciples, and its cleansing imagery would have been a fitting precursor to preparing them for ministry, in light of ritual precedents in both testaments (viz., the washing of the temple implements, and baptism).
Turning, then, to the body imagery, we find a curious potential to requalify the difficulty found in this quarter. In the Matthean/Markan accounts, Jesus simply says “Take, eat – this is my body.” Recognizing that the gospel writers do not always restrict themselves to verbatim quotes, this brief formula may be reduced to a comment that could be interpreted in two different ways, depending upon whether the audience took it as a Hebrew remark or an Aramaic remark. The comment would have been identical, and while in Hebrew it would have meant “this is my rainshower,” in Aramaic it would have meant “this is my body.” Being familiar with the Aramaic thought, it bears exploring the Hebrew alternate. Given the Passover setting, the meaning of bread/rainshower imagery would have been obvious: the manna, which explicitly said to have rained down in the Hebrew bible. And interestingly, we find in Deuteronomy that the manna was given that Israel might know that man does not live upon bread alone, but by every word that come forth from the mouth of God. So this correlates the manna with life, and with knowledge and revelation; all of this significance would have been readily apparent to a Jewish audience, who celebrated the events of the exodus as their primary faith experience, much as Christians regularly celebrate the Passion of Christ.
In the Last Supper, then, the disciples accepting such a “rainshower” would have been a ritual metaphor for accepting the life and knowledge or revelation of God through Jesus. Such imagery could have been all the more poignant in retrospect, given that Jewish liturgy at the time of Passover switches from prayers involving “rainshowers” to prayers involving lesser hydration – an acknowledgment of the passing of the rainy season. For the disciples, then, the acceptance of Jesus’ rainshower could be a seal upon their time in the rain of his revelation, before the drought of his departure from their regular company.
So, by dint of the “blood of the grape” and a manna-shower, we may arrive at a recasting of the eucharist that poses no challenge to the sacred imagery already in place for Jesus’ Jewish audience, and one that would have carried significant meaning to that audience in its historical context. On the eve of being deprived of their master’s company, the disciples would have sealed their sojourn with him by covenanting with him as their messiah, being cleansed in that relationship, and receiving his revelation as life and knowledge.
Yet, all of this might seem very speculative and impractical – were it not for the fact that we have evidence of such a very interpretation in the earliest years of the Christian movement. In one of the earliest Christian documents remaining to us, the Didache, we find extensive prayers for the eucharist that make no mention of the body/blood imagery. Rather, we find prayers that thank God for the vine of David, made known through Jesus, and for the life and knowledge made known through Jesus – each associated with the cup and the bread respectively. So it is apparent that such an interpretation did exist in the early church.
What is also apparent in early church writings is that the body and blood of Jesus were interpreted in many different ways, which suggests that the meaning of the elements was not altogether simple or obvious for early Christian generations, and also demonstrates that early Christians were willing to engage the eucharistic imagery with creativity. In light of how egregiously obscene the corporeal imagery would have been to Jesus’ Jewish audience, it raises the question of whether the early church did not derail in its embrace of the body/blood imagery, perhaps under the influence of Hellenistic philosophy and mystery religion. But that is a second discussion.