Talk:Origin of the Eucharist

Table redecoration
I was looking at the Last Supper article and then remembered that last November I talked with Esoglou and then redecorated the table there as below:

Do you guys want to think about that format here? Some users may actually read this one. History2007 (talk) 00:21, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for experimenting: personally I find the current table easier to follow; but this may be simply the result of the fact that this is the normal way of displaying such comparative tables and I am used to comparing vertically across columns.Jpacobb (talk) 16:26, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I think it has no evident advantage for the Institution Narratives table, which may be what Jpacobb had in mind; but I think it would make the Chilton Six Eucharists table much more readable. I find the shortness of the lines of text a serious difficulty in reading that table, probably because I am accustomed to take in more words at a glance.  Esoglou (talk) 16:38, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Editing Comparative Table of NT passages
It is good to see Oxyphenbutazone  taking an interest in the article. However, while many of his changes might be considered an improvement (though I would question some of them) they seem to raise a major question: are they OR? I presume that when Eschoir inserted the table he quoted a particular translation of the Bible (it looks to me like a NASV or similar text), but I can't locate the exact source among the many versions and editions. If so, does Wiki allow us to improve it in this way?Jpacobb (talk) 16:41, 13 April 2012 (UTC)


 * If you can not locate the version, and if the version is not clearly referenced, it is WP:OR. However, user:Oxyphenbutazone seems to edit once in a while, so my guess is that if you do not hear back in a few days, you can just use a suitable version and use that text, and state which version you have used. Some time ago, there was a discussion somewhere about copyright, and I do not even remember it any more, but the version in Wikisource is guaranteed to be trouble free. History2007 (talk) 14:19, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Off Topic?
I shan't have time till next week to deal with my concerns in detail, but I want to put them on record now.

I fully agree that many wiki articles tend to drift "off topic" by acquiring extraneous information which is peripheral and best placed elsewhere. There is however a prior problem in this case: "What exactly is the topic?" I prefer the second as the better of the two options, what do others think? Jpacobb (talk) 16:18, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
 * 1) It could be argued that it should be limited to the "raw materials" which lie behind the earliest descriptions of the Eucharist: this probably locates the cut-off at Justin Martyr.
 * 2) However, it could be held that a discussion of the "Origin of the Eucharist" should carry us down to the point where we are clearly dealing with an immediate ancestor of the Eucharists which are celebrated today and in particular the different anaphorai have emerged.  This carries us down to the middle/end of the fourth century with perhaps Ambrose's De Sacramentis being the last source. This was, I think, the underlying rationale of the article before recent edits.

Specific Concerns
If the second option is accepted, the following points will be relevant here rather than elsewhere: Full references for the above are available. Jpacobb (talk) 16:18, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
 * 1) It needs to be very clear that when dealing with any early anaphora where we have a long text there are weighty problems of textual criticism to be resolved.  There is a debate as to whether the earliest forms of Addai and Mari contained the Words of Institution. (It probably did not.)
 * 2) Opinion is far more divided than the current articles allow as to the provenance and date of the Apostolic Tradition and responsible scholars defend its Roman origin and date it around 215.
 * 3) David N. Power (The Eucharistic Mystery) divides the pre-Nicene Eucharistic prayers into four groups and includes the "Supper Narrative" (i.e. words of institution) as forming part of two of the four.

Question: Has not the label "Eucharist" been applied to this practice well after the 4th century? This word is not used by any of the biblical descriptions whatsoever. Indeed, there is an obvious gap between the "Fellowship" / "Communion" terms translated from the Koinonia noun root, should not that be called out? Its OK to call this (or something) the Eucharist, but thats not what it started out as. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.148.188.64 (talk) 16:39, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

Answers

 * I tend to favour the first alternative. I think this article began as an attempt to put forward any and all ideas that attributed to the Eucharist some origin other than that generally accepted in Christian tradition.  (It became better balanced later.)  The second alternative envisaged by Jpacobb would be not so much about the Origin of the Eucharist as about the Origin of the Eucharists.  Even if the problems about the early anaphoras alluded to by Jpacobb did not exist, I see no need to include them, beyond saying something about whatever conclusions regarding the origin of the Eucharist reliable sources may draw from the absence in them (according to several reliable sources) of an Institution Narrative.  In my poor opinion, I doubt if any clear conclusion can be drawn, since they could still be associated with the Last Supper, even if the Last Supper is not mentioned in them, especially since the connection is explicitly made in what are called early catechetical texts.  Esoglou (talk) 17:04, 5 May 2012 (UTC)


 * The problem is not the "off topic" but to make some order in the articles of Wiki, in order to avoid double dealing of the same subject. This article already got lot of material about the first century origin of the Eucharist, and now it has a clear "see also" template that explain to the reader that to follow the history of the Eucharist liturgy he can go to the article Anaphora (liturgy), where there is already a section about the "Historical Anaphoras", which should be further expanded.
 * From tha Anaphora article, the reader can arrive to the single articles about early anaphoras, such as the Anaphora of the Apostolic Tradition (where the debate about its dating is detailed), or the Anaphora of Addai and Mari (where the issue of the Works of Institution is deepened). I fully aware of the three points you highlighted (and also of more recent scholarship), and I'm preparing some other articles about early anaphora such as the Anaphora of Barcelona and the Deir Balyzeh Papyrus.
 * The concerns you arose about the early anaphoras deserve to be extensively managed without simplifications. (Also the lot of articles about the Roman Canon need a re-organization. Perhaps ‎Esoglou could help us)
 * So I may suggest to proceed to expand the article Anaphora, rather than to duplicate the content here in Origin of the Eucharist, also because to place this material here is like to state that the origin of the Eucharist could be dated in the 4th century, which is a POV. A ntv (talk) 17:31, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Psychedelic Mushrooms: Beyond the Fringe?
A new subsection has been added. I consider its inclusion unbalances the article and that we should consider deleting it. Two sources are given: John Allegro's 1970 book which was a nine-days talking point when published but as far as I know made no real impact on scholarly debate afterwards and a website which I think fails to qualify as a Reliable Source. In brief: undue prominence given to an incident which failed to find roots in the academic world. Jpacobb (talk) 03:11, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
 * delete: I agree to delete the Psychedelic Mushroom theory section because it is a fringe theory with no impact on scholarship.A ntv (talk) 06:13, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete: Does not really fit under "contemporary scholarship". Esoglou (talk) 06:34, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Removed according to the above A ntv (talk) 16:02, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Deleted Description of Link as "non-Catholic Protestant website"
The link http://www.leaderu.com/theology/passover.html was previously described as "a Christian website" and "Christian" was changed to "non-Catholic Protestant". This is a redundant expression which could be understood as POV. The site itself does form part of an evangelical conglomerate, but does not major on pushing protestantism and in fact, while a catholic might reasonably want to see more said about certain things, in my opinion at least, there is very little or nothing on the page to which a catholic academic would object as mistaken. I feel no description of the site is better than a potentially conflictive one. (I wondered whether to remove the description of the following one as well, but left it since the site positively implies it belongs to an individual Anglican parishes and they tend to express a theology which is more "restricted" than the range of opinions acceptable within Anglicanism.) Jpacobb (talk) 16:20, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Remove: I suggest to fully remove such a external link. There are thousands of web pages about this issue, and the simply reason that such link deals with the Origin of the Eucharist is not a reason to include it. As per WP:EXT we shall actually check the need of each single external link, and this link does not contain further research by well-known scholars, does not include material which cannot be insert in the article, is not a reference text source. Also the next link, the "Anglican" one, should be removed for the same reason: in Wiki we have lots of articles about the view of the Eucharist under each single denomination, and this article is not to duplicate such details. Only the first link should be retained, but simply because it meets the criteria of including further research by a well-known scholar (but perhaps it could be under a "Further reading" section).A ntv (talk) 09:26, 15 June 2012 (UTC)