Talk:Origin of the Eucharist/Archive 3

I propose we modify the opening of this article
Ceremonies in which people have consumed the flesh and blood of their gods have existed for many thousands of years and pre-date Christianity. As such, it is not accurate to say that the practice of consuming a Eucharist originates in the Christian Mysteries. The opening of this article is as follows:

"Church teaching[1][2][3] places the origin of the Eucharist in the Last Supper of Jesus with his disciples, at which he is believed to have taken bread and given it to his disciples, telling them to eat of it, because it was his body, and to have taken a cup and given it to his disciples, telling them to drink of it because it was the cup of the covenant in his blood.[4] The Acts of the Apostles and the Pauline epistles show that early Christians considered that in celebrating the rite they were fulfilling a mandate to do."

Because this type of ceremony does not originate with the Christian Church, I do not think this is a relevant summary of the main essence of this topic. I propose a modification to the article that mentions that Eucharistic practices originate elsewhere, mentions where, and cites sources to that effect. Obviously the Eucharist is a very important rite in the Christian church, and that should be reflected in this article. However, church teaching is not the end-all authority on a category of religious ritual that is found throughout human religious history. I would be willing to rewrite this section, but before I put all of the effort in, I want to be assured that someone won't simply revert any changes I make. - Nanamin (talk) 03:05, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
 * It seems to be your opinion, one for which you can of course cite some writers, that the Christian rite of the Eucharist originated from ceremonies in which people consumed the flesh and blood of their gods or believed that they did. An opinion that is not shared by all scholars.  For instance, there are those who think the Christian rite began as a simple rite of table fellowship, which later developed theological significance of various kinds.  Nearly everyone who knows of the Eucharist knows of the provenance attributed to it by the churches that celebrate it.  An excellent reason for starting with a statement of that best-known view of the origin of the rite, stating it, of course, not as an undoubted fact but simply as the view of the churches.  Your theory seems to belong much further down the list of theories.  Esoglou (talk) 08:40, 9 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree with Esoglou. And the article is about the Eucharist as used in Christianity in any case. History2007 (talk) 15:09, 9 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree with Esoglou and History2007. I checked the meaning of "eucharist" in three standard dictionaries and all of them confine its meaning to the Christian rite.  While similar sacred eating/drinking rites can be found in other religions the name Eucharist (if used at all) has not become sufficiently common to justify their being included in this article.Jpacobb (talk) 20:48, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Modern scholarship
Here's one example of modern scholarship concerning among other things the Eucharist. https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstream/handle/1887/13780/Alikin%20proefschrift.pdf?sequence=2

Chapter 3 concerns the Lord's Supper. Martijn Meijering (talk) 19:24, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

It make be helpful to quote the conclusion of chapter 3: Martijn Meijering (talk) 19:46, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

In reconstructing the earliest history of the Eucharist, l Corinthians and the Didache should and can be used as the main sources; they are mutually independent witnesses of a common, earlier tradition. The primary function of the Lord’s Supper was to establish the fellowship, communion, and unity among the participants. This meal was the expression of their being a community. It was also an anticipation of the ideal situation of the world to come. However, the interpretation of the community gathered for the supper as the “body of Christ,” the interpretation of the bread and the wine as Jesus’ body and blood, and the attribution of the ceremony’s origins to an institution by the historical Jesus himself, must all be regarded as early, yet secondary developments. It has proved to be difficult to regard the Lord’s Supper historically as a continuation of Jesus’ Last Supper. The story of the Last Supper, which is the story about the institution of the ecclesiastical communal meal, rather originated secondarily in explanation of the existence of the Lord’s Supper or Eucharist. This explains why the tradition about the Last Supper is absent in the Didache and other accounts of the Eucharist in the East. In the first half of the second century, besides the communal supper on Sunday evening, Eucharistic celebrations were incorporated into the prayer meetings held in the early morning. In these morning sessions the meal could not be, and did not need to be, as substantial as in the evening; the portions of food and wine used in the morning service were probably less sizeable than those provided at the supper on Sunday evening. As a result of practical constraints the Eucharist in the morning was probably ritualized to a certain extent. At the same time, owing to the growth of the Christian communities and the proliferation of morning services, the supper on Sunday evening began to lose importance and recognition as a sacrament, 134 CHAPTER THREE whereas the Eucharists celebrated on Sunday morning and the mornings of other days gained significance. This development resulted in the morning ceremony being regarded as the real sacrament, while the Sunday Supper gradually ceased to be considered eucharistic and as such became a charity meal for the less well-off members of the community.

This is not something for which one can assume that any given modern scholar (however one identifies them) is representative of a whole. Mangoe (talk) 16:50, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Agreed, I was just disagreeing with the idea that this is unique to the JS and that the JS seminar is fringe. Martijn Meijering (talk) 17:26, 6 March 2012 (UTC)


 * The JSeminar is not fringe, but they are way, way, way oversold on Wikipedia. Various articles almost refer to the "inerrant word of Crossan" - and that mentality now permeates many pages, and positions them as the ultimate scholarly authority. History2007 (talk) 21:47, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Can you give any examples of that on this page? Martijn Meijering (talk) 22:00, 18 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I was not referring to this page, but the overall trend I have seen. This page does not have the "inerrant word of Crossan" problem as such. It quotes him a few times, but I would have used him less and used other quotes next to him, yet that is not a major issue here I think. History2007 (talk) 09:23, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Overall Springcleaning?
I have now re-worked the lede in the light of comments from the previous sections. Here it is

To complement this, given that the article has grown over time and lost shape, the material in the body of the article needs to be reordered to match the sequence of the new lede. I would group it in the following main sections: References etc. .....
 * 1) New Testament
 * 2) Early Church (collecting all the material from various sections + Justin M. details from my previous proposal for lede.
 * 3) Contemporary Scholarship (mainly Establishment of the Eucharist)
 * 4) Cultural Influences
 * 5) Liturgy

In the process of reordering a certain amount of repeated or irrelevant material could be removed and the one sentence paragraphs sorted. Finally, the extensive notes would have to be tackled and reduced. I am will to attempt this over a period of a few days if there is agreement that this is the way forwardJpacobb (talk) 18:04, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
 * No objection. Esoglou (talk) 18:54, 16 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Actually a pretty nice lede now, it does what WP:LEDE says: Just 4 manageable paragraphs that spark interest in reading more. The one item I would change would be "mid-50s" that would just not sound familiar to many people. And instead of Church teaching perhaps "In Christianity" so it can get linked - and some denominations may not have a central teaching office as such. And I think the proposed structure will work out fine. I think if that style of improvement is continued, the article may achieve salvation at last. History2007 (talk) 21:42, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

In the light of the above, I have reordered the raw material. It is not always easy to decide whether some material should be under New Testament or Contemporary Scholarship. A lot of work remains to be done on improving the subsections and the notes, but the major moves between sections have been made made. Please note that there is quite a lot of material which I considered not really relevant still held at some points as comments in case someone wants it reinserted.Jpacobb (talk) 03:28, 19 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Looks better now, in my view. But I should say that I have looked at this article several times and have never managed to read through those text tables. Can you guys actually read them? I find it so hard to read text in narrow columns. And it can all get linked to Wikisource anyway, and the major elements presented. History2007 (talk) 06:08, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I find the Chilton Table very difficult. Anyway, I don't think the contents justify the space it takes up.  As an experiment I have tried reducing the Institution Narrative parallels to the absolute minimum.  The other two tables, Crossan and Jeremias are readable and the material from this latter one should be retained in some form.Jpacobb (talk) 18:13, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Try a smaller font, allowing the reader to take in more at a glance before restarting on a new line. Esoglou (talk) 19:24, 19 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I think I may need new eye glasses... History2007 (talk) 01:59, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Bad Article: Protestant Apologetics
It's sad to see such an important article marred by the blatant Protestant POV. The majority of this article seems to be aimed at undermining the Catholic and Orthodox Eucharistic theology. Bringing Crossan in as a special guest star only adds insult to injury. This is an encyclopedia so I did not come here expecting to see aplogetics of any variety BUT if you're going to offer information promoting the premise as to WHY Catholic and Orthodox theology is wrong, you should at lease include information in support of the position of those churches. That said. . .having followed the edit wars on this page and on the Eucharist page. . .I fully understand that there is a certain individual who is using Wikipedia as his own platform for promoting his own view of Eucharistic theology. . .or perhaps he's just an iconoclast? In any event, this is a bad article and should be made more balanced. I hope those better able then I to so will prevail over the person with the point of view that is so poisoning this page. Or maybe it should just be renamed "The Early Church Did Not Celebrate The Eucharist!" — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dliodoir (talk • contribs) 17:50, 23 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Articles like this which cover a large field of specialist knowledge grow over a period of time with contributions made by different editors and the end result can be a lack of balance. The publicity given to the Jesus Seminar may well result in the opinions of its members getting undue exposure and this may have happened in one section of this article.  However, lack of balance is an ever-present risk in Wikipedia and is not in itself necessarily the result of an attempt to impose a POV which insinuates bad faith on the part of other editors.
 * In this case, what might be a legitimate concern is spoilt by the impression that the article has not been read carefully enough. In the section on Early Christianity it is clearly stated that the Eucharist was celebrated. The section on Contemporary Scholarship starts by explaining that scholars "try to decide where the distinct components of the later rite originated by examining possible cultural elements, both Jewish and Hellenic, which already existed in the period under study".  Furthermore, any imbalance is is not a question of Catholicism and Orthodoxy versus Protestantism.  There are many main-line protestant scholars who disagree with academics like Crossan (who incidentally was a Roman Catholic priest, but resigned his orders).Jpacobb (talk) 17:02, 24 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Dliodoir, I believe the editor you refer to is now on "an enforced vacation of indefinite duration" . Now would be the best time to put the article in the shape you suggest, and, thoughtful editors (like Esoglou, to name just one) are moving the article in a good direction.  --  Kenatipo    speak! 20:52, 24 March 2012 (UTC)