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"In the history of the Church no subject has been more fruitful of controversy than the Lord's Supper. There never has been any unanimity in the understanding of its nature, nor any uniformity in the mode of celebrating it."

The origins of Eucharist, a kind of Christian liturgy cannot be absolutely determined. The word "Eucharist" is derived from Greek εὐχαριστία (eucharistia), a noun denoting the action of "giving thanks" (the meaning of the word). According to some, the word came to mean a thing (a common meal), Those who, as indicated above, hold that the agape feast and the Eucharist, though celebrated together, were distinct see the word as applied not to the common meal or agape, but to the ritual giving of thanks over bread and cup, the Eucharist. The others say that the word then came to mean a part of the thing (bread course and often cup course), then bread and often cup course detached from thing, then token servings of bread and often cup, and finally the prayers surrounding the consumption of token amounts of bread and often cup with porous historical boundaries between each period.

There were variations in the celebration of the Eucharist concerning the day (Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, or Sunday, or by the time of Cyprian, every day), the time (evening or morning), the order (bread first, or only bread, or cup first), and, according to those who hold that the agape feast and the eucharist were not distinct, components (bread, cheese, milk, honey, oil, salt, water and/or wine and attendance (under a dozen sharing a full meal at first, to crowds of participants and non-participiants consuming token amounts provided by and presided over by church officials after Christianity became the Roman State religion).

Historically, it is a liturgy whose institution has been attributed since the Fourth Century in Catholic doctrine to Jesus himself. "There is no hint of a tradition that the actual content of Jesus' thanksgiving at the Last Suppper was remembered, transmitted, and repeated at the celebration of the Eucharist"

There is no evidence that a narration of the "(alleged) historical event" called the Last Supper was used when celebrating the Eucharist in the earliest Christian centuries. Even now the narrative is not used by those who celebrate the Eucharist using the Holy Qurbana of Addai and Mari, but these do currently attach great importance to that narrative in their Eucharistic theology and within the Qurbana itself speak of offering it as taught "in his (Jesus') life-giving Gospel". And the account in is interpreted within the controversial Catholic Opus Dei movement as showing that, already in the mid-first century, "St Paul clearly teaches that the Eucharist was instituted by Christ himself (cf. 1 Cor 11:23-25)."

Though "giving thanks" [Heb. berakh] has been a part of religious meal practice from Mosaic times (see Passover Seder, chronologically, the first known to reference Eucharist as bread and cup course detached from meal is Justin Martyr, writing around 150, who is generally credited with the first explicit mention of Eucharist as thing. After the time of the Council of Nicea, Eucharist and the Last Supper started becoming placed in a relation of dependence in many, but not all, Eucharist liturgies, and excerpts from St. Paul's account of the Lord's Supper in 1 Corinthians, as well as portions of the Synoptic Gospels recounting the Last Supper began being quoted as Words of Institution of the liturgies of Paschal sacrifice.

Since 400 C.E., many, if not most, Christian Churches teach that the origin of the Eucharist was in the Last Supper. Taft teaches that "(n)ot until thee 12th Century do the scholastics formulate the thesis that the Words of Instution are the essential 'form of the sacrament' which alone effect the consecration of the bread and wine." The traditional Institution Narrative has since 1551 been the consecration of the Roman Catholic mass, without which there can be no Mass.

Contemporary scholarship examines the questions whether there is historical evidence of a single common paradigm for the various extant Eucharist liturgies (a conclusive no), and if not, whether the Last Supper is a necessary antecedant for the Eucharistic liturgy.

Development of the Eucharist tradition
The historical record is too sparse in original texts to put a date upon the first use of the term "eucharistia" as referring to the name of an ecclesiatical ritual and not ordinary thanksgiving for a common meal.

Common meals figured significantly in Jesus' ministry. In accordance with Jesus' general message of forgiveness and inclusion, Jesus ate meals with outsiders. According to both Matthew and Luke, critics called him a "glutton and a drunkard, a friend of publicans and sinners." Unlike John the Baptist, Jesus drank wine.

The New Testament recounts three instances of religious table fellowship, which would, in later centuries, be called eucharistic. Paul the Apostle mentioned in one paragraph of his many letters, in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, usually dated to A.D. 52–57 "When you assemble, it is not to eat the Lord's Supper." This is the only usage of the term "the Lord's Supper" in the Bible. Paul's letters are more likely to have been read at meals than at "business meetings."

and tell of the very first Christians "continuing steadfastly in the breaking of bread", interpreted by some as a reference to Eucharist, written some twenty years later than the reference in 1 Corinthians. And in Acts 20:7, believers are descrbed as gathered for the breaking of bread. "It is reasonable to conclude therefore that the author of Luke-Acts envisaged a Christian community meal in which the principle ingredient was bread."

Dennis E. Smith says that the earliest Christians worshiped at table in their hosts' dining rooms. and that the earliest Christians shaped the traditions about Jesus to fit that setting. In his study Dining Posture in Ancient Rome: Bodies, Values, and Status concerning practice at the meals designated in Latin by the word "convivium", equivalent to "deipnon" and/or "symposion" in Greek, Matthew D. Roller states that the number of participants at such meals in private houses, as opposed to other specially designated places, would be at most a dozen.

Dennis E. Smith also says that the symposium after the meal was the time for teaching and conversation, for the singing of hymns, for the contributions of those who prophesied or spoke in tongues.

There was a kind of symposium called the eranos in which participants brought their own food.

For many people at the time, especially the poor, the chief, if not the sole ingredients of the daily meal were bread, salt and water.

The term "Eucharist", which became the usual term for the rite, does not appear under that name in the Bible. "Was the Last Supper a Eucharist in this full sense of the word? Obviously not." Early occurrences are in the Didache, Saint Ignatius of Antioch and Saint Justin Martyr. The first-century Christian Eucharist - it is disputed whether it was considered identical with the agape feast in connection with which it was celebrated - was a communal supper with ritual prayer and blessing. Like Jewish banquets of the time, it followed Hellenic practices.

There is disagreement about the exact relationship between the earliest celebrations of the Eucharist and the common meal or Agape feast. Today, as a hundred years ago, some scholars hold that, though associated, they were distinct rituals. Some recent writers, including the above-cited McGowan, say that the Eucharist, beginning in the Early Church was a common meal,      The Encyclopaedia Britannica sums up the present state of the discussion as follows:
 * The Church Fathers used agape to designate both a rite (using bread and wine) and a meal of fellowship to which the poor were invited. The historical relationship between the agape, the Lord's Supper, and the Eucharist is still uncertain. Some scholars believe the agape was a form of the Lord's Supper and the Eucharist the sacramental aspect of that celebration. Others interpret agape as a fellowship meal held in imitation of gatherings attended by Jesus and his disciples; the Eucharist is believed to have been joined to this meal later but eventually to have become totally separated from it.

The Eucharistic celebrations of the early Christians were embedded in, or simply took the form of, a meal. These were often called Agape Feasts, although terminology varied in the first few centuries along with other aspects of practice. Recently, scholars have held 'the whole concept of the agape' as dubious, serving as a useful vague category in which to dump any evidence for meals the researcher did not want to treat as eucharistic. It is noted that except perhaps for Tertullian, there is no evidence at all for early Christian communities that practiced both a Euchaist and at the same time an agape.

The epistles of Apostolic Father and traditional second pope Clement of Rome makes no explicit reference to Eucharist. The Didache contains, among its components, the earliest surviving written church order. It is usually dated to the early second century. . A composite of several documents, it includes ritual prayers and a mention of what it calls the εὐχαριστία (Thanksgiving or Eucharist). According to the overwheling consensus among scholars, the section beginning at 10.1 is a reworking of the Birkat hamazon the prayer that ends the Jewish ritual meal. (see The Didache: Its Jewish Sources and Its Place in Early Judaism and Christianity by Hubertus Waltherus Maria van de Sandt, David Flusser pp 311-2)

Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, writing circa 107-110 CE referred to Eucharist three times in his Letter to the Smyrnaeans and once in his Letter to the Philadelphians, though they contain no reference to bread and wine. He refers to eucharist and the agape or love-feast synonymously : "Let that eucharist alone be considered valid which is celebrated in the presence of the bishop, or of him to whom he shall have entrusted it. ... It is not lawful either to baptize, or to hold a love-feast without the consent of the bishop." A Glossary of Eastern Orthodox Terms quoted in Father Symeon Ioannovskij, Orthodox Publishing Society. concludes that for Ignatius as well as Saint Hippolytus of Tome the two terms, "eucharist" and "love-feast" were synonymous.

Letter 96 from Pliny the Younger to Trajan in about 112 suggests that "a common but innocent meal" was celebrated among early Christians. Tertullian too writes of these meals.

Justin Martyr, writing around 150, is generally credited with the first explicit mention of the Eucharist as noun. He gave a detailed description of a baptismal rite, and stated that "eucharistia" was the name that Christians used for the bread and wine (or perhaps water ) shared by the participants at the baptism: "And this food is called among us eὐχαριστία" [eucharist] ... " Bradshaw says that he uses the passive participle of eucharistein three times in his First Apology, meaning 'over which thanks has been given,' demonstrating how dominant the concept of thanksgiving as the primary action of the Eucharist still was . Not only are there plentiful examples of eucharaistic meals involving water, there are others where no cup is found at all.

Clement of Alexandria (c.150-211/216) distinguished so-called "Agape" meals of luxurious character from the agape (love) "which the food that comes from Christ shows that we ought to partake of". Accusations of gross indecency were sometimes made against the form that these meals sometimes took.

Augustine of Hippo also objected to the continuance in his native North Africa of the custom of such meals, in which some indulged to the point of drunkenness, and he distinguished them from proper celebration of the Eucharist: "Let us take the body of Christ in communion with those with whom we are forbidden to eat even the bread which sustains our bodies." He reports that even before the time of his stay in Milan, the custom had already been forbidden there.

Canons 27 and 28 of the Council of Laodicea (364) restricted the abuses. The Third Council of Carthage (393) and the Second Council of Orleans (541) reiterated this legislation, which prohibited feasting in churches, and the Trullan Council of 692 decreed that honey and milk were not to be offered on the altar (Canon 57), and that those who held love feasts in churches should be excommunicated (Canon 74).

Paul Bradshaw argues in Eucharistic Origins that it is not until after the first century and much later in some areas that the Eucharist and the Last Supper became placed in a relation of dependence: many Eucharists did not relate to the Paschal mystery and/or the Last Supper.

Liturgies
Liturgies that fully developed by the late 300s in the great Anaphoras of St. Basil and St. Chrysostom of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Canon of the Mass of the Roman Rite, and similar anaphoras in other Churches, generally refer explicitly to what Jesus did at his Last Supper, using words that recall what the earliest sources attribute to him on that occasion. These first-century sources, namely the First Epistle to the Corinthians and the three Synoptic Gospels, do not use identical words in recounting what Jesus said at the Last Supper and, like the Words of Institution in the liturgies, do not claim to repeat word for word what exactly he said. A similar variety of expression is found in their accounts of what Jesus said on other occasions, giving the tenor, but not claiming to repeat the exact words of Jesus, which in any case were presumably spoken in Aramaic, not in the language of these sources, which is Greek. The words of institution used in present-day liturgies are different combinations of words given in Saint Paul's letter and in the Synoptic Gospels and may even include words not given in the first-century sources, such as the Roman Rite's "et aeterni" and (formerly) "mysterium fidei".

The Roman Catholic Church acknowledges the validity of the Holy Qurbana of Addai and Mari, which is a Eucharistic liturgy in use from time immemorial that does not expressly contain the words of institution. It has been described as "an authentic anaphora of early Christianity, close to the primordial patterns of the Eucharistic prayer". It speaks of "the commemoration of the Body and Blood of your Christ, which we offer to you on the pure and holy altar, as you have taught us in his life-giving Gospel" and of "commemorating this mystery of the passion and death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ".

(Father Robert Taft) showed that Catholic Masses didn't use the so-called words of institution, "This is my body, this is my blood," until after the Council of Nicaea in 325, and that even then the words of institution were not ordered until the Council of Trent issued a decree in 1531 [sic], responding to Luther's challenge over transubstantiation.

Ros Clarke refers to evidence that suggests that "Words of Institution" were not used in the celebration of the Eucharist during the second century. The liturgical use of the narratives, common today, seems not to have been known in the second century and only developed later in the third century.

Passover, Kiddush and Chaburah: Jewish Ritual Meal Practice
Scholars have associated the form of Jesus' Last Supper and the first-century Eucharist practices with three Second Temple Jewish meal practices: the Passover Seder meal, the kiddush blessing with wine, and the chaburah fellowship.

Passover Seder
The Synoptic Gospels speak of the Last Supper as a Passover meal. The diners are required to recline in the Greek manner, and the meal had three courses The Passover Seder involves four cups of wine. The emphasis placed on cups of wine at earlier points in the meal is not in accordance with the symposium tradition but is not unknown in Rome by the first century. The resemblance to Graeco-Roman banquets is furthered in the mutual expectation for appropriate discourse.

In the Gospel of John, the Last Supper takes place the day before Passover. Paul the Apostle does not mention Passover in relation to the Last Supper.

Where doubts have been acknowledged about the connection between the Last Supper and Seder, writers have sought other Jewish meal-types as models or precursors.

Kiddush
The Johannine Supper, Ratcliffe has suggested, was the Jewish ordinance known as Qiddush, the details of which involved the leader of the mixed-sex ceremony taking a cup of wine, sanctifying it by reciting a thanksgiving blessing, and passing it around. There was a similar blessing and breaking of bread. Qiddush is the "Jewish benediction and prayer recited over a cup of wine immediately before the meal on the eve of the sabbath or of a festival. After reciting the Ḳiddush the master of the house sips from the cup, and then passes it to his wife and to the others at the table; then all wash their hands, and the master of the house blesses the bread, cuts it, and passes a morsel to each person at the table.

Joachim Jeremias, in about the same time period, disputed the view that the Last Supper was Qiddush, because the Kiddush was always associated with the sabbath, and even if there was a Passover Kiddush, it would have taken place immediately before the seder, not the day before. Jeremias argued in favor of a Seder as Last Supper.

Ratcliffe wrote: "Though the Qiddush accounts for the '[Johannine]' Last Supper, it affords no explanation on the origin of the eucharist . . . the Last Supper and the Sabbath-Passover Qiddush was therefore no unusual occurrence. It represented consistent practice since Jesus had first formed the group. It is from this practice, rather than from any direct institution from Jesus, that the eucharist derives its origin. The practice was too firmly established for the group to abandon it, when its Master had been taken away; the primitive apostolic eucharist is no other than the continuation of Jesus's chaburah meal. This is the 'breaking of bread' of  Acts ii. 42."

Chaburah
The chaburah (also 'haburah', pl 'chaburoth') is not the name of a rite, rather it was the name of a group of male friends who met at regular intervals (weekly for Dix) for conversation and a formal meal appurtenant to that meeting. Nothing is said about them in the Bible but scholars have been able to discover some things about them from other sources. The corporate meeting of a chaburah usually took the form of a supper, held at regular intervals, often on the eve of sabbaths or holy days. Each member of the society contributed towards the provision of this common meal.

The form of the supper was largely the same as the chief meal of the day in every pious Jewish household. Each kind of food was blessed when it was first brought to the table. At the end of the meal came the grace after meals - the Blessing or Benediction as it was called. This long prayer was said by the host or father of the family in the name of all who had eaten the meal. On important occasions, and at a chaburah supper, it was recited over a special cup of wine known quite naturally as "the cup of blessing." At the end of the Thanksgiving prayer this cup was sipped by the leader and then by each of those present. The chaburah supper was concluded by the singing of a psalm, after which the meeting broke up.

Jeremias also disputed that the Last Supper was a chaburah meal, interposing the objection that the chaburah was a "duty" meal, held appurtenant to a formal occasion such as a 'bris' or a betrothal.

Deipnon, libation and symposion
Analysis of Jesus' meal practice, including the Last Supper, requires familiarity with Greek banquet meal practices, established centuries earlier.

In the 8th century BC, the Judean shepherd/prophet Amos denounced the luxurious social and ceremonial religious practices of Israel's wealthy and referred to these practices (assemblies, feasts, reclining, songs, harp music, ointment, and bowls of wine) negatively.

During the Second Temple period, Hellenic practices were adopted by Jews after the conquests of Alexander the Great. By the 2nd century BC, Jesus Ben Sirach writing in the longest biblical wisdom book, Ecclesiasticus, described Jewish feasting, with numerous parallels to Hellenic practice, without disapproval. .

Gentile and Jewish practice was that the all-male participants reclined at table on their left elbows, and after a benediction given by the host (in the case of a Jewish meal), would have a deipnon (late afternoon or evening meal) of bread with various vegetables, perhaps some fish or even meat if the meal was extravagant.

Among the Greeks, a ritual libation, or sacrificial pouring out of wine, followed, with another benediction or blessing, leading to the 'symposion' (as in Plato's Symposium) or wine-drinking course and entertainment. Thus was established an order of breaking bread and drinking wine. Cups of wine were even passed from diner to diner as a way to pass responsibility for speaking next. "Plutarch spoke in the highest terms of the bonds created by the shared wine bowl. His words are echoed by Paul who spoke of the sharing of bread and wine as the act that created the one body, that is to say, it was a community-creating ritual."

Mystery Cults
Parallel to the religious duties to god and state, "the Hellenic world also fostered a number of 'underground' religions, which countless thousands of people found intellectually and emotionally satisfying." They were known as the "mysteries," because their adherants took oaths never to reveal their rites to the uninitiated. Several honored young male gods born of a divine father and human mother, ressurected after a heroic death. In some of these secret religions "celebrants shared a communal meal in which they symbolically ate the flesh and drank the blood of their god."

Dionysus cult
Early Christianity spread through a Hellenized populace. Jewish feast practices had taken on Hellenic forms. Hellenic culture recognized several gods of death and rebirth, such as Osiris. The deity most similar to the Christ of the Eucharist is Dionysus. Dionysus was the god of the vine, and his feasts included wine that was the god himself, sacrificed for those at the feast. Dionysus was the son of Zeus, the king of the divine mountain. Zeus raised Dionysus from the dead and made him immortal. Dionysus was the most famous dying and resurrected god, son of the King of the gods and a mortal mother. Zeus raised his son from the dead, granting him everlasting divinity. He was "god of 'the vine' - representing wine, the most universally popular beverage in the ancient world." "To quote Euripides statement, he was the libation, 'The god who himself is offered in libation to the other gods.' In this passage the identification of the god with the wine is as absolute as the identification of Christ in Catholic thought with the consecrated wine of the mass, or, to cite an illustration from the far away religious system of the Vedas, the identification of the god Soma with the soma drink. . . Under such circumstances the devotees of Dionysus would be sure of the presence of the very god himself in the consecrated wine made from the sacred grapes."

The modern scholar Barry Powell says that Christian notions of eating and drinking the "flesh" and "blood" of Jesus were influenced by the cult of Dionysus. He says that Dionysus was distinct among Greek gods, as a deity commonly felt within individual followers. Willoughby writes "The wine they drank was for them potent with divine power--it was the god himself, and the very quintessence of divine life was resident in the juice of the grape.. . The drinking of wine in the service of Dionysus was for them a religious sacrament. . . . The devotees of Dionysus had other realistic means of attaining to communion with their god. They had a sacrament of eating as well as a sacrament of drinking. This rite was the "feast of raw flesh." To be an initiate into the mysteries of Dionysus . . . (t)hey Quaff the goat's delicious blood. . . (t)he devotees tore asunder the slain beast and devoured the dripping flesh in order to assimilate the life of the god resident in it. Thus when the Bacchanals by the sacraments of eating and drinking entered into direct communion with their god, they became partakers of his immortality. In assimulating the raw flesh wherein the god was temporarily incarnate and in drinking the juice of the grape, they received into their bodies an undying substance.

Mithras
The following is said to be a ritual enunciation by Mithras: "He who will not eat of my body and drink of my blood, so that he will be made one with me and I with him, the same shall not know salvation."

"Under the influence of theories of the sacred and of sacrfice from such as Frazer, Durkheim, and Mauss, both Mithraic and Dionysus cult-meals . . . seem now to have been dependent on the abstraction of sacramental theory from medieval and later Christian reflection on Eucharist. Rather than being keys to a generalized theory of the sacred, these earlier theories turn out to be anachronistic."

Pre-Pauline Confluence of Greek and Hebrew Traditions
By the time the Roman conquest, Jews practiced festive dining in essentially the same form as the Greeks, with a dinner (deipnon) followed by the symposium proper, where guests drank wine and enjoyed entertainment or conversation. There were, to be sure, cultic differences, such as a berachah over the wine cup instead of the Greeks' libation to Dionysus. But eating together was a central activity for Jewish religious groups such as Pharisees and Essenes.

"Thanksgiving" (in Greek, "εὐχαριστία"[eucharistia]) is probably to be regarded as the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew "ברכה" [berakhah, berakah], the Jewish "blessing" (in Greek, "εὐλογία" [eulogia]) "addressed to God at meals for and over the food and drink. It is in this sense that the term was originally used in connection with the common meal of the early Christian community, at which the 'blessing' or 'thanksgiving' had special reference to Jesus Christ."

One formulation had it that "(t)he eucharistia was the berakhah without the chaburah supper, and the agape is the chaburah meal without the berakhah.

The Last Supper in the New Testament - Institution or Substitution
Paul had first evangelized the inhabitants of Corinth, in Greece, in 51/52 C.E. Paul's nascent congregation there was made up of pagan, not Jewish, converts. All first generation Christians were necessarily converts, either pagan or Jewish. They had written him regarding numerous matters of concern. Criticizing what he had heard of their meetings, at which they had communal meals, one paragraph in Paul's response reminded them about what he asserted he had "received from the Lord" and had "passed on" about Jesus' actions and directives at his Last Supper. The ambiguities some find in that wording has generated reams of books, articles and opinions about the Origins of Eucharist. Most students of eucharistic origins agree that the Last Supper (a one-off event) and eucharist (a periodically repeated rite) are not the same thing. Clearly the religious table fellowship tradition had been going on in the Early Christian Church antedating Paul's conversion, unless the contention is made that Paul invented it. See table below for Paul's paragraph regarding the Last Supper.

The paragraph preceding this gives Paul's complaints against how the Corinthians actually ate and drank "the Lord's Supper", and the two paragraphs that follow it  give his appeal to them to eat and drink it worthily, since otherwise they would sin against the body and blood of the Lord.

Ratcliffe, writing in the 1926 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, said: "The eucharist, therefore, for Paul was in some way a re-presentation of the crucifixion, ordained by Christ himself to assure to His followers the enjoyment, until his proximate return, of the blessings which the crucifixion, as a covenant sacrifice, had secured. This interpretation, however, cannot be taken as current outside the Pauline sphere influence. Paul himself fails to cite the general assent of Christians in confirmation of the tradition which he asserts."

In his 1994 book, A Feast of Meanings: Eucharistic Theologies from Jesus through Johannine Circles, Bruce Chilton wrote that Paul "indeed 'received from the Lord' (1 Corinthians 11:23, through Cephas (Galatians 1:18), what he 'handed over' (1Corinthians 11:23) to his hearers. … He reminds his hearers of what he already had taught as authoritative, a teaching 'from the Lord' and presumably [sic] warranted by the earliest 'pillars': in that sense, what he hands on is not his own, but derives from his highest authority, 'the Lord' (11:23)."

Eugene LaVerdiere wrote: "That is how Paul introduced the tradition, presenting himself as a link in the chain of Eucharistic tradition. He received (paralambano) the tradition of Eucharist in the early 40s while in the community at Antioch. He handed it on (paradidomi) to the Corinthians in the year 51 when first proclaiming the gospel to them.  Like Paul, the Corinthians also were to become a link in the chain of Eucharistic tradition, handing on to others what Paul handed on to them. Several years later, circa 54, Paul reminded them of this in 1 Corinthians."

James Still represents that most contemporary commentators argue that what Paul "receives from the Lord" is church tradition with the authority of the Lord behind it, rather than a direct revelation from Christ, and quotes as representatives of this view Kilmartin, Jeremias and Marshall. But he himself argues that Paul, in his Epistle to the Galatians, "denies that any of his teachings are from other men in authority", "goes to great lengths to distance himself from the Jerusalem Church and its gospel", and "goes on to contrast his gospel from the perverse teachings of those 'who were reputed to be something' (the three 'pillars' of James, Cephas, and John) and to defend himself from their interference". He then mentions as a possibility that "Paul needed to look no further for his soteriology than the pervasive Dionysian cult in the pagan world", but adds: "However, it is not necessary to think that he went outside of Hellenistic Judaism for his gospel."

Jesus' Last Supper is an event so significant to the Early Church that all four Gospels include a version. See table below. "It is important, however, to distinguish the Last Supper as an (alleged) historical event from the narratives of the Last Supper in the New Testament. . . The trend, therefore, in more recent scholarship has been to locate the source of the Eucharist within the context of other meals in Jesus' life and not merely the last Supper. . . scholars today tend to bee more interested in what the variety says about the particular theologies of the Eucharist that were espoused by the individual writers and their communities . . . "

A passage found only in Luke records a command, echoing Paul, that the breaking of the bread be done "in remembrance of [Jesus]", though is does not specify whether it should be performed annually, as per the Passover, or more frequently. A number of commentators conclude that passage, i.e., the second half of 22:19 and all of 22:20 are later interpolations. The Rev. E.C. Radcliffe, the Canon of St. Mary's, Ely, writing in the Encyclopaedia Britannica 13th Edition (1926) Eucharist article, declared: "The textus receptus indeed includes the command, but the passage in which it occurs is an interpolation of the Pauline account; and whatever view be taken of the Lucan text, the command is no part of the original. The evidence, therefore, does not warrant the attribution to Jesus of the words 'This do in memory of Me'." Jeremias says "Do this in remembrance of me " would better be translated "That God may remember me."

Chapters 13-17 of the Gospel of John attribute to Jesus a series of teachings and prayers at his Last Supper, but does not mention any meal rituals. On the other hand,, in particular verses such as ("For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him"), is widely interpreted as an allusion to the Eucharist. Peculiarities in phrasing as compared to the Synoptics are thought to reflect the liturgical tradition of the Johannine community.

Worldwide practice
Early in the 20th century, Edward Carpenter advanced the theory that the Christian Eucharist arose from a ubiquitous worldwide practice of sacramental sacrifice or memorial, with wine symbolizing blood. "(A)s instances of early Eucharists we may mention the following cases, remembering always that as the blood is regarded as the Life, the drinking or partaking of, or sprinkling with, blood is always an acknowledgment of the common life; and that the juice of the grape being regarded as the blood of the Vine, wine in the later ceremonials quite easily and naturally takes the place of the blood in the early sacrifices.

Thus P. Andrada La Crozius, a French missionary, and one of the first Christians who went to Nepaul and Thibet, says in his History of India: "Their Grand Lama celebrates a species of sacrifice with bread and wine, in which, after taking a small quantity himself, he distributes the rest among the Lamas present at this ceremony." "The old Egyptians celebrated the resurrection of Osiris by a sacrament, eating the sacred cake or wafer after it had been consecrated by the priest, and thereby becoming veritable flesh of his flesh." 1 As is well known, the eating of bread or dough sacramentally (sometimes mixed with blood or seed) as an emblem of community of life with the divinity, is an extremely ancient practice or ritual. Dr. Frazer 2 says of the Aztecs, that "twice a year, in May and December, an image of the great god Huitzilopochtli was made of dough, then broken in pieces and solemnly eaten by his worshipers." And Lord Kingsborough in his Mexican Antiquities (vol. vi, p. 220) gives a record of a "most Holy Supper" in which these people ate the flesh of their god. It was a cake made of certain seeds, "and having made it, they blessed it in their manner, and broke it into pieces, which the high priest put into certain very clean vessels, and took a thorn of maguey which resembles a very thick needle, with which he took up with the utmost reverence single morsels, which he put into the mouth of each individual in the manner of a communion." Acosta 3 confirms this and similar accounts. The Peruvians partook of a sacrament consisting of a pudding of coarsely ground maize, of which a portion had been smeared on the idol. The priest sprinkled it with the blood of the victim before distributing it to the people." Priest and people then all took their shares in turn, "with great care that no particle should be allowed to fall to the ground--this being looked upon as a great sin." 4

Moving from Peru to China (instead of 'from China to Peru') we find that "the Chinese pour wine (a very general substitute for blood) on a straw image of Confucius, and then all present drink of it, and taste the sacrificial victim, in order to participate in the grace of Confucius." [Here again the Corn and Wine are blended in one rite.] And of Tartary Father Grueber thus testifies: "This only I do affirm, that the devil so mimics the Catholic Church there, that although no European or Christian has ever been there, still in all essential things they agree so completely with the Roman Church, as even to celebrate the Host with bread and wine: with my own eyes I have seen it." 1 These few instances are sufficient to show the extraordinarily wide diffusion of Totem-sacraments and Eucharistic rites all over the world. Carpenter, Edward 'Pagan & Christian Creeds' (1920)

Problem of the historical Jewish prohibition against blood-drinking
In a 10,000 word analysis in the Biblical Theology Bulletin of 2002, Michael J. Cahill surveys the state of scholarly literature from some seventy cited sources, dating from the 1950s to the present, on the question of the liklihood of a Jewish Jesus proposing the drinking of blood in the Eucharist. For instance, Hyam Maccoby proposes that "Paul, not Jesus, was the originator of the eucharist, and that the eucharist itself is not a Jewish, but an essentially Hellenistic rite, showing principal affinities not with the Jewish qiddush, but with the ritual meal of the mystery religions." John M. G. Barclay "stresses the anomalous nature of Paul. If Paul's status were to be determined on the single issue of the drinking of blood, it would have to be conceded that Paul simply moves off the scale." A. N. Wilson, whose work, Cahill says, synthesizes scholarly trends, distinguishes between the Jewishness of Jesus and Paul: "... the idea that a pious Jew such as Jesus would have spent his last evening on earth asking his disciples to drink a cup of blood, even symbolically, is unthinkable". He sees no problem, however, in proposing "the genius of Paul," "Paul's fertile brain," as the source of the Christian Eucharist incorporating the blood-drinking element. Cahill writes: "It is instructive to recall the context in which the drinking of blood was acceptable. First-century folk who participated in mystery cult rituals were no more tolerant of cannibalism than we are. There is no evidence that, in itself, drinking of blood was not revolting for them, generally speaking. Yet, we find it in religious ritual. The reason is that they were drinking the blood of an animal that had been numinized in some way and had come to be identified with the god. Drinking the blood of a god was acceptable." Otfried Hofius, argues for the authenticity of the passage in 1 Corinthians where Paul speaks of the Eucharist, writing: "A convincing proof that the Apostle has himself encroached on the wording of the tradition delivered to him has not thus far been adduced." David Wenham writes: "Jesus typically uses vivid, almost shocking metaphors (e.g., Matt 18:8, 9/Mark 9:43-48). Furthermore, that the shocking eucharistic words came to be accepted by Jewish Christians (including Matthew) may suggest that they were not quite as unacceptable as Vermes supposes or that they had a strong claim to authenticity, since they would not easily have been accepted if they were not in the Jewish Christian tradition." John Meier, too, insists on Jesus' propensity to use "shocking symbols", in reference to the words of the institution narrative and in his "deliberate flouting of certain social conventions". He gives particular attention to "a subversive aphorism of Jesus," referring to "Let the dead bury their dead."

After examining these various theories that have been put forward, he concluded: The survey of opinion, old and new, reveals wide disagreement with a fundamental divide between those who can accept that the notion of drinking blood could have a Jewish origin and those who insist that this is a later development to be located in the Hellenistic world. What both sides share is an inability to proffer a rationally convincing argument that can provide a historical explanation for the presence of this particular component of the Eucharistic rite. Those who hold for the literal institution by Jesus have not been able to explain plausibly how the drinking of blood could have arisen in a Jewish setting. In fact, this difficulty has been turned into an argument for authenticity. For example, Jeremiah [sic] quotes Dalman: "Exactly that which seems scandalous will be historical" (170-71). W. D. Davies draws attention to the fact that Dalman also argued that the Pauline version of the institution arose in a gentile environment to eliminate the difficulties presented by the more direct Markan form (246). It would appear to be obvious that the difficulties would have been greater in a Jewish environment. Davies' conclusion is apt: "When such divergent conclusons [sic] have been based upon the same evidence any dogmatism would be foolish" (246). On the other hand, I have earlier argued that previous suggestions supporting the non-Jewish source have been vitiated by vague generalities or by association with inappropriate pagan rituals.

Psychedelic Mushroom theory
John Allegro and Carl Ruck claimed that Jesus was seen as a vegetation god incarnated, like Dionysus and Osiris, as an entheogenic plant or fungus or both.

Jesus Seminar
“The purely symbolic meal of modern Christianity, restricted to a bit of bread and a sip of wine or juice, is tacitly presupposed for the early church, an assumption so preposterous that it is never articulated or acknowledged.” This quotation reflects the iconoclastic view of an inter-denominational group of contemporary scholars, led by the Jesus Seminar, "a research team of about 200 New Testament scholars founded in 1985 by the late Robert Funk and John Dominic Crossan under the auspices of the Westar Institute", which has analyzed the historical record of the Eucharist. They reached consensus among themselves that, based on the deeply ingrained Jewish prohibition against drinking blood, and the pervasive history of Greek memorial dining societies, the rite of the last supper "had its origins in a pagan context." They also reached consensus among themselves that the Last Supper, as it is depicted in Mark, was not a historical event. And since Matthew and Luke copy Mark in some sections (though Luke draws on other sources at this point), adding what the Seminar called a mere touch here and there, Luke even adding a second cup, they declared that the accounts of Matthew and Luke also cannot be held to be historical. Other reasons the Seminar thought the tradition ahistorical: the earliest collection of Jesus' teachings, the Q Gospel and the recently rediscovered Gospel of Thomas make no mention of any last supper.

Crossan suggests that there are two traditions "as old as we can trace them" of the eucharist, that of Paul, reflecting the Antioch Church's tradition, and that of the Didache, the first document to give explicit instruction regarding prayers to be said at a celebration that it called the Eucharist.

The cup/bread liturgy of the Didache, from the Jerusalem tradition, does not mention Passover, or Last Supper, or Death of Jesus/blood/body, and the sequence is meal + thanksgiving ritual. For Crossan, it is dispositive that "even late in the first century C.E., at least some (southern?) Syrian Christians could celebrate a Eucharist of bread and wine with absolutely no hint of Passover meal, Last Supper or passion symbolism built into its origins or development. I cannot believe that they knew about those elements and studiously avoided them. I can only presume that they were not there for everyone from the beginning, that is, from solemn formal and final institution by Jesus himself." The Western Catholic Church itself in 2001 controversially validated an ancient East Syrian Eucharist liturgy without any literal Pauline words of institution, known as the Anaphora or Holy Qurbana of Addai and Mari, on the basis that "the words of the institution of the Eucharist are in fact present in the anaphora of Addai and Mari, not in the form of a coherent narration and in a literal way but in a euchological and disseminated manner, that is to say they are integrated in the prayers of thanksgiving, praise and intercession which follow." The Holy Qurbana of Addai and Mari "was the only anaphora in general and continuous use by that Church of the East from time immemorial until the time of Mar Isaac the Catholicos and his synod of A.D. 410."

Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, in the context of correcting the eating habits of the Corinthians serves to reestablish "the Pre-Pauline tradition, ritual of bread/body + meal + ritual of cup/blood." Hellenized Jew Paul references a Greek Lord's Supper which is not a Passover meal, and does not have the participants giving thanks ("Eucharistia"), rather the purpose is to proclaim Jesus' death until he comes again, in the manner of Hellenic societies formed "to hold meals in remembrance of those who had died and to drink a cup in honor of some god."

Both sequences underline the primary importance of the Shared Meal to historical First Century Christian ritual. In the Jerusalem tradition, of James and Peter, the meal is of higher importance than blood and body since the Didache fails to mention them. Both traditions reflect the pitfalls of a shared meal among social unequals, namely freeloading. The Didache says in 12:3-4, if you work, you eat. Paul, in 2 Thessalonians 3:10 says if you don't work, you don't eat. "Both stipulations must presume a communal share-meal or they make no sense." The administrative difficulties of communal meals, easily glossed over in a small congregation of Jewish peasants, become more intractable as the church succeeds and grows and adds Gentile adherents, foreshadowing the eventual reduction to symbolism over substance.

Six "Eucharists" in the New Testament
In this ongoing search for eucharistic origins, the work of Bruce Chilton, a Catholic apologist writing to counter Crossan, suggests that we have been able to "find" in the New Testament six different ways of celebrating what Christians came to call the Eucharist, and to locate each of these in its own specific socio-religio-political setting. If Chilton's exegetical findings are accurate, this would seem to make irrelevant a number of time-honored scholarly approaches. Fundamental to these traditional scholarly approaches was, first, the "literally true" vs. "literary fictions" debate, and, second, the assumption that there was a unified line of development from the established Eucharist of later centuries back close to the time of the historical Jesus.

Catholic Answer to Historical Objections
Professor Robert J. Daly, S.J., proposes a synthesis between the orthodox and the skeptic, acknowledging the historical evolution of the Eucharist while not abandoning the faith that informs it. He argues that Jesus did indeed institute the Eucharist, even though it would take generations and centuries of guidance from the Holy Spirit for the Eucharist to reach its current form.