Just want to mention that the bread-and-wine of the Eucharist hearken back to Melchizedek, in Genesis. St. Paul talks about Melchizedek in the Epistle to the Hebrews, wherein he explains that Christ is a priest-king, like Melchizedek.
That is interesting. I was not aware of that - the OT is my biggest weak spot. If it is the true source of the signs for the bread and wine, that would make it the earliest reference for a eucharistic rite that I am aware of. I want to say that Genesis is supposed to date from around 1500-1300 B.C.
One thing I am wary of - just taking the scripture on its own - is that to bring out bread and wine to celebrate Abram doesn't appear to be a eucharistic rite, but rather something merely celebratory. As far as I know of sources for eucharistic material in the Palestinian/Hellenistic world, the Didache and Paul's letters were the earliest, along with the gospels. I brought up the Didache in the prior comment because it appears to contain evidence for very early Jewish-Christian observance of the shared-table literal rite of a eucharist, but not truly, for the reasons I gave before.
I suppose it could be possible that if Christ had introduced the concept to the apostles at Passover, that he might have been drawing on Melchizedek instead of a Hellenized version of Jewish table tradition. It's the drinking it and treating it as blood that form the strongest case against a pure Jewish or Christic origin. That consumption of a savior-God's body and blood appears very tethered to the mysteries of the Greeks.
But, who the hell knows. When it comes to the Bible, where there is a question, there is a controversy.
For my part, I think Paul is (if not wholly, then close to it) responsible for the gospel-form of the Eucharist. Paul had a Hellenistic background, and he was primarily preaching to the Gentiles, so the transition from what we see in the Didache to what we get with Paul's description makes sense if he was doing what I think he was. Of course, we know that Paul says he is bringing to the Corinthians what he received from God, but either way, even if we take it as having divine origin, the change over to the traditional sacrament that we know today is something I'd place with Paul.
I'm highly doubtful that Christ Himself ordered this as a sacrament to the apostles at the Last Supper. It's certainly possible that Christ would have, in teaching at the Passover table, made a reference to the Passover lamb and to the blood that they were to mutually spill as sacrifices. That just makes sense. But it doesn't make sense that Christ would have told the apostles to drink His blood and eat His body, that is, unless Christ himself (in the decades of his early life the Bible omits) was exposed to the same Hellenism that Paul had been.
EDIT: Just for clarity, what I'm trying to do here is establish a way to see the development of early Tradition from within the logical framework that Peace has given us as it regards popery, the idea being that what Christ empowered through the apostles was a means of founding the Church by means of binding and loosing people by temporal forms, assuring the apostles that what they did to this end would be binding in Heaven also. Viewed this way, this bestowal is the prescription to build the Church according to ways which Christ may not have directly prescribed, but which we think are inspired by the Spirit. Hence, my belief that Paul had a heavy hand in the early tradition of the developing Eucharistic sacrament, which the writers of the gospels would have taken up in his wake (and they did).
On the one hand, if we appeal to the advent of popery on the very grounds that Peace has, then what I am saying about the Eucharist can't be rejected on the grounds of the argument where you say: "Well, that's wrong because it's not contained in scripture! It's wrong to appeal outside of scripture for the source of the Eucharist when it says so right in the gospels!", while at the same time not relying solely on scripture for the case for the pope. I'm trying to resolve what I see as the source of wrong impressions about early tradition. The result must be the very same source of authority that was first granted to the apostles to bind and loose. If Christ didn't lay out the way to build the Church up temporally, then it makes sense that the earliest fathers had the latitude and inspiration to know how best to do it. In the case of the Eucharist, I think Paul, and later the gospel writers, were exercising that exact authority.
In the case of the Last Supper anyway, I’m certain the earliest Church regarded Christ’s utterances, (“take, eat, this is My body ... drink of this all of you, this is My blood”) as entirely historical, and no serious scholarship even questioned that until at least, say, sixteen hundred years later. As far as the Orthodox are concerned, Christ’s words here are all the proof needed that the Eucharist is literally His Body and Blood. God says so, it is thus.
I think there’s probably plenty of leeway on the historicity of other topics, but the Eucharist is one of the least debated, right up there with the Crucifixion. I think I see where you’re going with it, though ...
Clearly, there’s difference of opinion on the type of bread. One of my favorite names for Latin Christians is azymites. I need to start using it more often.
The Greek word for “bread” used in the Gospels is artos, which means “ordinary bread*, most often leavened, though not absolutely necessarily. The Greeks have always interpreted this as evidence that the Last Supper was a Communion Meal they had together while preparing the Passover Lamb - that is, Christ Himself. Because everybody knows they’re supposed to have azymes at the Passover - not artos. And it was at this meal that Christ (re)instituted the Melchizedek Priesthood.
The Orthodox have always used leavened bread for Holy Communion, because that’s what it says, and it’s what they’ve always done. But it’s easy enough to argue the other direction - that is, that it’s a Passover Meal, and therefore artos _must_ be meant as unleavened bread. Which is what the Latins use.
Which one is right? Personally, I go Orthodox on this one. My Church uses leavened bread, deliberately and decidedly. We think it’s the stronger case. But at some point, someone in the Latin Communion had authority to decide it’s supposed to be azymes.
The fact of the Eucharist is beyond debate. But the type of bread is indeed a perennial debate. Somehow, someone in either Communion had the authority to decide one way and somebody in the other, the other way.
I think I see where you’re going with it, though...
:)
But the type of bread is indeed a perennial debate.
Now, I mean neither of you any offense by what I'm about to say. I understand what happens when you're coming from a tradition in any domain, and the way that it becomes simple to debate others over minutiae. From within the tradition, it appears substantial. From outside, not as much.
But I have to say that I consider this debate utterly ridiculous. It is just cosmically absurd to me that the creator of the entire universe would be particular about the way the bread for a particular ritual is made. This is just too Jewish for me to think God is partial to this or that bread. I mean, I suppose I could see a case being made about the nature of the microorganisms in the bread and how the total matrix of the food has to be such and such a way for transubstantiation to take place. I mean, I guess.
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