Читать книгу Rethinking the Origins of the Eucharist - Martin D. Stringer - Страница 9
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Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians
In this study I am breaking with much of the tradition in the search for the origins of the Eucharist by beginning, not with the accounts of the Last Supper in the Gospels, but with the account of the Lord’s Supper in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. This is partly because this account is the first literary record of a ‘Christian’ meal that still survives and partly because I am convinced that if it is possible to rethink what this meal may or may not have been then all the other accounts of meals in the early Christian literature will have to be rethought in the light of this re-analysis. There is no indication within the text of how often the Lord’s Supper was held. The only reference to any regular activity comes in the recommendation by Paul to put some money aside each week for the collection he is due to take to Jerusalem (16.2). It is only the subsequent history of the Eucharist, and particularly the accounts in the Didache and in the writings of Justin Martyr, that has led to the assumption that because the Lord’s Supper has some elements in common with what was to become the Eucharist, it must have been held on a weekly basis. If that subsequent history did not exist then what kind of assumptions might be drawn from the account given in the letter?
Any solution to this question must be suspect on two grounds. First, it is clear that the subsequent history does exist and therefore it is not possible to look at the account without some pre-formed ideas. Second, as the account does not provide information on the frequency of the supper then any proposal has to be speculative and one guess might well be as good as another. Let me, therefore, rephrase the question that I want to address in this chapter: is it plausible to suggest that the Lord’s Supper represented in chapter 11 of 1 Corinthians was an annual event? If it is, then, I would suggest, it might make scholars look again at the rest of the texts that are available in a very different light.
This Chapter, therefore, will have four parts. I will begin by setting the account of the Lord’s Supper within the wider context of the letter as a whole. Second, I will look at what this text can say about the meal that is being described. Third, I will relate this to other references to meals and to eating within the rest of the letter. Finally, I will look to the rest of Paul’s writing, and writing attributed to Paul, to see how this account relates to other elements in the wider corpus.
The Lord’s Supper in the context of 1 Corinthians
As with all of Paul’s writings there has been considerable debate about the purpose and structure of the first letter to the Corinthians (Mitchell 1992; Thistleton 2000; Hall 2003). Much of this is not directly relevant to this discussion, but there are a number of questions that need to be addressed if the account of the meal in chapter 11 is to make sense. The first asks whether the text presented in the New Testament is the letter as Paul originally wrote it, or whether a subsequent editor has put it together in its current form (Hall 2003, pp. 30–50). Or, to rephrase the question, does 1 Corinthians represent a single letter or should it be divided into two or more texts? There have been various attempts to show that the letter is made up of different elements, led largely by apparent contradictions in the author’s position on the eating of meat offered to idols and the role of women in worship. De Boer for example, would want to divide the letter between chapters 1––4 and chapters 5––16 (de Boer 1994). He says, ‘there are considerable points of continuity between the two sections of the epistle . . . But points of continuity are to be expected . . . They are not worthy of special notice and certainly need no explanation. The discontinuities, or discrepancies, however, do’ (de Boer 1994, p. 242). While this appears to be eminently reasonable, if this were to be taken to the extreme then every chapter, or subsection of each chapter, would have to be considered as a different letter (Hall 2003, pp. 44–5).
In practice few, if any, of the attempts to discern a division in the letter would affect the interpretation of chapter 11, and so the simplest and safest solution at this stage in the discussion is to follow the current scholarly consensus and assume that the letter is one text, and that the letter as it exists today is pretty much the letter as Paul originally wrote it (Hall 2003). The next question, therefore, is to ask when Paul might have written the letter. While there is considerable debate about the place of the letter within various reconstructions of Paul’s life and travels (Hurd 1965, pp. 3–42), the dating of 1 Corinthians appears to be uncontroversial. It is dated at about 53–55 ce, following Paul’s first visit to Corinth, where he founded a Christian community, and before any second visit that may have taken place (Fee 1987, p. 15).
The next series of questions relate to the reasons why Paul might have written this letter, and the kind of issues that he is addressing within it. Any reading of the letter will show that it ranges over a series of essentially random concerns that appear to have no common thread. Scholars have attempted to discover a thread, or to demonstrate one or more underlying themes to the letter as a whole. Mitchell, for example, argues that the central theme is reconciliation and that Paul’s dominant purpose in writing the letter was to persuade the community to become united (Mitchell 1992). Despite Mitchell’s attempts to match the letter to the features of classical rhetoric this analysis does not provide an adequate explanation for the structure of the text. More profitable are those analyses that begin with the hints offered within the letter that it was written as a response to a series of questions that have come to Paul from the Corinthian community.
One of the most interesting of these is still Hurd’s 1965 study, The Origin of 1 Corinthians. Hurd aims to reconstruct the dialogue that occurred between Paul and the Corinthian community from Paul’s first visit through to the writing of the letter. Hurd sees 1 Corinthians as being constructed out of Paul’s responses to three different kinds of communication from the Corinthians (Hurd 1965, pp. 48–9). First, there is a letter that is mentioned in 7.1. Second, it is clear that Paul has had some personal communication from people associated with Chloe (1.11). Finally, towards the end of the letter, there is mention of Stephanas, Forunatus and Achaicus who had recently arrived from Corinth (16.17). From this Hurd demonstrates that there are two types of material within the letter: that which is written in response to the letter from Corinth, and that which is written in response to personal communications. He goes on to note that this distinction is reflected in Paul’s level of emotional response to the issues covered, with Paul being more detached in his discussion of the material from the letter and more forthright and emotional in his response to material from personal communication (Hurd 1965, pp. 62–3). Finally, this enables Hurd to identify those passages that begin with the words ‘now concerning (περί δέ)’ (7.1; 7.25; 8.1; 12.1; 16.1; 16.12) as responses to the letter (Hurd 1965, p. 63). If this is followed through, then the first section of the letter (chapters 1––6) is largely a response to verbal communication (with the possible exception of 5.9–13a), and the second section (chapters 7––16) is largely a response to issues raised in the letter, with the notable exception of 11.17–34 (Hurd 1965, p. 93).
It is precisely 11.17–34 that is of concern. The discussion of the meal derives, according to the text (11.18), from what Paul has heard from personal communication. Hurd argues that the section is placed here because, like the rest of chapters 11––14, it deals with the issue of worship (Hurd 1965, p. 182). Unlike chapters 1––6, however, 11.18 does not say who is the source of the information. Hurd simply assumes that it is the same ‘Chloe’s people’ who informed Paul of other difficulties and disputes within the Corinthian community (Hurd 1965, p. 82). Dunn assumes that it was Stephanas and his companions (Dunn 1995, p. 19). Neither author, however, has much to say about what they think were the intentions and purposes of Chloe’s people or Stephanas, and where these might fit within the relationship between Paul and the Corinthians. Hurd concentrates too much on the reconstruction of the letter to Paul from the Corinthians, and does not really consider the content and motivation of the verbal communication. Dunn simply does not raise the question.
1 Corinthians 11.17–34
Turning to the text itself, the first point to note is that it opens with a condemnation of divisions within the community (11.18). There are a number of points within the letter that deal with divisions and a considerable amount of debate within the scholarly literature discusses what the nature of these divisions might be. Hall, for example, argues that the opposition faced by Paul in 1 Corinthians was inspired by teachers from elsewhere (Hall 2003, pp. 3–18). Hurd and Fee see the opposition as coming from within the Corinthian community itself (Hurd 1965, pp. 95–113; Fee 1987, pp. 4–15). Goulder (2001) is explicit in seeing the opposition as between Pauline and Petrine factions. Dunn (1995) simply sees the community as being prone to factionalism. The literature spends many pages debating the nature and identity of the various ‘parties’ that are mentioned in the opening of the letter (1.12), and there are numerous theories about who these might be. If it is assumed that the account of the meal was given to Paul by the same person, or people, who provided the account of the internal divisions at the beginning of the letter, whether this was Chloe’s people or some other informant, then it might be assumed that there is a relationship between the divisions of chapter 1 and those of chapter 11. However, the text of chapter 11 makes it very clear that the division that is being highlighted at this point is not one between ‘parties’ as such. It appears to be between those who come to eat their own meal and those who have nothing, and the text does not indicate that it represents any kind of ideological or theological difference among the people involved.
Some scholars have assumed that the division being alluded to is one between the rich and the poor within the community (Meeks 1983, pp. 67–8), but this is not stated explicitly in the text. Unfortunately, the text itself is not very clear. The issue appears to revolve around the translation of the word προλαμβάνει in verse 21. The compound ‘pro’ might normally indicate a sense of time associated with the word, in the sense of ‘before’, and so would suggest that some of those present go ahead with their meals before the others arrive (Fee 1987, pp. 540–5). However, other scholars say that this element of waiting is not necessarily implied by the word, and that there is no other context in which the word is used in this way in the New Testament. What Paul might be indicating, therefore, is merely a distinction between those who eat their own meals and those who get nothing to eat at all (Winter 2001, pp. 144–8; Lampe 1994). Either way, the text does not suggest that the division between those who eat and those who do not eat is an easy distinction between rich and poor. Further sociological analysis is needed in order to draw out that conclusion and I will come on to look at that in the following section.
Before moving on, therefore, I need to discuss briefly the issues related to the name, the ‘Lord’s Supper’ (χυριακòν δεîπνον, 11.20). This is the only point within the New Testament where the phrase ‘Lord’s Supper’ is used and there is no internal evidence to suggest what Paul might mean by this. The term was never taken up in any consistent way in other early Christian literature, and where it does occur, in the Apostolic Tradition and in the writings of Tertullian, there is no direct reference to Paul and the letter to the Corinthians, and so this does not help to determine its meaning (Bradshaw 2004, p. 44).
Next comes Paul’s statement of the ‘tradition’ that was handed on to him concerning the Last Supper (11.23–24). A number of commentators note that the structure that Paul uses at this point is similar to that used in some Jewish traditions for the passing on of teaching: ‘I delivered to you . . . what I also received’ (Donfried 2002, p. 302; Alexander 2001, pp. 116–21). This is also one of a number of places within the letter where Paul makes specific reference to what has been passed on to him (Furnish 1999, pp. 21–2; Ellis 1986). Throughout the letter it appears that Paul is very particular about making a distinction between what is being presented on his own authority and what he has received from ‘the Lord’ or ‘the Lord Jesus’. Hurd notes that references to authority, whether of Jesus, scripture, common sense, custom or his own apostolic authority is a feature of those passages that are responding to the Corinthians’ letter (1965, p. 74). However, this section is dealing with an oral communication. The distinction Hurd makes is that ‘it is noticeable that Paul’s rehearsal of the Lord’s teaching here does not seem intended to give the Corinthians new information to settle a new problem, but seems intended rather to recall them to earlier behaviour from which they had strayed’ (1965, p. 79). Here another distinction between responses to the letter and responses to oral communication is highlighted, that is, instruction about the future as opposed to correction of past errors. In this reference to the tradition Paul is clearly referring to the past. What, however, is the nature and source of this tradition?
It is possible to suggest, and some scholars clearly argue, that when Paul talks about receiving a ruling or phrase from the Lord, or from Jesus, this was granted in a vision, whether that on the road to Damascus or some other subsequent experience. If this were the case then these sections would relate to direct communication between Jesus and Paul. The vast majority of commentators, however, argue that this is not what Paul means in these contexts, and that the phrase, or ruling, has been passed on to Paul as being authentically from Jesus by his immediate disciples, whether directly or indirectly (Bornkamm 1966, pp. 130–2; Fee 1987, pp. 547–9). What then are the distinctions that Paul wishes to make between rulings or phrases that come from Jesus and those given on his own authority?
In an earlier passage, in chapter 7, Paul states that ‘to the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband’ (7.10). Here Fee and others have argued that the reference is to an actual statement of Jesus, whether one that is preserved in the gospel tradition or another along similar lines, but this does not suggest how this command came to Paul (Fee 1987, pp. 291–4). The usual, and generally unquestioned, assumption is that Paul must have learnt about it in Antioch during his stay there following his conversion, or directly from the disciples in Jerusalem during one of his visits. The same has generally been assumed of the tradition of the Last Supper (Dix 1945, p. 64). This is certainly possible, but also raises more interesting questions about what role this text had within the community at Antioch or Jerusalem. That, however, is an issue I want to come back to in Chapter 5. For now all that is relevant is that the text is constructed to suggest that the account of the Last Supper is not something that Paul has made up for himself; it forms a tradition that he has heard before and passed on to the Corinthian community, either in exactly the same form that he received it or with his own additions and modifications.
What is important to note is that this is not the first time that Paul has told the Corinthian community about this tradition (11.23). He is reminding them of something that he has previously shared with them. In Hurd’s reconstruction of the relationship between Paul and the Corinthians, it seems most probable that the teaching on the Lord’s Supper would have been given while Paul was in Corinth during his initial founding of the community (Hurd 1965, pp. 213–39). The real question, however, is whether Paul expected the community to repeat, or otherwise remember, the text every time they met for a meal, or whether this was something he taught them when he first instructed them to celebrate the meal, and that they have subsequently forgotten. This question cannot be answered from the limited information provided in the text, but the question is central to the discussion of how often the meal was held within the Corinthian community and it is an issue I will be returning to in the following sections.
The next few phrases are probably the most difficult element of the whole text. This is the eschatological reference in verse 26 and the comments on judgement at the end of the chapter (11.27–34). One difficulty is that it is not at all clear whether verse 26 is a new interpretation that Paul is passing on to the Corinthians in this letter or whether it has always been a part of Paul’s understanding of the meal and was something that was passed on to the community at the same time as the tradition. Most scholars tend to assume that this eschatological reference is part of Paul’s own gloss on the meal, something that fits in well with his way of thinking and the particular stage in his developing thoughts about the death and imminent return of Jesus (Fee 1987, pp. 556–8).
The section on judgement, however, is even more difficult to situate. At one level it reads like a general statement about the worthy reception of the bread and the cup. However, the context that is set up by the issues raised at the beginning and end of the account of the meal (11.20–22 and 11.33–34) suggests that the particular ‘sin’ that the Corinthians are committing relates to their failure to share the meal as a community. It is judgement on this sin that is being called down, because this lack of respect for others in some way fails to recognize the presence of the body of the Lord (11.29), and this in turn has led to sickness and death in the community (11.30). Is the reference to the ‘body’ in verse 29, however, drawing our attention back to the association of the bread as the body of the Lord (11.24) or is it, as most recent commentators suggest, looking forward to the idea of the community as the body of Christ (12.27) (Fee 1987, pp. 562–4)? Both are possible and it may be that Paul himself is establishing a double meaning. It must be stressed, however, that it is the division within the community that is being judged and not any failure to understand a nascent doctrine of the real presence.
Finally, therefore, does the end of the chapter mark a natural break, and does this material form a clear and coherent section within the letter? Given that the next section opens with the ‘now concerning . . .’ (12.1) that Hurd defines as a reference to the letter Paul received from the Corinthians (1965, p. 63), then it is fair to see this as the end of the discussion of the meal. The subsequent discussion of spiritual gifts and the meeting at which each member brings a hymn or a testimony (14.26) relates to different issues. This is important only in relation to those who argue that the order of Paul’s letter, with a discussion of the meal in chapter 11 followed by a discussion of the meeting for prayer and singing in chapter 14, might represent a primitive order of service based, perhaps, on the model of the Graeco-Roman symposium or Philo’s account of the meal among spiritual Jews in Alexandria, where the meal is followed by discussion/teaching and/or ecstatic prayer (Alikin 2009, p. 28; Smith 2003, pp. 200–1). It is fairly clear, however, that Paul is simply moving through the series of issues raised by the Corinthians, either in their letter or by personal communication. These two sections clearly belong to different answers to different issues, and are not connected in any formal way within Paul’s text.
The structure of the Corinthian community
Having looked in detail at the text itself, and explored a number of the issues raised by biblical scholars in relation to the text, it is necessary to move on and ask what, if anything, can be said about the reality behind the text. It is not possible to say that this text describes a particular kind of event with specified people being present and so on. That kind of detail is not available. However, it is possible, from the text, and from sociological thinking about what is actually possible within a small enthusiastic community of recent converts to a new ecstatic cult, to make some statements about what is, and more importantly what is not, likely to have occurred. Before looking at any kind of detailed questions about the meal, however, it is necessary to look more closely at the social and cultural make-up of the Corinthian community itself.
Early in the twentieth century, Deissmann (1957) reinforced a popular view, based on his travels in the Middle East, that the earliest Christian community came from the poorer strata of society. However, by the 1970s Malherbe was able to state that ‘a new consensus may be emerging’ that the community was made up of a wide range of social strata, probably reflecting the social structure of the surrounding society (1983, p. 31). The most detailed study of the social structure of the Corinthian community as it relates to the Lord’s Supper is found in Theissen’s article ‘Social Integration and Sacramental Activity’, which was original published in 1974 (1982, pp. 145–63). This paper builds on a series of related papers that were brought together in an edited volume in the early 1980s (Schütz 1982).
In ‘Social Stratification in Corinthian Community’ (1982, pp. 69–119) Theissen looks at the passages in Paul’s writing that deal with the community as a whole, those that refer to individuals associated with the Corinthian community and those that comment on the various subgroups within the community. All these show the clear presence of some individuals who are of high social status and who act, in part, as patrons to the community, offering their houses for hospitality to Paul and other visiting preachers, and for meetings of the community as a whole (Chow 1992). Assuming that the rest of the community is made up of traders, artisans, and probably slaves and freedmen, Theissen argues that the community has a high level of social stratification, something that is considered by Theissen to be unusual for social gatherings at this time (1982, p. 99). Meeks follows Theissen’s basic outline but adds the rider, based on his understanding of the nature of Corinth as a ‘new town’, that most people within the community had an ambiguous relationship to social status and may have been moving up or down the social ladder (Meeks 1983). Fiorenza also says that the community contained a significant number of women and these played an important role as patrons and perhaps as leaders of the community (1983, pp. 175–84).
In a further paper, ‘The Strong and the Weak in Corinth’ (1982, pp. 121–43), Theissen suggests that the distinction that Paul makes between ‘the strong’ and ‘the weak’ throughout the letter is the same as that which can be made between the few high-status members of the community and the many lower-class members. This is argued primarily through the way in which each group is assumed to react to the question of meat offered to idols, which is discussed in chapters 8 to 10. The ‘strong’, the richer members of the congregation, would be expected to attend formal meals where such meat is served on a regular basis, while the ‘weak’, the poorer members, would hardly ever get a chance to eat meat anyway. The distinction, therefore, can be seen to mirror the economic and social profile of the community. Such an analysis, however, fails to take into account the possibility that the categories of the ‘strong’ and the ‘weak’ may be part of Paul’s rhetorical strategy rather than representing real social groupings within the community (Smith 2003, pp. 193–6). Theissen does not really consider this and goes on to suggest that Paul generally sides with the weak against the strong but that the letter itself is addressed to the strong, to those who can read, or to the wealthier members of the congregation. This distinction, between the poorer majority and the richer few, is also essential to Theissen’s analysis of the meal in chapter 11.
Theissen begins his analysis by stressing the divisions mentioned in verse 21 and identifying these as distinctions between the rich and the poor. There are two main reasons why he takes this position. First is the use of the phrase ‘those who have nothing’ in verse 22 (1982, p. 148). Theissen argues that having nothing must refer to a permanent state rather than to those who have nothing on this particular occasion. Second, he notes the use of the word ‘houses’ in verse 34 and argues that Paul is clearly addressing the wealthy at this point, as they are the only ones who would have ‘houses’ to eat their meals in. Both of these assumptions need to be challenged (Smith 2002, pp. 195–8). By emphasizing those who have nothing as a permanent state, Theissen does not acknowledge Paul’s rhetorical distinction between those who are hungry and those who get drunk, and it is never suggested that being ‘drunk’ should be seen as a permanent state (Fee 1987, p. 543; Winter 2001, pp. 147–8). As to the ‘houses’, this again should not perhaps be taken literally and could be translated as ‘homes’ (as it is in the NIV and other translations) rather than referring to a particular high-status ‘house’. All members of the community would have some kind of home to eat their meals in. It is fair to assume, therefore, that sociologically the community in Corinth was mixed, with both richer and poorer members but that this may not have been the only division in the meal.
The cultural, or religious, make-up of the community is far more difficult to determine, and it is not something that those who are concerned about the sociology of the Pauline communities spend very long discussing (Winter 2001, p. 150; Meeks 2001, p. 135). If, however, the account in Acts is taken at face value, then Paul’s first contact in Corinth was a Jew named Aquila (Acts 18.2). Paul also began his teaching in Corinth, as in all cities, within the synagogue (18.4), and when he was thrown out he moved next door, presumably taking some members of the synagogue with him. One leader of the synagogue, Crispus, is mentioned by name (18.7–8). There were, therefore, some Jews among the community. It is also clear, from Theissen’s list of named members of the Corinthian community, that other members of the community were Greeks or even Romans (Theissen 1982, pp. 73–96). One common suggestion is that many of the non-Jews could have been so-called ‘God fearers’, Greeks and Romans who had a great deal of sympathy for, and knowledge of, Jewish beliefs and traditions but were reluctant for whatever reason to convert (Esler 1987). Unfortunately so little is known about synagogue life and organization, especially within the Diaspora, during the first century ce, that it is impossible to make any firm statement on this (Runesson 2001; Lieu 2002). The text of both first and second Corinthians also makes it clear that there are a significant number of Gentiles within the community who probably had no previous association with the Jews. Given all this, it is fair to suggest that the Christian community in Corinth was made up of some Jews, although perhaps not very many, some Greeks or Romans who had knowledge of, and sympathy for, Jewish ideas, although again perhaps not very many, and some who were converted directly without any previous knowledge of Jewish scriptures and traditions. While no firm predictions can be made about the relative proportions of these groups, it is fairly clear that the leaders of the community, including the leaders of worship, would most likely have come from one or other of the first two groups.
Finally, therefore, in this discussion of the community, what can be said about the number of members who might have attended the meal? Like so much else in this area, making any accurate statements is of course impossible. Goulder notes that Luke says twice that many believed at Corinth and paints the picture of the community reaching perhaps 50 members in 50–51 ce and moving from the house of Titus to that of the wealthy convert Gaius. However, he notes that even here ‘the house would probably not have rooms with space for fifty people to eat together, and we have to think of the church as meeting in his garden’ (Goulder 2001, p. 225). White also notes that ‘the assembly was regularly convened in the dining room of the house’ but that this might have taken a number of different forms within the cities of the Aegean (1990, p. 107). From all the information that is available, and based on sociological models, it is most likely that the group was relatively small, with a maximum of about 100 members and a minimum of 50. One implication of this is that the members of the community probably sat for the meal rather than reclining as was usual at many Roman banquets (Smith 2003, p. 177). This is going to be significant for anything that might be said about the nature and frequency of the meal below.
The Lord’s Supper within the Corinthian community
For all of his analysis of the social make-up of the community and his emphasis on the rich and the poor, or the weak and the strong, the essence of Theissen’s reconstruction of the meal itself is not entirely dependent on these assumed divisions (1982, pp. 153–63). Theissen argues that the institution narrative must, in some way, reflect the heart of the ‘cultic’ meal, the ‘Lord’s’ Supper (χυριακòν δεîπνον), which he suggests was probably a limited meal consisting only of bread and wine. This, Theissen argues, is what Paul had instituted within the community. The rich, however, were holding a pre-meal, a ‘personal’ supper (ίδιον δεîπνον), probably containing meat and other foodstuffs, before the Lord’s Supper begins and it is this personal supper, Theissen argues, that Paul is objecting to. The Lord’s Supper in this view must have followed the personal meals because it begins, according to the text of the tradition, with the blessing of bread. If such a blessing took place at the very beginning of the event then many of those who came late (after others had begun the meal) would have missed an important element of the cultic event. This, in Theissen’s view, would have been unthinkable so the meal that people came late to must be a pre-meal. Such a view would certainly fit the text, but has no kind of precedent in the ancient world as a structure and clearly makes too many assumptions to be comfortable.
The crux of Theissen’s analysis depends on his assumption that the Lord’s Supper itself must reflect the narrative of the Last Supper; that is, the ‘sacred, cultic formula’ for the meal. This, he argues, would have been followed meticulously because Paul had instituted it with a specific reference to what Jesus had done. Theissen states, ‘in my opinion it is unthinkable that Paul would quote a sacred, cultic formula, expressly state that he received it in just this and no other form, and yet at the same time tacitly suppose that its order is not to be followed’ (1982, p. 152). If, however, the narrative was not a regular part of the meal, and therefore not seen as a sacred blueprint for the meal, then the whole argument begins to fall apart (Bradshaw 2004, pp. 13, 45).
Mazza suggests that the order cup–bread, as presented in 10.16–17, underlies the structure of the meal, but this is based on comparison with the Didache and other texts and cannot be justified from 1 Corinthians itself (Mazza 1995, pp. 76–8). The meal itself could have consisted of any number of foodstuffs, including, of course, bread and wine, and it does not need to be held in any special, sacred or, as Theissen describes it, ‘cultic’ fashion (Lampe 1994). It could simply be a shared meal, or a meal to which each person brought their own food and which each member of the community started as soon as they arrived, what Lampe (1994) identifies as an ‘eranos’ meal. Winter even goes so far as to suggest that apart from bread and wine the meal itself was an entirely individual affair and some brought significant quantities while others went without and had to wait till the rest had finished (2001, pp. 142–63). It is the individual nature of the different meals that Paul is clearly objecting to and the lack of sharing among the community, not to some assumed distinction of social status within the community.
If the leaders of the community are more likely to have been Jews, or perhaps Greeks who had considerable knowledge of Jewish scriptures and practices, then it seems probable that any meal would have had a Jewish structure and shape. This would have included blessings of some kind (although there are no texts of these from this particular period) and the principal blessings would most likely have been said in relation to bread and the cup. Paul clearly chooses to emphasize the bread and the cup in his letter, although it is worth pointing out that throughout the letter wine as such is never mentioned, either in chapter 11 or in other places where the bread and the cup are referenced (McGowan 1999a, pp. 221–6). Essentially, therefore, very little can be said about the nature of the meal.
Finally, there is the question of frequency. The text offers no hint whatsoever of how often the meal may have been held. The only reference to anything that was to happen weekly within the Corinthian community comes, as I have already indicated, towards the end of the letter when Paul advises the Corinthians to put aside some money each week as a kind of savings plan to build up a sum of money that could be sent to the community in Jerusalem (16.2). It is sometimes assumed that this collection would be taken during the weekly worship, but again there is no direct evidence to support this (Bradshaw 2004, p. 39). If there was a weekly act of worship then this could easily be the kind of meeting described in chapter 14 and does not need to take the form of a weekly meal (Smith’s statement that ‘we should imagine Christian meetings taking place at table most if not all of the time’ (2003, p. 177) is utterly unfounded). How likely was it, therefore, that a community of about 50 individuals within a busy Greek city would have come together on a weekly basis for a shared meal?
In theory this is possible. There is some evidence of weekly meals among a number of Jewish communities within the ancient world (Smith 2003). I will come to look at this evidence in more detail in Chapter 4. If it is also assumed that this community is relatively new and, like all converts, the members still maintained a high level of enthusiasm for, and commitment to, their new-found faith, then the suggestion that they should come together once a week for a collective meal would not seem too burdensome. It is not the possibility of a weekly meal, therefore, that raises questions; it is the way in which Paul addresses the issue within the text.
In particular there are two points that suggest to me that what is being described is not a weekly event. The first relates to the disputes and arguments that form the primary reason for the text in the first place. Whatever Paul goes on to say about the link between the Lord’s Supper and the Last Supper, and the eschatological nature of the meal, he is talking about it in this letter because some members of the Corinthian community have complained about the behaviour of other members of the community during the meal itself. While acknowledging the possibility that the reporters could have ulterior motives for passing on the information that they did, or that they may even have been falsifying their account for reasons of their own, for Paul the account of the disputes and the disruption is taken at face value and addressed as such within the letter. If, however, this is an accurate account, and if the meal was taking place weekly, then the resulting tensions would undoubtedly have made it very difficult for the community to continue in anything like a peaceful state. Theissen argued that it is not the Lord’s Supper itself that was subject to disruption but rather a pre-meal or personal supper indulged in by the richer members of the community (1982, pp. 151–3). Theissen also suggests that this was accepted as a normal way of functioning in public meals of the time and would not have caused too much alarm or concern among the Corinthians (1982, p. 154). The problem with this argument, however, is, first, that it is clear that the divisions did cause alarm, at least for some, and enough alarm for them to pass this information on to Paul, and, second, that Paul, in his text, makes it clear that these divisions impact directly on the Lord’s Supper even to the extent that it ceases to become the Lord’s Supper and leads ultimately to judgement and death within the community (11.20, 30).
While other parts of the letter give the impression of a very divided and disturbed community, the divisions referred to elsewhere are different from those suggested for the meal. The divisions surrounding the meal are practical; each person is bringing their own meal and some are eating well while others are going hungry. It would have been very difficult to continue for any serious length of time to hold a weekly meal where there was such a level of resentment and utter disregard for the feelings of others. To say it would have been difficult does not mean, of course, that it was impossible. It is clear from chapter 14 that other gatherings of the community were also somewhat chaotic and this may have been accepted as the normal state of affairs. But why had the local leaders not sorted out what was, after all, a very practical problem much earlier? It is possible that the issue had only just arisen within the community, or had been developing only very slowly to the point that it had become a noticeable and serious issue at the time the reporters left on their journey to Ephesus. Either way, I think there is something about the nature of the dispute that makes the possibility of a weekly meeting very unlikely.
My other concern relates to the giving of the ‘tradition’. Why should Paul’s response to the divisions and discord present at the Lord’s Supper take the form of a re-presentation of a tradition in the form of an account of the Last Supper? It is clear from the way the text is written that Paul does not really expect the Corinthians to remember the Last Supper narrative, he would not need to present it in full if this was the case. His usual way of referring to statements and rules from the ‘tradition’ is to allude to things, not to lay them out in full (1 Cor. 7.10; 15.3–8). In this case, however, he presents the whole narrative as he has received it. It is clear that he has already presented this narrative to the Corinthians while he was with them and that he has told them, in response to this narrative, to celebrate a meal, sharing in bread and the cup just as Jesus had done on the night before he was betrayed. If the instruction was to celebrate a weekly meal then this narrative could not have been repeated regularly as part of that meal. If it were, he would not need to repeat it in full within the letter. If what was instituted was not a weekly meal, however, then there is a possibility that the narrative might have been associated with the meal in some more direct way, although once again it is not possible to say whether or not it was read or spoken as some kind of warrant. Paul’s felt need to restate the tradition in such detail, however, leads me away from the possibility of a weekly meal. As with all the other evidence, this is not conclusive in itself, it is part of a body of what might be called ‘circumstantial’ evidence. Before coming back to this question, therefore, it is necessary to look at other aspects of the letter beyond the account of the meal in chapter 11 and see what other ‘circumstantial’ evidence might exist.
1 Corinthians as a paschal letter
There are two other sections of 1 Corinthians that might have a bearing on the question of the meal and its frequency. The first relates to the question of meat offered to idols in chapters 8––10, and the second to a series of references throughout the letter that appear to point to a paschal context. The question of meat offered to idols is relatively simple in relation to the Lord’s Supper, although the issues behind it are complex and have caused a great deal of controversy (Gooch 1993). I am only including it here because it deals with the question of eating and may have a bearing on whether the Corinthians shared a common meal on a weekly basis. It is also the context in which the other references to the bread and the cup are made.
Clearly there was some dispute over the eating of meat that was bought in the marketplace and that may have been offered to idols (10.25). Hurd suggests that Paul is tempering earlier advice that suggested that all meat could be eaten, either because it was causing difficulties for the Corinthian community or because Paul had realized that such a liberal attitude was not all that helpful (Hurd 1965, pp. 142–9). Gooch suggests that Paul never held the liberal position, and that he continued to maintain the traditional Jewish abhorrence of idol food that was accepted by the Corinthians and all other orthodox Christian communities at the time (Gooch 1993, pp. 129–33). It is not my concern here to tease out the exact meaning of the text. The question, in the light of chapter 11, is whether, if there was a common weekly meal, the source of any meat that might have been eaten at that meal was an issue.
If each household was providing their own food there may not have been a problem, but the question could, potentially, have been raised with some members asking others where they had acquired their meat. However, this is not stated as an issue, either in the account of the meal or, more importantly, at the time that Paul is discussing the eating of idol meat. The second of these points is significant. As Goulder comments, ‘so many problems get an airing in the Corinthian letters that it is hardly believable that there was trouble over the meat at the agape without our hearing of it’ (2001, p. 170). Paul talks in terms of members of the community being invited to the houses of unbelievers where potential idol meat was being served (10.27). If this were a concern in a weekly meal within the community then surely he would have said something about this as well. It is perfectly plausible, however, that the weekly meal did not contain meat on a regular basis. The poor at this time hardly ever ate meat and the richer members of the community would not have done so on a regular basis. Other evidence suggests that a meat-free communal meal, especially if it was a regular event, would not have been considered particularly unusual. Some broth and a few vegetables, or fruit and nuts with some bread, would have been perfectly acceptable (Smith 2003). I will come back to these issues in Chapter 4. For now, all I wish to note is that this discussion of meat offered to idols does not offer any further insight into the meal described in chapter 11.
Within the wider discussion of meat offered to idols, however, following on from an account of Moses and the Israelites in the wilderness, there are a number of references to bread and the cup (10.14–17). These have always tended to be interpreted, without much critical reflection, as having a eucharistic referent. At the very least they are associated with the account of the meal in chapter 11, and are used as evidence that a symbolic discourse on the bread and the cup as the body and blood of Christ was central to the Corinthian community at this time. This, in turn, is used to suggest that the meal, with the blessing of the cup and of bread, was a regular, and potentially weekly event within the community (Mazza 1995, pp. 71–2). Fee, however, emphasizes that the main theme of this passage is not the eating of bread or the sharing of the cup per se, but rather the question of idolatry (Fee 1987, pp. 441–91). Indirectly, Paul is emphasizing the continuity between Israel and the Corinthian community, and only in passing is there a reference to bread and the cup. A core passage is in verses 15–21 where Paul refers to the ‘cup of blessing’ and also to the ‘bread that we break’, but goes on to talk about ‘those who eat the sacrifices’ (the Israelites) as participating ‘in the altar’. Paul then extrapolates this to refer to the eating sacrifices offered to demons as participating with demons. Finally he tells the Corinthians that they cannot ‘have a part in both the Lord’s table and the table of demons’ (10.21). Fee picks up the threefold structure of the rhetoric here and emphasizes the links between the sacrifices of the Israelites, the sacrifices to demons and the table fellowship of the Corinthians (Fee 1987, pp. 462–75). The Lord’s Supper is being used here to say something about eating meat sacrificed to idols and not the other way round. It is an argument that draws on the Corinthians’ own experience of the meal and it is not aimed at presenting any commentary on that meal in itself. Does this suggest, therefore, that the experience is so common, say weekly, that nothing more needs to be said?
The other point that is almost always made in relation to the phrases in verses 16–7 is that they have a ritual ring about them; they do not appear to be Paul’s own words. The suggestion is that he is quoting a liturgical formula. Many of those who follow this line go on to point out that the nearest equivalent of these formulas, particularly the phrase ‘the cup of blessing’, appear in relation to the Jewish celebration of the Passover (Bruce 1971, p. 94). Very little is known about how the Jews celebrated weekly meals or festivals at this time, and so the phrases actually relate to later Jewish texts on the Passover. If there was no account of the meal within 1 Corinthians, however, and if there had been no future development of the Eucharist, it is very possible that these particular phrases would have been read metaphorically and would probably have led scholars to see the letter as being framed within a Paschal context (Bruce 1971). Paul would have been seen as using images and metaphors from the Passover liturgy to make wider theological points. Do these phrases, therefore, necessarily have to be seen as relating to a weekly meal?
There is a certain amount of other circumstantial evidence that points to a Paschal context for the letter, not least the reference to the place of unleavened bread at the feast and Jesus as the Paschal sacrifice (5.6–8), the reference to Jesus’ resurrection as the ‘first fruits’ (15.20) and the fact that towards the end Paul comments that he intends to wait in Ephesus until Pentecost (16.8) (Bruce 1971, p. 145). The imagery and ‘typology’ of 10.1–13 has also been associated with the period surrounding the Passover (Carrington 1952, p. 42; Bruce 1971, p. 90). The comment at 16.8 would suggest that Paul is writing between Passover and Pentecost. If this is the case then he would have ‘celebrated’ Passover in Ephesus fairly recently and many of the images and practices associated with the Passover celebrations would have been fresh in his mind (Shepherd 1960, p. 22). It is not possible to know, of course, how Paul would have celebrated Passover. Nor is it possible to know in detail how any Jew of this time might have celebrated Passover, especially in the Diaspora. Even whether Paul, in his rejection of many Jewish laws and practices, would have celebrated Passover at all has to be guessed at. At one level this does not matter, and I will come back to the detail of the question in the next chapter. Paul, having been brought up as a devout Jew, and having been a Pharisee for much of his adult life, would have celebrated the Passover regularly before his conversion, and even if he did not continue to do so as a Christian, the way in which he conceived of time would still have been firmly rooted in the Jewish calendar, so the time of year, of itself, would have brought to mind Paschal imagery and practices, even if he was not celebrating them himself. I would want to suggest, however, that Paul probably had celebrated some form of Christian Passover with the community in Ephesus, and what is more, that the meal he refers to in 1 Corinthians was probably a Paschal meal celebrated by the community in Corinth.
Obviously this cannot be proved. Conzelmann, among others, goes out of his way to stress that, unlike Mark and the other Synoptic Gospels, Paul makes no reference to the Passover in his account of the Last Supper (1975, p. 197). However, if it were the case that the meal in question were a Paschal meal, then this would explain, first, the range of Paschal imagery throughout the letter, second, the particular association of the meal with the account of the Last Supper, which, I will argue in the following chapter, may have formed a part of a Christian Passover narrative that Paul may have heard once again in Ephesus, and third, it would explain the eschatological thinking that Paul associates with the meal, as for the Christians the Passover would have been associated with the death and resurrection of Christ rather than, or perhaps as well as, the liberation of the Jews from Egypt (Bruce 1971, pp. 113–14; Segal 1984). What is more, it may explain why the Corinthian community, many of whom were non-Jews, had such difficulties engaging with the meal. They did not really know how to celebrate it, and hence created such difficulties for themselves, with each person or household providing their own food and some even going without. It may also explain why those who were Jews were so offended by this behaviour and reported it to Paul. This does, at the very least, provide a plausible reading of the information contained within the letter.
The rest of Paul’s letters
This explanation would also answer one other very puzzling element of Paul’s other writings. If the meal, with its emphasis on bread and the cup, and its link in some way with the narrative of the Last Supper, was a regular, even weekly event that Paul had established in all the communities he founded and that he also shared in each week wherever he happened to be based (although probably not in prison or while travelling), then why is it that the only reference to it is in the first letter to the Corinthians? Not only does 1 Corinthians provide the only account of what happened at this meal (although it does not even do that), it is also the only direct reference to any kind of communal meal within the whole of Paul’s output (whether that is measured by the traditional attributions or those of recent scholarship). Paul does mention baptism on more than one occasion, and makes a big play of the different ways of understanding baptism and the role it plays within the community and in the lives of individual Christians (Johnson 1999, pp. 22–32). Of course there would have been more baptisms at this time of expansion and evangelical activity than at many other times in the Church’s history. However, baptism would not have been held as frequently as a regular weekly meal. Why is there no other mention of the meal? There is no easy answer to this question except to suggest that there was no regular weekly meal within the communities that Paul founded.
There are three other sections of the letters attributed to Paul where references to a weekly meal might be expected if it existed. The first two raise the question of who can eat with whom: the account of the divisions at Antioch that Paul provides in his letter to the Galatians (2.11–21) and a brief reference to a similar issue in Romans (14.1–23). The third relates to the issues raised by the Pastoral Epistles.
The Galatians material raises a number of complex issues. First, it is necessary to reconcile the account of the dispute at Antioch, as recounted by Paul, with the account in Acts. Having done that, it is important to decide what the real issues were in this dispute. It looks, on the surface, as if the issue concerned the question of whether Jews could share a meal with non-Jews (Esler 1987). Paul said that they could, his opponents argued that they could not. There is scholarly literature to suggest that both positions reflected the accepted position of the time, but the more general view in recent scholarship is that ordinary Jews in the first century, whether in Palestine or the Diaspora, would actually have shared meals with non-Jews with little concern (Sanders 1992, pp. 214–17; Barclay 2001). They would have become unclean in doing so, but this was easy to remedy. It would only be the nature of the food that would have caused problems, and if the Jews and non-Jews each brought their own food then even this could be avoided. It would only be the strictest Jewish groups that would have seen any real problem with this and so, once again, it is necessary to go back and ask what the real issues were in the Antiochene dispute. Unfortunately that is beyond the scope of this particular discussion and I will come back to it in Chapter 5.
Whatever the real issues, however, what is very striking in relation to the discussion in this chapter is that there is no mention of the ‘Lord’s Supper’, or of any other regular cultic meal that the community is obliged to celebrate. The reference in Galatians 2.12 simply says ‘before certain men came from James, he [Peter] used to eat with the Gentiles’. There is no further reference to indicate the context in which this eating takes place. This would be the ideal place to make reference to the regular weekly meal if such existed. Smith takes it for granted that the ‘eating’ in question represents the same basic meal tradition as at Corinth; ‘in other words, what Paul calls “the Lord’s Supper” at Corinth is also what was being practiced at Antioch’ (Smith 2003, p. 174). However, if that is the case then why is this not mentioned explicitly in the text? If Jesus really did institute a regular weekly meal, and if there were some in Antioch who found sharing food with others difficult if not impossible, then once again some reference to Jesus’ command would surely have settled the issue once and for all.
The same argument can also be raised in relation to Romans 14, although this also relates back to the discussions in 1 Corinthians 8—10. As with Galatians 2, however, there is no reference to a specific meal within which, or around which, this discussion takes place. Once again Smith states, ‘in Romans Paul also refers to a church fellowship meal’ (Smith 2003, p. 177), except that he does not. He talks about what individuals feel it is appropriate to eat. At no point in the argument does Paul say that the Roman community should eat any particular thing at any particular meal, and the question that is raised over the wine in verse 21 (it is better not to eat meat or drink wine) would sit very strangely with the Lord’s Supper as outlined in 1 Corinthians. Finally, there is reference in verses 5–6 to days kept sacred or not, depending on the consideration of each individual, making any suggestion that either Paul or the Roman community kept one day a week special with a celebration of a fellowship meal highly problematic.
Unlike the discussion of Galatians or Romans, there is very little scholarly discussion about the place of what might have become the ‘Eucharist’ in the Pastoral Epistles. This is not surprising as there is no direct mention of any meal, or anything that might be considered remotely eucharistic, within these texts. It is generally accepted by modern scholarship that these letters are not by Paul and represent a later development of a Pauline school or community (Pietersen 2004, pp. 4–26). They have features that indicate that the communities they represent are becoming more formal and more highly organized. In particular there is considerable discussion about the role of the overseers, deacons and elders within these texts (MacDonald 1988). Some have argued that these texts are proto-church orders (Pietersen 2004, p. 3), others suggest that this is misleading and that the texts are essentially written to challenge certain factions within the community and to bolster the position of Timothy and Titus (Pietersen 2004). If, however, these texts are concerned, in whatever way, with the role and practice of the leaders of the community, including their role in prayer (1 Tim. 2.1–8), in the public reading of scripture and teaching (1 Tim. 4.13; 2 Tim. 4.2) and in pastoral care (1 Tim. 5.1–25; Titus 2.1–15), why is it that they say nothing about meals (Rowland 1985, pp. 242–3)?
There is a condemnation of the ‘hypocritical liars’ who abstain from certain foods (1 Tim. 4.3) and a comment that if any food is ‘received with thanksgiving’ (εuχαριστíας) then it should be considered good. This is not developed, however, into a statement about any kind of regular meal within the community. Timothy is also encouraged to ‘stop drinking only water’ (1 Tim. 5.23), which suggests that some of the ascetic practices that McGowan identifies in a later generation are already present here (McGowan 1999a, pp. 231–3). If a regular meal was taking place within this community, therefore, what might it have consisted of, and would wine have played any part in it?
The overwhelming lack of evidence for regular meals, with ritual significance, in the corpus of Paul’s work, and those other texts that are a product of the school or community associated with him, must be important. I cannot accept that this silence is coincidental and that meals were occurring that had a special place for bread and a cup, blessings, and an eschatological or paschal meaning, but that they were not infringing on Paul’s thinking enough to be mentioned in more than one letter. The only real solution is that they were not a regular or frequent part of the life of the communities Paul founded, or, by implication, of Paul’s own practice. In my view at least, this lack of evidence suggests even more strongly that the meal in 1 Corinthians was probably an event that occurred less frequently than once a week and could possibly have been an annual event associated with the Passover. What I am proposing, therefore, is that the Lord’s Supper was probably a part of the Passover celebrations of the Corinthian community. To justify this assertion, however, the Christian communities beyond Paul’s own orbit need to be looked at much more closely, along with any evidence about the possible celebrations of the Passover within Christianity as a whole at this very early date. That will form the basis for the next chapter.
