MYTHOS
"For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread: And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, this cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till he come." 1 Corinthian 11:23-26 (KJV)
The first mention of Holy Communion is not found in any of the Gospels, but in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, which I have quoted above. Paul's letter to the Corinthians predates the earliest Gospel of Mark by at least twenty years. Consider the first sentence of Paul's description of Jesus instituting what is widely known as Holy Communion.
"I have received of the Lord that which I also delivered unto you..."
This statement should give us pause. Paul is not claiming he was told this story by any eyewitness. There is no mention of his version being confirmed by Jesus disciples. He is saying Jesus taught him this. He doesn't say how he "received" this information. Was it in a vision or a dream?
How, then, did renditions of what Paul wrote to the Corinthians end up in the Synoptic Gospels?
Nobody really knows. What we do know is that Paul's version of Jesus' instituting Holy Communion during the Last Supper became the central rite in the emerging Christian church. Most Christians assume that Jesus instituted the rite of Holy Communion during the Last Supper is common knowledge. Little thought, however, is given to Paul's role promulgating that story.
Acts 2:42-42 introduces the shared meal by Jesus' earliest followers, which is widely known as an Agape meal today In the book of Acts it is referenced as breaking bread together. What it indicates is that Holy Communion, as Paul described it, was not ritualized when the followers of Jesus lived communally in Jerusalem in what became known as the Church in Jerusalem.
Whether Paul "received" a vision or had a dream in which Jesus told him what Paul passed on to the Corinthians, it is Paul who introduced this rite within the early church. 1Corinthians 11, suggests that the Church at Corinth may have been the first Christian gathering in which Holy Communion was practiced. By the time the Synoptic Gospels were written, Paul's description of Holy Communion in 1 Corinthians was accepted as fact.
PAUL
Paul figures prominently in New Testament literature. His epistle or the epistles attributed to him make up more than half of the 27 books of the New Testament. What we know about Paul comes from his letters and a probable disciple of his, Luke, who is the nominal author of the Gospel by that name along with The Acts of the Apostles. Apart from the Acts of the Apostles and Paul's epistles, there is only one reference to Paul which is 2 Peter 3:15, "And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you," which tells us very little about Paul other than by the time the second letter of Peter was written Paul's influence in the early church was being noted.
Paul is a complex person as his epistles demonstrate. He was the product of two worlds; being well-versed in both the world of Judaism and the world of the Greek speaking Roman Empire. As a Jew, he had to know that the mere thought of eating human flesh, much less drinking human blood, was about as repulsive as one can imagine, but as a Roman citizen he would have known that the symbolism of Jesus changing bread into his body and wine into his blood would have resonated within that world where mystery cults of the Greeks and Romans was an attraction that Paul could adapt to help spread the Gospel in Hellenized world of the Roman Empire.
The Eleusinian and Dionysian (Bacchus) mysteries come to mind. Paul would at least have had an awareness of them and their popularity in Greek and Roman culture. Paul was no fool to what appealed to his audiences, and the audience that he found willing to listen to him, was not the Jewish communities that resided in almost every major city of the Roman Empire but the Greek-speaking gentiles. What they would find appealing was ready access to a mystery religion that offered them a way to eternal life. To this day, mystery is a literally at the center of the Holy Communion liturgy:
"Let us proclaim the mystery of faith:
Christ has died
Christ is risen.
Christ will come again."
This mystery of faith is not only central to Holy Communion but also reflects Paul's theological perspective. In Paul's view, participation in Holy Communion literally incorporates the faithful into what Paul referred to as the Body of Christ, the living presence of Christ in our world.
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Brian Muraresku's book, The Immortality Key, explains that wine in ancient times was frequently mixed with herbs, mushrooms, and ingredients that would result in psychedelic experiences. Muraresku points out that wine wasn't the "weak" wine we drink today. It was potent and particularly potent if mixed with substances known as psychedelics today which were likely perceived as visionary pathways the divine in ancient time.
In Corinthians 11, Paul is upset with the Corinthian church because they turned Holy Communion into what sounded like a Bacchanalian event. Paul comments, " For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep (1Cor 11:20-30 Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® ).
Muraresku suggests that the reason people mixes a psychedelic brew back then was to enhance a spiritual experience, to have a taste of eternity or to have a vision of the divine. These were mixtures that could be lethal, especially, if not done accurately or people overindulged. He hypothesizes that the people Paul is talking about may have become sick and died because the wine they were drinking was mixed with such substances that led to overdoses which killed some and made others sick. It is an interesting hypothesis.
Paul's pharisaical side comes through in his epistles as expressions of moral outrage at the behavior exhibited in places like Corinth and Rome. Things that he railed against such as drunkenness and sexual promiscuity were commonplace in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the Roman Empire. Drunkenness was often associated with religious and civic events and where there was excessive intoxication other behaviors were likely to emerge.
In his effort to spread the Gospel, Paul admits to trying to be all things to all people, as he says in 1 Corinthians 9:22, "To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some" (NIV). Paul understood what appealed to his audiences with regard to spreading the Gospel message. Salvation, eternal life, as the result of Jesus atoning sacrifice for sin, "once for all" was something that would have had great appeal to vast number of people who understood that sacrifice was necessary in order to appeal and appease the gods or God.
In addition, the rite of Holy Communion allowed everyone, regardless of status, to participate in the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus, once for all. "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise." Galatians 3;28-29 (NIV) Interestingly, over time Holy Communion became known as the sacrificed offered for us; the concept of the Sacrifice of the Mass that continues to this day.
JESUS
As I have mentioned in other post, Jesus was not into sacrifice. In Matthew 9:13 and 12:7, Jesus quotes Hosea 6:6, "For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings." Jesus quoting Hosea seemingly supports the notion that Jesus would not have considered any suffering he would go through as a sacrifice to God for the sins of others. Human sacrifice was an abomination in eyes of Jews.
Being a devout Jew, it is unlikely that Jesus would not have entertained such a repulsive idea of equating bread and wine as symbols of his body and blood. In chapter 6 of the Gospel of John, this repulsion is noted when a number of Jesus' disciples leave him when he states in John that he is the Bread of Life and mentions eating his body and drinking his blood. I will address this further when discussing the mythic features of that Gospel.
Offering sacrifices made sense in the religious world of the first century CE and one can understand how Jesus crucifixion was cast as a sacrifice to God for the sins of the world. Jesus' crucifixion as an insurrectionist against Jewish authority and the Roman Empire was seen as the ultimate putdown and degradation of a human being. The resurrection of Jesus, which we will come to in the next post was understood in the early chapters of the Acts as a reversal of the degradation Jesus suffered. In fact, the first seven chapters of Act in which Peter and Stephen make speeches at theTemple, they never allude to Jesus's death on the cross as a sacrifice to atone for their sins.
MEANING
Paul made a huge leap from Judaism's repulsion at the thought of eating human flesh and drinking human blood to presenting such an act under the species of bread and wine as active participation in Jesus' atoning sacrificial act on the cross; nevertheless, we see him trying to rationalize that leap in Judaic terms justify the practice of Holy Communion. For example, in 1 Corinthians 5:7 he writes, "For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed," and in Romans 3:25-26." God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus." (NIV)
In Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, we see the first mention in the New Testament of Jesus' crucifixion linked to the Jewish celebration of Passover, which according to the Synoptic Gospels was the setting of the Last Supper. In Paul's mind, Jesus becomes the sacrificial lamb by which death passes over us or rather that death passes us over to life in the resurrected Christ. In his letter to the Romans, Paul links Jesus crucifixion as a sacrifice of atonement "to be received by faith." This is a bizarre statement that becomes even more bizarre as Paul continues to say that God did this to demonstrate God's righteousness, because God left sins go unpunished before Jesus atoning sacrifice in order for God to demonstrate God's righteousness in justifying "those who have faith in Jesus."
Whether Paul intended it, the rite of Holy Communion provided the gravitational force needed to give structure to the emerging Church and to draw people into its orbit. While Paul seemed to be unaware of the teachings of Jesus found in the Synoptic Gospels, Paul's point of reference to Jesus in his epistles is Jesus' last supper with his disciple, his trial and crucifixion, and his resurrection/ascension.
While one can only hypothesize, there is good reason to consider that Paul created this myth to incorporate both Jews and gentiles into a cohesive religious group that became Christianity. He rejected his Jewish proclivity to repulsion at the thought of the flesh and drinking the blood of a crucified victim in order to create a sacrificial meal that crossed the boarders of Judaism by allowing the gentile a place at the table of God's love in Christ Jesus; as such, Paul's actions support the Pagan Continuation Hypothesis that archeologist are seeing at play within the rites practiced within the early church.
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For the vast majority of Christians throughout the world today, Holy Communion remains the gravitational center of Christian worship, while losing much of its gravitational pull to those outside of the Church's orbit. That it has lost its gravitational pull is due, in large part, to access to it has been guarded to ensure that those who partake of it are worthy of doing so. This can also be traced back to Paul who wrote to the Corinthians:
So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink from the cup. For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves. (1 Corinthians 11:27-29 - NIV)
Throughout the centuries the glue that held the church together was the belief in "one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church," whose central rite was Holy Communion. Today the idea of "one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church" is largely a rhetorical construct found based on the Nicene Creed which is said in most liturgical churches, but this statement belies the fact that the Church has fractalized into numerous denominations where the rite of Holy Communion may no longer be central in some denominations' worship. The emphasis throughout the centuries has been that participation in this rite ensured the participant being one with Christ and if one with Christ then one with God; therefore, securing the full atonement of sin and the promise of life everlasting.
Today, many Christians see Holy Communion as a sign and symbol of God's forgiving love for the world; that participation not only brings us into a deeper relationship to God in Christ, but into a deeper relation with those we are sharing this minimal meal of consecrated bread and wine with. Increasingly mainline Protestant church practice "open" communion; that is, communion offered to all who seek a deeper relationship with Jesus. As a result, Holy Communion is increasingly being treated as entry into the ongoing redemptive ministry of Jesus; that those who partake of it are called to bind up the wounds of those who are hurting, heal the broken hearted, and recognize a child of God, a sibling of Jesus and oneself, in every human encounter.
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Until next time, stay faithful.
Norm
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