Many or maybe most churches (Protestant, at least) conduct communion by doing a recitation of Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 11:
with the members then eating their wafer or piece of bread and drinking their thimble or cup of juice or wine.1 Corinthians 11:23–26 (NRSVue): 23 For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
Also note that whereas in 1 Corinthians 11 Paul says that Jesus’s giving thanks for the bread was at the beginning of the supper and his taking and sharing the cup was after the supper, the Didache has the thanksgiving for both the bread and the cup at the beginning of the supper, with the thanksgiving for the cup coming before that for the bread.
Chapter 9:1 As for thanksgiving, give thanks this way.
2 First, with regard to the cup:
“We thank you, our Father,
For the holy vine of David your servant,
which you made known to us
through Jesus your servant.
To you be glory forever.”
3 And with regard to the *Bread:
“We thank you, our Father,
For the life and knowledge
which you made known to us
through Jesus your servant.
To you be glory forever.
4 As this < … > lay scattered upon the mountains
and became one when it had been gathered,
So may your church be gathered into your
kingdom from the ends of the earth.
For glory and power are yours,
through Jesus Christ, forever.”
5 Let no one eat or drink of your thanksgiving [meal] save those who have been baptized in the name of the Lord, since the Lord has said concerning this,
“Do not give what is holy to the dogs.”1 When you have had your fill, give thanks this way:Chapter 10:
2 “We thank you, holy Father,
For your holy name,
which you made dwell in our hearts,
And for the knowledge and faith and immortality,
which you made known to us
through Jesus your servant.
To you be glory forever.
3 You, almighty Lord, created all things for the
sake of your name,
and you gave food and drink to human
beings for enjoyment,
so that they would thank you;
But you graced us with spiritual food and
drink and eternal life
through <Jesus> your servant.
4 *For all things, we thank you, Lord, because
you are powerful.
To you be glory forever.
5 Be mindful, Lord, of your church,
to preserve it from all evil
and to perfect it in your love.
And < … > gather it from the four winds,
into the kingdom which you have prepared
for it.
For power and glory are yours forever.
6 May grace come, and may this world pass by.
Hosanna to the God of David!
If anyone is holy, let him come.
If anyone is not, let him repent.
Maranatha! Amen.”7 Allow the prophets, however, to give thanks as much as they like.
Kurt Niederwimmer and Harold W. Attridge, The Didache: A Commentary, Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1998), 144,155. * = Textual emendation by the authorThe reference in the Didache 10:3 to “spiritual food and drink” echoes the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:
though Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 10 for “food” and “drink” (βρῶμα brōma and πόμα poma, respectively) differ from those in the published editions of the Greek text of the Didache (τροφή trophē and ποτόν poton, respectively).1 Corinthians 10:1–4 (NRSVue) 1 I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, 2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 3 and all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.
John 6:63 (NRSVue) 63 “It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”So an argument could be made (as many Protestants do) that “eat[ing his] flesh” and “drink[ing his] blood” is about coming to Jesus and believing in him, and not about eating his real flesh and drinking his real blood in the more literal sense that the Roman Catholic and [Eastern] Orthodox Churches teach and confess. With this understanding the bread and wine of the Lord’s supper don't become or need to become anything other than the ordinary bread and wine that they are, as “spiritual food and drink and eternal life” are about and are obtained by coming to Jesus (and hence to the Father through him) and believing in him, and not by eating the bread and drinking the cup.
Chapter 141 Assembling on every Sunday of the Lord, break bread and give thanks, confessing your faults beforehand, so that your sacrifice may be pure.2 Let no one engaged in a dispute with his comrade join you until they have been reconciled, lest your sacrifice be profaned.3 This is [the meaning] of what was said by the Lord: “‘to offer me a pure sacrifice in every place and time, because I am a great king,’ says the Lord, ‘and my name is held in wonder among the nations.’”[ Translation supplement] Translation supplementKurt Niederwimmer and Harold W. Attridge, The Didache: A Commentary, Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1998), 194.
The church also began treating the Eucharist as being sacramental, including regarding the bread and wine as being or becoming Christ’s real body and blood. In conjunction with or subsequent to that, a hierarchical priesthood arose or was instituted in order to offer the bread and wine as sacrifices,...
What is meant by θυσία, the sacrifice to be presented at the meal?18 It seems tempting to understand θυσία to refer to the sacred action of the eucharistic celebration,19 or more precisely to associate it with the eucharistic elements (as, e.g., Justin does in Dial. 41.3 [Goodspeed, 138]).20 In that case Did. 14.1–321 would represent the oldest explicit instance of the understanding of the Lord’s Supper as a sacrifice.22 This interpretation, however, is uncertain. The context permits still another possibility: that θυσία refers in a special sense to εὐχαριστήσατε. The sacrifice that is spoken of so often here would then be the eucharistic prayer offered by the congregation.23 It is stained if guilty persons speak it, but it is pure if their guilt is removed. But is this alternative a justifiable interpretation of the Didache text? No matter how unsatisfying it may appear to a later, more reflective consciousness, one cannot exclude the possibility that these alternatives are utterly foreign to the state of mind reflected in the text (and other, similar texts); that is, the tradition that comes to light here associates the sacred meal with the idea of sacrifice in the most general way, without making detailed specifications about what precisely is to be understood by “sacrifice” in this instance.24 That seems to be the most appropriate understanding of the Didache text. In any case, it is true that participation in the θυσία demands moral purity as ritual purity—and the prior purification by exhomologesis is intended in that sense.
Footnotes
18 “During the first three centuries the Eucharist was understood in a threefold way as sacrifice. The sacrifice presented to God is, first of all, the prayers, second, the bread and wine, … third, the sacred action at the altar itself as analogue to the sacrifice of the death of Christ” (Lietzmann, Mass, 68).19 E.g., Harnack, “Prolegomena” 139; Knopf, Lehre, 36: “θυσία: the Eucharist as sacrifice”; Lietzmann, Mass, 193; Drews, “Apostellehre” 279: θυσία refers to the Lord’s Supper, not merely the prayers, as sacrifice. The proof of this is said to be the Malachi quotation that follows; see Koester, Synoptische Überlieferung, 214–15.20 Περὶ δὲ τῶν ἐν παντὶ τόπῳ ὑφʼ ἡμῶν τῶν ἐθνῶν προσφερομένων αὐτῷ θυσιῶν, τοῦτʼ ἔστι τοῦ ἄρτου τῆς εὐχαριστίας καὶ τοῦ ποτηρίου ὁμοίως τῆς εὐχαριστίας, προλέγει [sc. the prophet Malachi, 1:10–11] τότε (“concerning the sacrifices offered to him by us, the nations, in every place, that is, the bread of the Eucharist and, likewise, the cup of the Eucharist”). Justin, however, is also acquainted with the other idea according to which the eucharistic prayers are a sacrifice to God: Dial. 117.1 (Goodspeed, 234).21 The term θυσία is used three times (the third in the quotation from Malachi).22 1 Clem. 44.4 may be considered older, but the meaning of the phrase δῶρα τῆς ἐπισκοπῆς there is uncertain. Otherwise one must obviously distinguish between the explicit examples and the idea itself; the latter can be older than the former. Thus, e.g., it seems to me that 1 Cor 10:16–22 implicitly presupposes the idea of the Eucharist as sacrifice.23 Thus, e.g., Harris (Teaching, 106), with reference to the quotation in Ps.-Cyprian De aleat. 4 (CSEL 3.3.96): ne inquinetur et inpediatur oratio vestra (“lest your prayer be troubled and impeded”); Johannes Behm, “θύω,” TDNT 3 (1967) 189–90 (cautiously). Wengst thinks that θυσία probably means first of all the prayers spoken by the congregation and second, in a broader sense, “the congregation itself as those who celebrate” (Didache, 55).24 It seems to me that the statements of Audet (Didachè, 462–63) tend in the same direction, as do especially those of Vööbus, Liturgical Traditions 107: “According to all the canons of typology, this [the reference of the word θυσία to the Eucharist] is the answer which must be given. However, for the sake of circumspection, the question should be raised whether the same notion also covered prayer, thanksgiving, hymns, in one word, all the acts of worship. There are reasons for thinking that the line between these acts and the εὐχαριστία as ‘sacrifice’ par excellence was not yet sharply drawn.” Vööbus adds (pp. 107–8) that θυσία here does not yet have the usual meaning of propitiation for sins. Cf. also Frank, “Maleachi 1, 10ff.” 72: “It is impossible on the basis of the text to attempt to define the precise referent of ‘sacrifice,’ whether the congregation’s prayer of thanksgiving or the breaking of bread. All that is permitted us is the conclusion that the whole action of the congregation on Sunday is understood as a sacrifice before God.” According to Moll (Opfer, 110) θυσία refers to “the whole action”; 115: “the sacrificial gifts in particular,” or rather “the … eucharistic prayer of thanksgiving spoken over the bread, which remains symbolically attached to the sacrificial gifts.”Justin Justin Martyr
Dial. Dialogue with Trypho
Did. Didache
Kurt Niederwimmer and Harold W. Attridge, The Didache: A Commentary, Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1998), 196–197.
I earlier mentioned that scholars debate when the church began separating the Eucharist from the fellowship meal. The Didache complicates the issue, and Niederwimmer and Attridge discuss how scholars have tried to explain the Didache’s structure in relation to this debate:
3. After the introductory liturgical formula περὶ δὲ τῆς εὐχαριστίας (“As for the thanksgiving”), the reader of a later era expects to find directions for the sacrament of the Eucharist, and that expectation is heightened by the context. Chap. 7 described baptism, and chaps. 9–10 are to deal with the Lord’s Supper. But what emerges in chaps. 9–10 is surprising in a number of ways. The sequence of elements appears to be reversed. The liturgical directions begin with the prayer of blessing over the wine (9.2), and only then follows the blessing of the bread (9.3–4).9 Still more striking is that the words of institution are absent; it is also questionable whether the prayers of blessing contain any reference at all to the kerygma of the passion.10 In addition, the expression in 10.1 (μετὰ δὲ τὸ ἐμπλησθῆναι) implies a full meal. Under these circumstances the question arises whether chaps. 9–10 really deal with the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. This has been one of the crucial problems in Didache research from the outset.
4. What kind of meal is this, then?
a. Among those who considered it to be eucharistic are Harnack,11 Völker,12 Greiff,13 Middleton,14 Creed,15 Richardson,16 Bosio,17 Glover,18 and Kraft.19 There is an especially interesting variant in the work of Hans Lietzmann.20 In his interpretation this is “an agape introduced by a eucharistic celebration.”21 Did. 9.1–5 describes the eucharistic celebration, and this was followed by an agape, which was a complete meal (between chaps. 9 and 10). The agape meal was then in turn followed by the prayers of thanksgiving in 10.1–6; the text in 10.6 (part of the eucharistic liturgy) is misplaced.22 This description played a particular role within the framework of Lietzmann’s conception of the twofold origins of the Eucharist.
b. Among those who considered this meal an agape were F. Kattenbusch,23 Connolly,24 Vokes,25 Dix,26 Adam,27 and Gero.28
c. Drews had his own solution to the problem: the meal prayers in chaps. 9–10 are said to refer to “a Lord’s Supper celebrated in the form of a unified, complete community meal,” while chap. 14 describes the official Sunday Eucharist of the local community, led by a bishop.29 Knopf’s judgment was similar. He wrote of the prayers in chaps. 9–10, “What we have here is a celebration in a smaller group where there is still a genuine meal (10.1), whereas [chap.] 14 refers to the celebration of the whole community, on Sunday, without a meal: the Mass with the consumption of the sacrament alone, as in Justin 1 Apol. 67.”30
d. The opinion that the prayers in chaps. 9–10 are agape prayers followed by the Eucharist in 10.6 has been widely adopted.31 The most important arguments for this idea are found first in the work of Zahn32 and later p 142 in that of Arthur Darby Nock,33 August Arnold,34 Martin Dibelius,35 and others. Agape prayers (or table prayers for the community meal) followed by the Lord’s Supper are also suggested by, among others, Bultmann36 and Jeremias,37 and with caution by Stuiber,38 Vielhauer,39 and (again cautiously) now Rordorf and Tuilier as well.40
e. Audet produced a remarkable variant on this model.41
f. Vööbus completed a thorough investigation42 in which he again spoke in favor of interpreting this as a eucharistic celebration. Chaps. 9–10 are eucharistic prayers, and the fact that the meal is a full-course dinner need not disturb us because Eucharist and agape had not yet been separated. Finally, Johannes Betz, adopting and correcting an idea of Peterson,43 advocated the idea that the table prayers in the Didache were originally eucharistic prayers, but the redactor of the document has made them agape prayers.44
g. Most recently Wengst has defended the idea that chaps. 9–10 depict nothing but a full-course meal.45 It bears the name εὐχαριστία, but it has nothing to do with the Christian Lord’s Supper. The celebration spoken of in chaps. 9–10 is purely a meal for the satisfaction of hunger, and nothing else.46
5. It seems to me that if we are to reach a conclusion in this matter we must begin with Did. 10.6, a text that must be placed before the sacramental Communion.47 This means that the Eucharist in our sense, that is, the sacramental Lord’s Supper, must begin after chap. 10. It is characteristic that Lietzmann, who defended a different position, raised objections to the placement of 10.6.48 If we allow the text to stand as it has been handed down we have scarcely any other choice but to suppose that 10.6 is the invitation to the Lord’s Supper, which follows immediately thereafter. In that case, however, the meal envisioned in Did. 10.1 cannot be a Eucharist in the sacramental sense, but only a community meal. This is indicated also by ἐμπλησθῆναι, if we do not attempt to interpret it artificially against its context.49 In that case the difficulty otherwise produced by the “reversed” sequence of wine and bread in 9.2–4 disappears. If we are to suppose that the sacramental meal follows after Did. 10.6 it seems plausible (with Rordorf)50 to understand the prayer of thanksgiving in 10.2–6 as also a kind of “preface” preceding the sacrament to follow; the text itself, in its individual phrases, favors this interpretation.
Thus we find the following progression of the liturgy: community meal (“agape”?) as meal for satisfaction of hunger, introduced in each part (9.2–4) by short blessings of wine and bread (in which the formularies point to Jewish blessings of wine and bread as models); after the full meal (10.1) follows the prayer of thanksgiving (modeled on the Jewish prayer after meals, but strongly Christianized), which at the same time introduces the celebration of the Lord’s Supper (10.2–5); this prayer in turn is followed by the invitation (10.6) and then (or after the free prayers of the prophets: 10.7) the Lord’s Supper itself.
Two major objections may be raised against this interpretation. First, the rubric in Did. 9.1 speaks expressly of εὐχαριστία. If we are to maintain the position just enunciated we must suppose that εὐχαριστία here does not have the ordinary, sacramental sense, but describes the nonsacramental community meal. This would be a singular but early usage of the word, not yet restricted to the sacrament. Correspondingly, εὐχαριστεῖν in 9.1 and 10.1 would mean the speaking of the prayers of blessing that are to be offered at the community celebration.51 These propositions would be in harmony with the archaic character of the liturgy given here.
A second difficulty results from the absence of the words of institution. If, understandably enough, one is not satisfied with Bultmann’s solution (the liturgy of the Lord’s Supper “[did] not need to be set down because it [was] familiar to all”),52 one might be tempted to suppose that there is a deliberate suppression of the words of institution, in order not to profane them.53 This supposition is awkward, however, because there is no evidence at this early period for the so-called arcane discipline.54 Thus there remains an unresolved problem at this point.
Footnotes
9 1 Cor 10:16–17 is not a parallel. Klauck, Herrenmahl 262: “the cup-bread sequence does not indicate a different liturgical praxis, … but rests on a reversal by Paul (as in v. 21).”
10 This is asserted by Sandvik, Kommen des Herrn 59–60; “life” in Did. 9.3; 10.2–3 is said to refer to the resurrection and “servant” to Jesus’ suffering. There would thus, in fact, be an anamnesis of Jesus’ passion, “but here the accent is on his resurrection, not on his death” (p. 60).
11 Harnack, Lehre, 28–36; idem, “Prolegomena,” 58–60. Harnack thought that the Eucharist was celebrated as part of the agape (Lehre, 28), as “a genuine meal” (Apostellehre, 3). Cf. also “Prolegomena,” 60: “This complete obscuring of the death of Christ and the forgiveness of sins is characteristic of the postapostolic or, better, the non-Pauline origin of the prayers.”
12 Karl Völker, Mysterium und Agape: Die gemeinsamen Mahlzeiten in der Alten Kirche (Gotha: Klotz, 1927) 105–7, 126–28, and passim.
13 Pascharituale, 109–11, and passim.
14 “Eucharistic Prayers,” 259–61.
15 Didache, 374, 386–87.
16 “Teaching of the Twelve Apostles,” 165–66: “a period when the Lord’s Supper was still a real supper, and when the joyful and expectant note of the Messianic Banquet had not yet been obscured by the more solemn emphasis on the Lord’s Passion” (p. 166).
17 Padri apostolici, 1.21.
18 “Quotations,” 26–27.
19 Kraft (Didache, 168) thinks of an “annual Baptism-Eucharist-service” as the Sitz im Leben for chaps. 9–10.
20 Mass, 188–94, at 189–90.
21 Lietzmann, Mass, 190.
22 Lietzmann, Mass, 192–93.
23 “Messe, I: Dogmengeschichtlich,” RE3, 12.671.
24 Richard H. Connolly, “Agape and Eucharist in the Didache,” DRev 55 (1937) 477–89.
25 Riddle, 197–207.
26 The Shape of the Liturgy (repr. of 2d ed.; London: Black, 1970; New York: Seabury, 1982) 90.
27 “Herkunft,” 32–33 (combined with certain remarks on the myron prayer: see below).
28 Gero, “Ointment Prayer” 82; for his remarks in this connection regarding the myron prayer, see below.
29 “Untersuchungen,” 74–79, esp. 78–79 (quotation on p. 79).
30 Knopf, Lehre, 24. Cf. Klein, “Gebete,” 144–45: the meal in chap. 9 is a festive Sabbath meal held in the evening, at the beginning of the Sabbath (perhaps also a baptismal meal occasioned by the baptisms performed on Friday evening). On the Sabbath the community celebrates a festive, full-course meal, and on the Lord’s day (chap. 14) the Eucharist.
31 For the sequence of the two celebrations the following variants have been proposed:
• Originally, the full meal could have been inserted in the sacramental celebration (cf. “after dining,” μετὰ τὸ δειπνῆσαι in 1 Cor 11:25), so that the sequence would have been: eucharistic bread, full meal, eucharistic wine.
• At an early date the full meal was transferred to the beginning of the celebration (as it appears in the Didache), so that the sequence “agape”—Eucharist resulted. Cf. also Ep. apost. 15, Ethiopic (NTApoc, 1.257–58).
• The reverse sequence (Eucharist—agape) is attested in the Didache, according to Lietzmann.
• Finally, there is also early evidence of the separation of Eucharist and agape.32 Kanon, 3.293–98. The prayers in chap. 9 are agape prayers. “The prayers in Doctr. 10 constitute the transition from the agape to the sacrament proper” (p. 296).
33 “Liturgical Notes,” 390–91.
34 Der Ursprung des christlichen Abendmahls im Lichte der neuesten liturgiegeschichtlichen Forschung (2d ed.; FThSt 45; Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1939) 26–31.
35 “Mahl-Gebete,” 126–27: “the special sacred action, whatever its makeup, did not occur between 9 and 10, but after 10.6. Between 9 and 10 is only the meal proper” (p. 126). He then says (p. 127) that the sacred action following 10.6 is the Eucharist.
36 Theology of the New Testament (trans. Kendrick Grobel; 2 vols.; New York: Scribner’s, 1951–55) 1.151: “It does appear to be true that the words of 10:6 are to be understood as a transition to the sacramental Eucharist, the liturgy of which does not need to be set down because it was familiar to all. But then it is clear that two celebrations of entirely different kind have been secondarily combined. Therefore, the celebration implied in Did. 9 and 10 existed at first by itself, and it must have been from it that the Lord’s Supper took over the title ‘Eucharist’ (‘Thanksgiving’), which is a very strange term for the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.”
37 Eucharistic Words, 117–18, 134.
38 “Eulogia,” 914; cf. also 919.
39 Geschichte, 38–39.
40 Rordorf and Tuilier, Doctrine, 40–41. Cf. also Rordorf, “Didachè,” 15–16; Moll, Opfer 106–15.
41 Audet, Didachè 372–77. At 405–7 he distinguishes between the “breaking of the bread” (which, however, is not to be understood as an agape) and the Eucharist itself (which follows chap. 10). The whole celebration is a vigil. It is introduced by the breaking of bread. Did. 10.6 is the transitional formula: the baptized move to another room for the Eucharist proper, the “great ‘eucharist.’”
42 Liturgical Traditions, 63–74.
43 Peterson, “Probleme” 168–71. Behind the prayers in chaps. 9–10 of the Bryennios text are remnants of ancient eucharistic prayers of the Egyptian church, or a church prayer (in chap. 10). For the Novatianist (?) redactor of the document responsible for the the Bryennios version, these prayers have been devalued and (in chap. 10) abbreviated to table prayers for ascetic circles.
44 So Betz, “Eucharist” 251–53. Betz counts Did. 9.2–4; (9.5); 10.2, 3b–5 among the ancient parts. The blessing of the cup (9.2) has been shifted by the redactor; 10.3a is a later addition by the redactor, and 10.1 is also redactional. Klauck (Herrenmahl, 263) uses the same explanation as Betz and sees the table prayers as reflecting the influence of the Hellenistic synagogue, as does Dibelius (see below).
45 Wengst, Didache, 43–56. Bread and wine are sufficient for the satisfaction of hunger. “From the fact that this eucharist had the character of a full meal we may by no means conclude that the meal consisted of anything more than, or different from, bread and wine. Bread was the food for satisfaction of hunger” (p. 45).
46 Of course, in that case, Did. 10.6 creates difficulties. Wengst admits (Didache, 46) that “originally” (as he says) this was “a fragment of a Lord’s Supper liturgy.” But the text in its present context has lost that function. In that case, however, how did this liturgical text come to be placed at the end of the prayer of thanksgiving? This “may be because of its eschatological orientation” (p. 47).
47 Vööbus’s attempt (Liturgical Traditions, 70–74) to show that Did. 10.6 is redactional (p. 73), and in fact “a general admonition and warning to the readers of the manual reminding them of the demand for purity as a requirement of preparedness” (p. 74), is not persuasive.
48 See p. 141 above.
49 Ἐμπλησθῆναι can be understood metaphorically; cf. Rom 15:24 and the linguistic parallels for that verse in BAGD. Thus Karl Völker (Mysterium und Agape: Die gemeinsamen Mahlzeiten in der Alten Kirche [Gotha: Klotz, 1927] 107) thought of a spiritual satisfaction in Did. 10.1. But even Zahn (Kanon, 3.293) wrote, “Here, however, it is a matter of eating bread and drinking wine, and hence ἐμπλησθῆναι is to be understood as the satisfaction of hunger and thirst.” Cf. also the analogous μετὰ τὸ δειπνῆσαι in 1 Cor 11:25, and the replacement of the didachistic ἐμπλησθῆναι by μετὰ δὲ τὴν μετάληψιν in Const. 7.26.1 (because there, in Constitutions, the author is thinking not of a full meal but of the sacrament).
50 “Didachè,” 18. Cf., however, Arthur Darby Nock, “Liturgical Notes,” JTS 30 (1929) 391; and Stuiber, “Eulogia” 912: “The participants in the meal are invited to the prayer after the meal in a special address concluding, simultaneously, the eating, drinking, and table conversation. This invitation and the prayer after the meal that follows provided the formal basis for the later Christian eucharistic prayer.”
51 I believe that the redactor’s usage was already different, i.e., more advanced. The term εὐχαριστία in 9.5 (redactional) could already include the Lord’s Supper. Something analogous is then true of εὐχαριστεῖν in 10.7 and 14.1.
52 Theology of the New Testament, 1.151.
53 This is suggested by Rordorf and Tuilier, Doctrine, 40 n. 2. One should compare Jeremias, Eucharistic Words, 132–37.
54 “To this time there is not a single secure proof of the existence of a Christian ‘arcane discipline’ in the first two centuries,” Otto Perler, “Arkandisziplin,” RAC 1 (1950) 671.
Did. Didache
Justin Justin Martyr
1 Apol. First ApologyKurt Niederwimmer and Harold W. Attridge, The Didache: A Commentary, Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1998), 140–143.
Louis Bouyer writes this about the Didache and Jewish prayers:
THE FIRST EUCHARISTIC LITURGIES: THE DIDACHE
Yet it still seems that it is the Didache which has preserved for us the most ancient example of these formulations of the eucharist where the Church, like Christ at the last Supper, still used the Jewish formulas, merely giving a new sense to their expressions with the help of a few insertions.
We need not argue at this point about the origin of the Didache, which has been placed either at the very beginning of the Church or else after the year 180 at the time of the Montanist crisis.65
Let us say once again—and this will not be the last time—that the date and the origin of a liturgical prayer must not be confused with that of the collections in which it is found. What now interests us in the Didache for our study is only the prayers themselves. That these are of Jewish origin, as Dibelius was the first modern scholar to acknowledge,66 is obvious once we connect them with the traditional Jewish meal prayers. We must even go further than Dibelius who thought that he had found here a prayer of hellenistic Jews. Let us recall that the Synagogue of Dura-Europos has given us a fragment of papyrus where we read a Hebrew prayer which is the central element of the berakah of the Didache.67
But in the Didache, it is clear that the prayer used by the Christians has undergone a few additions, not without some awkwardness, which are intended to specify the renewed sense given to it.
Concerning the Eucharist, give thanks in this way.
First for the cup;
‘We give thanks to thee, our Father, for the holy vine of David thy servant, which thou madest known to us through thy servant (παῖς) Jesus.
To thee be the glory for ever.’
And for the broken bread;
‘We give thanks to thee, our Father, for the life and knowledge, which thou madest known to us through thy servant Jesus.
To thee be the glory for ever.’
As this broken bread was scattered upon the hills, and was gathered together and made one, so let thy Church be gathered together into thy kingdom from the ends of the earth; for thine is the glory and the power through Christ Jesus for ever. ‘… And after ye are filled, give thanks thus:
‘We give thee thanks, Holy Father, for thy holy name, which thou hast made to tabernacle in our hearts, and for the knowledge, faith and immortality which thou hast made known to us through thy servant Jesus.
To thee be the glory for ever.
Thou, Lord Almighty, didst create all things for thy name’s sake, and gavest food and drink to men for their enjoyment, that they might give thee thanks; and to us thou didst grant spiritual food and drink and life eternal, through thy servant.
Above all we thank thee that thou art mighty.
To thee be glory for ever.
Remember, Lord, thy Church, to deliver her from all evil and to make her perfect in thy love, and to gather from the four winds her that is sanctified into thy kingdom which thou didst prepare for her; for thine is the power and the glory for ever.
Let grace come, and let this world pass away.
Hosanna to the God of David.
If any is holy, let him come:
if any is not holy, let him repent.
Maran atha.
Amen.’68
We have italicized the obviously Christian additions. Their small number and their laconicism will be noted. It will also be noted that we have not italicized the mentions of the Church. The rediscovered Hebrew text shows that ἐκκλησία in our text simply corresponds to the Hebrew qahal, which for the first composers and users of the prayer simply designated the expected foregathering of the diaspora of Israel.
Arguments are still in vogue among Christian critics, who are ignorant (willingly or no) of the parallel Jewish texts, about whether we have here a eucharistic prayer in the strict sense or a prayer for the agape meal which they suppose to have already been separated from the eucharist, or again two groups of texts to be used in different celebrations. They are rendered useless once we are aware of the Jewish parallels. The whole is in continuity, and follows the traditional succession of the meal berakoth (blessing over the initial cup, blessing over the broken bread, threefold blessing over the last cup). But, in their final state, they obviously apply to a sacred meal of a Christian community that is still very close to Judaism, and it could only be its eucharist. It can be all the better understood that the Christians kept the Jewish prayers practically intact since this form of those prayers certainly represented a special form of them proper to the communities dominated by the expectation of the Messiah. What particular community was its author? This is undoubtedly an unanswerable question. But from these texts we can get some idea of what must have been done with the traditional Jewish prayers, before the first Christians, by Jews such as those from Qumrân or the Zadokite community of Damascus.
The mention of the hills where wheat was scattered indicates a Palestinian origin, or at least a Syrian one. The connection between life and knowledge, and even the mention of the spiritual food and drink, can belong just as well to this messianic Judaism as to primitive Christianity, like the insistence on the revealed divine Name and even the title “our Father” given to God. But for Christians all of this was so easily charged with a more precise content that they could hardly have felt the need at the moment to say anything more. Jesus, as Daniélou has so well shown, was this revealed divine Name for them,69 just as he was spiritual food and drink as well as life and knowledge, which were found in faith in him and procured immortality through participation in his resurrection.
Up to the final invocation (“Let grace come, and let this world pass away”) there is nothing which may not have been Jewish before being taken over by the Christians. On the other hand, “Hosanna to the God of David” seems a cryptic expression, typical of primitive Christianity, of belief in the divinity of Jesus. It seems to be an echo, by its correction of the formula repeated by the gospels: “Hosanna to the son of David,” of the discussion Jesus had with the scribes about the 110th Psalm.70
The following words are an invitation to communion which seems to be the most ancient expression that we have of the need for penance on the part of Christians who wish to approach the holy table after having sinned. But we might also wonder if the disciples of the Baptist, for example, could not have used them as well.
Maran atha, the expression of the expectation of the parousia, which St. Paul has preserved for us,71 confirms what he himself has allowed us to see of the eschatological orientation of these first Christian eucharists, where they “proclaimed” the death of the Lord, “until he comes.” As many an appearance of the risen Lord must have been in relation to the first celebrations, they were done in the expectation of his return. But we may indeed wonder, particularly if we consider that the entreaty for the coming of the Messiah was already, at least on feast days, to be found at the conclusion of the Jewish berakah over the cup, whether the formula Maran atha itself was not borrowed by the first Christians from other earlier groups of pious Jews.
Footnotes
65 Cf. Audet, La Didachè (Paris, 1958).
66 Cf. Audet, op. cit.
67 Cf. above, p. 27.
68 Didachè, 9 and 10. For the translation, cf. Henry Bettinson, Documents of the Christian Church (London, 1959), pp. 90 ff.
69 J. Daniélou, The Theology of Jewish Christianity (Chicago, 1964) p. 189 ff.
70 Matthew 22:41–45 and parallels.
71 1 Corinthians 16:22.
Louis Bouyer, Eucharist: Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer, trans. Charles Underhill Quinn (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968), 115–119.
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