From the Feast of Agape to the Nicene Creed - Part 5

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

 

We concluded Part 4 with:

 

(P.16) " The historian Jonathon Draper suggests that one early version of the

Didache reveals a group of Jesus' followers who were (p.17) still participating

in the life of the Jewish community in their home city in Syria. When members of

this group baptized newcomers, they understood baptism as their fellow Jews did

then, and still do today: as a " bath " that purifies outsiders--that is,

Gentiles--who seek admission to God's people, Israel. The point of this early

and influential manual, Draper shows, is to demonstrate how non-Jews may become

part of God's people; that is, to offer, just as the title promises, " the

teaching of the twelve apostles 'to the Gentiles'. " [30] The Didache provides

these Gentiles an exposition of the " way of life " set forth in the Hebrew

Scriptures as Jesus interpreted it, and then shows how Gentiles willing to

follow that " way " may be baptized, so that they, too, can share in the blessings

of God's coming kingdom. "

 

Beyond Belief (The Secret Gospel of Thomas), Chapter 1, pg. 16-17.

 

Note:

 

[30] See also Draper, " Social Ambiguity and the Production of Text: Prophets,

Teacher, Bishops, and Deacons in the Development of the Jesus Tradition in the

Community of the 'Didache', " in C.N. Jefford, ed., 'The Didache in Context:

Essays on Its Text, History, and Transmission' (Leiden, 1995), 284-313.

 

Here now, is Part 5.

 

Enjoy,

 

violet

 

 

 

From the Feast of Agape to the Nicene Creed - Part 5

 

(p.17) Finally, the Didache tells how the initiate, who fasts and prays before

being baptized, would have learned how sharing in this simple meal of bread and

wine links the human family gathered for worship with " God, our Father, " and

with " Jesus, [his] servant " (or his " child, " as the Greek term 'pais' may be

translated). And by " breaking bread " together, his people celebrate the way God

has brought together people who once were scattered, and has joined them as one:

 

As this broken bread was scattered upon the mountains but was brought together

and became one loaf, so let your people be gathered together from the ends of

the earth into thy kingdom. [31]

 

Those speaking this prayer in unison ended by calling--in an ancient Aramaic

phrase some Christians invoke to this day--for the imminent coming of the Lord:

" Let grace come, and let this (p.18) world pass away....'Maran atha!' [Our Lord,

come!] Amen. " [32] According to Draper's analysis, these are Jews who revere

Jesus as " God's servant " and believe that his coming signals Israel's

restoration at the end of time.

 

But other early followers of Jesus, like the majority ever since, saw the sacred

meal in a much stranger--even macabre--way: as eating human flesh and drinking

human blood. Only twenty years after Jesus' death, Paul declared that Jesus

himself commanded his followers to do this. Paul, like the gospels of Mark,

Matthew, and Luke, tells how, on the night Jesus was betrayed,

 

while [the disciples] were eating, [Jesus] took bread, and after blessing it he

broke it, gave it to them, and said, " Take: this is my body. " Then he took a

cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, and all of them drank from it,

and he said to them, " This is my blood. " [33]

 

Tertullian satirizes the reaction of outsiders to this practice: " We are accused

of observing a sacred ritual in which we kill a little child and eat it. " [34]

He writes,

 

No doubt [the Christian] would say, " You must get a child still very young, who

does not know what it means to die, and can smile under your knife; and bread to

collect the gushing blood.... Come, plunge your knife into the infant.... Or, if

that is someone else's job, simply stand before a human being dying before it

has really lived.... Take the fresh young blood, saturate your bread with it,

and eat freely. " [35]

 

Despite his sarcasm, Tertullian cannot dispel the shocking fact that the

Christian " mystery " invites initiates to eat human flesh--even if only

symbolically. Pagans might be repelled by the practice of instructing newcomers

to drink wine as human blood, but devout Jews, whose very definition of 'kosher'

(pure) food requires that it be drained of all blood, would be especially

disgusted. [36]

 

But, in their own time, many Jews and Gentiles might have recognized the

eucharist as typical of ancient cult worship. Justin Martyr the philosopher

worried that pagans would dismiss these rituals with contempt and charge that

Christians were simply copying what worshipers in the so-called mystery

religions did every day in their exotic cults. Justin admits that the priests

who presided over the various temples of " devils " --the gods of Greece, Rome,

Egypt, and Asia Minor--often asked their initiates to perform " washings " like

baptism, and that priests of the Persian sun god Mithras and the Greek Dionysus

" command[ed] the same things to be done " as Jesus allegedly did--even " eating

the flesh and drinking the blood " of their god in their sacred meals. [37] But

Justin insists that these supposed similarities are actually 'imitations' of

Christian worship inspired by demons who hope to " deceive and seduce the human

race " [38] into thinking that the Christian cult is no different from the

mystery cults. Justin might have worried more had he foreseen that, from the

fourth century on, Christians would celebrate a new festival--the birthday of

Jesus--on December 25, the birthday of the sun god Mithras, around the time of

the winter solstice, when the waning sun is reborn as the days grow longer.

 

Beyond Belief (The Secret Gospel of Thomas)

Chapter 1, pg. 17-19

Elaine Pagels

Vintage Books, New York, U.S.A

ISBN: 0-375-70316-0

 

Notes:

 

[31] Didache 9:4. Scholars have engaged in much discussion of the Didache's

account of baptism and eucharist; for a summary of views, see Bradshaw, 'Search

for the Origins', 80-82, 132-136; see also Willy Rordorf, " The Didache, " in 'The

Eucharist of the Early Christians' (New York, 1978), 1-23; John W. Riggs, " From

Gracious Table to Sacramental Elements: The Tradition History of 'Didache' 9 and

10, " 'Second Century' 4 (1984), 83-101; and Johannes Betz, " The Eucharist in the

'Didache', " in Draper, 'Didache in Modern Research', 233-275.

 

[32] Didache 10.6; see also Enrico Mazza, " Elements of a Eucharistic

Interpretation, " in Draper, 'Didache in Modern Research,' 233-275.

 

[33] Mark 14:22-24; compare Matthew 26:26-29; Luke 22:7-13; 1 Corinthians

11:23-25.

 

[34] Tertullian, 'Apology' 7.

 

[35] Ibid., 8.

 

[36] One contemporary anthropologist has suggested that Paul and his followers

adopted this ritual to repel traditionally minded Jews and so to set themselves

apart from the Jewish communities.

 

[37] Justin, I 'Apology' 66. Closer parallels occur within some of the Dead Sea

Scrolls; see, for example, Otto Betz, " Early Christian Cult in the Light of

Qumran, " 'Religious Studies Bulletin' 2:2 (April 1982), 73-85.

 

[38] Justin, I 'Apology' 54. Many scholars have considered the parallels between

the rituals practiced in mystery religions and the Christian eucharist; see, for

example, E. Lohse, 'The New Testament Environment' (London, 1976), and more

recently, A.J.M. Wedderburn, " The Soteriology of the Mysteries and Pauline

Baptismal Theology, " 'Novum Testamentum' 19:1 (1982) 53-72, and " Hellenistic

Christian Traditions in Romans 6? " in 'New Testament Studies' 29 (1983),

337-355.