Rethinking the Origins of the Eucharist. Martin D. Stringer
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