Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

FROM THE GOSPELS TO JESUS §8.5
wine are set in parallel ('This is my body; this is my blood') probably indicates a
liturgical shaping to bring out the parallelism. Whereas the B version maintains
the framework of a meal, with the bread word presumably said at the beginning
(in accordance with the normal pattern of the Jewish meal) and the cup bringing
the meal to a close ('after supper'). In A the modification puts the focus more directly
on the wine/blood, whereas in B the focus is more on the cup. 240
Here again it would be somewhat farcical to assume that this tradition was
known to the various writers only as written tradition and only by hearing it read
occasionally from some written source. The more obvious explanation, once
again, is that these words were familiar within many/most early Christian communities
because they used them in their regular celebrations of the Lord's Supper:
this was living oral tradition before and after it was ever written down in
semi-formal or formal documentation. Here too it was a matter of fundamental
tradition, the sort of tradition which Paul took care to pass on to his newly
formed churches (1 Cor. 11.23), 241 the sort of tradition which gave these
churches their identity and by the performance of which they affirmed their identity
(cf. again 1 Cor. 10.21). It was tradition remembered as begun by Jesus himself,
and remembered thus from as early as we can tell. 242
240. See further my Unity and Diversity 165-67, and those cited there in n. 23; R. F.
O'Toole, 'Last Supper', ABD 4.234-41 (here 237-39); Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus
420-23.
241. The fact that Paul ascribes the tradition to 'the Lord' (1 Cor. 11.23) should not be taken
to indicate a revelation given to Paul after his conversion (as particularly most recently
H. Maccoby, 'Paul and the Eucharist', ATO 37 [1991] 247-67). The language is the language of tradition
('I received' — parelabon; T handed on to you' —paredökä), and 'the Lord' from whom
Paul received it is 'the Lord Jesus [who] on the night in which he was betrayed took bread . . .'
(11.23). See further the still valuable discussion of O. Cullmann, 'The Tradition', The Early
Church: Historical and Theological Studies (London; SCM, 1956) 59-75, who notes inter alia that
1 Cor. 7.10 also refers the tradition of Jesus' teaching on divorce to 'the Lord' (To the married I
give charge, not I but the Lord...') (68). In an XTalk on-line Seminar exchange Maccoby repeated
his claim that 'the Eucharistie elements betray their lack of orality not only by their lack of semitisms'
(ignoring Fitzmyer's observation above — n. 239) and referred to the 'glaring contradictions
between the various Gospels'. What Maccoby calls 'glaring contradictions' I see only as performance
variation — well within the range of performance variation in the Jesus tradition elsewhere.
242. The silence of Didache 9 ('concerning the Eucharist') as to any 'words of institution'
need not imply that Didache reflects an earlier stage (than Mark or 1 Cor. 11) in the liturgical
development (as Crossan, Historical Jesus 360-67 argues). It could well be that Didache
assumes the traditional core and attests simply the addition of thanksgiving (eucharistein)
prayers deemed appropriate in a more liturgically solemnized act (as also Didache 10). John's
Gospel says nothing of a last supper, but reflects knowledge of bread and wine words in John
6.52-58. See the brief discussion and review (with bibliography) in Davies and Allison, Matthew
3.465-69. On the Didache and the eucharist see the essays by J. A. Draper, J. Betz, and
E. Mazza, in Draper, ed., Didache 1-42 (26-31), 244-75, 276-99.
230