Rethinking the Origins of the Eucharist. Martin D. Stringer

to the past. What, however, is the nature and source of this tradition?

      It is possible to suggest, and some scholars clearly argue, that when Paul talks about receiving a ruling or phrase from the Lord, or from Jesus, this was granted in a vision, whether that on the road to Damascus or some other subsequent experience. If this were the case then these sections would relate to direct communication between Jesus and Paul. The vast majority of commentators, however, argue that this is not what Paul means in these contexts, and that the phrase, or ruling, has been passed on to Paul as being authentically from Jesus by his immediate disciples, whether directly or indirectly (Bornkamm 1966, pp. 130–2; Fee 1987, pp. 547–9). What then are the distinctions that Paul wishes to make between rulings or phrases that come from Jesus and those given on his own authority?

      In an earlier passage, in chapter 7, Paul states that ‘to the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband’ (7.10). Here Fee and others have argued that the reference is to an actual statement of Jesus, whether one that is preserved in the gospel tradition or another along similar lines, but this does not suggest how this command came to Paul (Fee 1987, pp. 291–4). The usual, and generally unquestioned, assumption is that Paul must have learnt about it in Antioch during his stay there following his conversion, or directly from the disciples in Jerusalem during one of his visits. The same has generally been assumed of the tradition of the Last Supper (Dix 1945, p. 64). This is certainly possible, but also raises more interesting questions about what role this text had within the community at Antioch or Jerusalem. That, however, is an issue I want to come back to in Chapter 5. For now all that is relevant is that the text is constructed to suggest that the account of the Last Supper is not something that Paul has made up for himself; it forms a tradition that he has heard before and passed on to the Corinthian community, either in exactly the same form that he received it or with his own additions and modifications.

      What is important to note is that this is not the first time that Paul has told the Corinthian community about this tradition (11.23). He is reminding them of something that he has previously shared with them. In Hurd’s reconstruction of the relationship between Paul and the Corinthians, it seems most probable that the teaching on the Lord’s Supper would have been given while Paul was in Corinth during his initial founding of the community (Hurd 1965, pp. 213–39). The real question, however, is whether Paul expected the community to repeat, or otherwise remember, the text every time they met for a meal, or whether this was something he taught them when he first instructed them to celebrate the meal, and that they have subsequently forgotten. This question cannot be answered from the limited information provided in the text, but the question is central to the discussion of how often the meal was held within the Corinthian community and it is an issue I will be returning to in the following sections.

      The next few phrases are probably the most difficult element of the whole text. This is the eschatological reference in verse 26 and the comments on judgement at the end of the chapter (11.27–34). One difficulty is that it is not at all clear whether verse 26 is a new interpretation that Paul is passing on to the Corinthians in this letter or whether it has always been a part of Paul’s understanding of the meal and was something that was passed on to the community at the same time as the tradition. Most scholars tend to assume that this eschatological reference is part of Paul’s own gloss on the meal, something that fits in well with his way of thinking and the particular stage in his developing thoughts about the death and imminent return of Jesus (Fee 1987, pp. 556–8).

      The section on judgement, however, is even more difficult to situate. At one level it reads like a general statement about the worthy reception of the bread and the cup. However, the context that is set up by the issues raised at the beginning and end of the account of the meal (11.20–22 and 11.33–34) suggests that the particular ‘sin’ that the Corinthians are committing relates to their failure to share the meal as a community. It is judgement on this sin that is being called down, because this lack of respect for others in some way fails to recognize the presence of the body of the Lord (11.29), and this in turn has led to sickness and death in the community (11.30). Is the reference to the ‘body’ in verse 29, however, drawing our attention back to the association of the bread as the body of the Lord (11.24) or is it, as most recent commentators suggest, looking forward to the idea of the community as the body of Christ (12.27) (Fee 1987, pp. 562–4)? Both are possible and it may be that Paul himself is establishing a double meaning. It must be stressed, however, that it is the division within the community that is being judged and not any failure to understand a nascent doctrine of the real presence.

      Finally, therefore, does the end of the chapter mark a natural break, and does this material form a clear and coherent section within the letter? Given that the next section opens with the ‘now concerning . . .’ (12.1) that Hurd defines as a reference to the letter Paul received from the Corinthians (1965, p. 63), then it is fair to see this as the end of the discussion of the meal. The subsequent discussion of spiritual gifts and the meeting at which each member brings a hymn or a testimony (14.26) relates to different issues. This is important only in relation to those who argue that the order of Paul’s letter, with a discussion of the meal in chapter 11 followed by a discussion of the meeting for prayer and singing in chapter 14, might represent a primitive order of service based, perhaps, on the model of the Graeco-Roman symposium or Philo’s account of the meal among spiritual Jews in Alexandria, where the meal is followed by discussion/teaching and/or ecstatic prayer (Alikin 2009, p. 28; Smith 2003, pp. 200–1). It is fairly clear, however, that Paul is simply moving through the series of issues raised by the Corinthians, either in their letter or by personal communication. These two sections clearly belong to different answers to different issues, and are not connected in any formal way within Paul’s text.

      The structure of the Corinthian community

      Having looked in detail at the text itself, and explored a number of the issues raised by biblical scholars in relation to the text, it is necessary to move on and ask what, if anything, can be said about the reality behind the text. It is not possible to say that this text describes a particular kind of event with specified people being present and so on. That kind of detail is not available. However, it is possible, from the text, and from sociological thinking about what is actually possible within a small enthusiastic community of recent converts to a new ecstatic cult, to make some statements about what is, and more importantly what is not, likely to have occurred. Before looking at any kind of detailed questions about the meal, however, it is necessary to look more closely at the social and cultural make-up of the Corinthian community itself.

      Early in the twentieth century, Deissmann (1957) reinforced a popular view, based on his travels in the Middle East, that the earliest Christian community came from the poorer strata of society. However, by the 1970s Malherbe was able to state that ‘a new consensus may be emerging’ that the community was made up of a wide range of social strata, probably reflecting the social structure of the surrounding society (1983, p. 31). The most detailed study of the social structure of the Corinthian community as it relates to the Lord’s Supper is found in Theissen’s article ‘Social Integration and Sacramental Activity’, which was original published in 1974 (1982, pp. 145–63). This paper builds on a series of related papers that were brought together in an edited volume in the early 1980s (Schütz 1982).

      In ‘Social Stratification in Corinthian Community’ (1982, pp. 69–119) Theissen looks at the passages in Paul’s writing that deal with the community as a whole, those that refer to individuals associated with the Corinthian community and those that comment on the various subgroups within the community. All these show the clear presence of some individuals who are of high social status and who act, in part, as patrons to the community, offering their houses for hospitality to Paul and other visiting preachers, and for meetings of the community as a whole (Chow 1992). Assuming that the rest of the community is made up of traders, artisans, and probably slaves and freedmen, Theissen argues that the community has a high level of social stratification, something that is considered by Theissen to be unusual for social gatherings at this time (1982, p. 99). Meeks follows Theissen’s basic outline but adds the rider, based on his understanding of the nature of Corinth as a ‘new town’, that most people within the community had an ambiguous relationship to social status and may have been moving up or down the social ladder (Meeks 1983). Fiorenza also says