Centre for biblical and Jewish Studies
Bulletin of the centre for Biblical and Jewish Studies for a better understanding of the background of the Gospel and of the Early Church
Bulletin 6 - 1965

At the time when the gospels were finally edited the evangelists no longer thought it necessary to report in detail the rites of the ancient Passover when speaking of the Last Supper. Their main purpose was to explain the new significante Christ had given to the old gestures and words and to describe the act of cult as it was then performed in the Christian assemblies, according to his commandment "Do this in memory of me." (1 Cor 11: 24). Yet they ali make the point that the Last Supper took piace at the time of the Passover, even if it is not quite clear whether this was the attuai paschal meal or a solemn community supper taken the night before.l This is not merely a desire for chronological exactitude; they wanted to establish the intimate connection between the biblical Passover and the Christian Eucharist

According to the Synoptic Gospels the Last Supper was a Passover celebration. According to John's Gospel it took place the day before the feast. Present day scholarship has not yet found a satisfactory solution to this problem.

(see also St Paul: "Christ our lamb has been crucified." 1 Cor 5: 7), and to show that the promise contained in the covenant of which this feast was the memorial had now been accomplished. Christ who had not come to destroy but to fulfil did not simply discard the ceremonies of this feast but used them, evolving out of them the memorial of the new covenant, as they had formerly been that of the old. Thus even the gentile Luke precedes his account of the Last Supper by a reference to the Pasch : "I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer," 22:15, and from a homily of a Greek bishop of the later second century it would appear that in some churches the account of the Pasch in Exodus 12 was read in Hebrew before the passion of the Lord. So much importance was attached to the link with the Jewish feast that many churches in Asia Minor insisted on celebrating the Easter liturgy on 14. Nisan, the day of the Jewish feast, and it was only after many bitter polemics that the present calendar, where Easter always falls on a Sunday, was adopted.

The Passover, with the Pentecost that completed it fifty days later, was the only Jewish feast taken over by the Church. Easter and the Passover still have certain features in common : both are preceded by a solemn vigil, the "night of watching," as it is called in Hebrew. The Jewish feast was instituted as a memorial, a perpetuated re-presentation in the liturgy, of the one saving deed of God who brought his people out of the land of bondage and united them to him by a covenant. Easter is the anamnesis, the renewed memory, of Christ's saving deed, establishing a new closer covenant relationship between God and man. The Passover does not only look back to the past; by its rites and prayers it also looks forward to Messianic times, for according to the teachings of the rabbis "on this night Israel was saved; on this same night Israel will be saved." Therefore the prophet Elijah, who is to usher in the days of the Messiah, plays a certain part in this liturgy. This idea of expectation, together with that of a memorial, is the main topic of the fine illustrations of the medieval Passover rituals (Hebr. Haggadah). Easter too points to the future, as Christ himself indicated by the words reported by the three Synoptics: "I shall not drink again of this fruit of the vive until I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom." (Mt 26 : 29; Mk 14: 25; Lk 22 : 18).

The Christian Easter is the Jewish Passover but transformed to express a .new stage in the history of salvation. The feast as it was celebrated in New Testament times had already undergone certain developments, each one lending the old ceremony a new meaning so as to express the present religious experience of the Hebrew people. The Passover rite itself, as described in Exodus 12, goes back to pre-revelation times. It was practised by nomads at the time of the spring equinox, at the full moon. It may even have formed part of a New Year celebration when, to placate the deity and to call down upon the clan and its flocks the blessing of fertility, a young lamb was slaughtered and its blood smeared on the entrance of the tent. The animal was offered as a redemptive sacrifice for the preservation of the members of the household, particularly the first-born male, the heir. It was slam not by a priest but by the head of the family. As soon as

the roasted lamb had been consumed with the green herbs and unleavened bread both customary to Bedouins, the `exodus', that is the migration in search of fresh pastures, would begin. The household is in the attire of men ready to go forth on a journey - they eat standing, their loins girt, their staff in their hard (Ex 12 : 11).

The feast of Unleavened Bread was at first separate from the Passover. As it was a harvest feast it probably originated among a population of sedentary farmers. Sometime in spring, when the barley ripened, the first sheaf was offered at the local shrine, and from that day on fifty days were counted to the second harvest feast, the feast of the wheat offering. During the seven days of the spring feast no leaven was added to the new bread. The beginning of a new phase was thus emphasised by the fact that nothing belonging to the old year was mixed with the new harvest. St. Paul was not slow to avail himself of this symbolism : "Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump; as you really are unleavened... Let us celebrate the festival not with old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth" (1 Cor 5 7-8).

Certain features which the Passover and the Unleavened Bread feast had in common later facilitated their fusion; both fell in spring, and unleavened bread also formed part of the Passover meal of the shepherds. This very ancient double feast with its familiar ritual full of a rich symbolism had long brought an element of the sacred into the world of the Canaanite shepherd and farmer. It was later transformed to become part of the commemoration of those historical events to which the Hebrew nation owed its existence the Exodus. By celebrating this event annually they lived, in a certain manner, the historical moment all over again. The feast was now no longer concerned with crops and animals but with the history of this people and with its experience of God's saving action. All its rites were now viewed from this angle and therefore assumed a new meaning. For instance the unleavened bread became the "bread of affliction" which their ancestors ate "in haste" in Egypt because of the imminent departure. In the same manner the blood of the lamb became the memorial of God "passing over" the houses of the Hebrews when the firstborn of the Egyptians were slam, while his people were redeemed "with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm" from the land of bondage.

The whole ceremony was now designed to introduce the Israelite into the sacred history of his nation so that he would feel personally involved. It was a solemn duty to hand on the deposit of salvation history to the next generation ("You shall tell your son on that day" - Ex 13 : 8.), and to carry out this command the head of the household had to interpret, one by one, the various symbolic objects set out on the table for the Passover meal. These, together with the story, helped to recreate the past. The material symbols added to the spiritual re-enactment the dimensions of the sensory experience and thus made fit more fully human. To produce its effect the ritual had to be freely accepted by those for whose sake fit was performed. This meant that each one present was challenged to identify himself with the community brought out from Egypt and constituted by God his people on Sinai. This identification is expressly stipulated in the Haggadah: "In every generation let each man look on himself as if he carne forth out of Egypt. As fit is said: ‘And thou shall tell thy son on that day saying : fit is because of that which the Lord did for me when I carne forth from Egypt' " (Ex 13 : 8; Deut 5 : 2-4). What was believed to happen in ritual form was what once took place in history. This was its "memorial" (Ex 12 : 14). The Passover was therefore a real sacrament of the old covenant (as was circumcision), fulfilling all its conditions, including that of looking forward to a future redemptive intervention. The first part of the night's celebration fittingly ends with a prayer to the God who has saved his people and who will save them again; at that time they will offer him "a new song of praise for our redemption and the deliverance of our soul." (Haggadah)

The two parts of the sacramental celebration can be easily distinguished and roughly correspond to the two parts of the Mass: the synaxis or liturgy of the word, and the meal. A group, composed either of a family or of a rabbi with his disciples (Hebr. haburah), assembled to carry out together the fixed order (Hebr. seder) of this night's ritual. While the temple stood, the lamb was slaughtered there by the head of the group or his representative, the priests only stood by to receive its blood and to sprinkle fit on the altar. Then the whole lamb was taken home, for fit was there that the Passover was celebrated, each Israelite being invested on this night with a priestly dignity. This mode of celebration went back to the times before the Passover sacrifice had become centralised at the one national sanctuary in Jerusalem.

It began with a preliminary course, some green vegetable dipped into salt-water, and this was presumably the dish referred to in the gospels as that of which Judas received his morsel. The prayer that follows is very ancient, fit is in Aramaic not in Hebrew like the rest of the haggadah, and might go back to the Babylonian exile. It mentions the poor who are invited to come and join the assembled company. It might have been here that Judas left, for fit was customary to distribute alms on feast days, and the apostles apparently thought this the reason for his departure (Jn 13:29). Then, stimulated by the symbols on the table (the unleavened bread, the lamb, the bitter herbs) and by the solemn attitude and special dress of the participants, the youngest of the group asked four questions as to the meaning of fit all. This offered the celebrant the opportunity to begin his interpretation.

This narrative "begins in shame and ends in glory," say the rabbis, for fit tells first of the suffering of the Hebrew people in Canaan and Egypt and finishes with a description of the mighty works which God accomplished for them, the exodus, the crossing of the Red Sea, the covenant, and the entry into the promised land. After the symbols of this night have been carefully explained, the whole company breaks into a hymn of praise and thanksgiving, singing the Great Hallel, psalms 112-117.

The meal then begins, like all liturgical Jewish meals, with a cup of wine over which a blessing is recited, and of which all drink. Then the blessing over the unleavened bread is said and a piece distributed to each. This is a significant moment, for fit is the first unleavened bread of this year. The meal is then eaten, followed by a long grace, at the end of which another cup of wine, the most solemn of this night, is drunk. Before grace a servant, or the youngest member of the company, gets up, takes a basin and a towel, and washes the hands of each guest, beginning with the youngest and ending with the celebrant. The cup is then prepared and is held a little above the table, for all to see; it is called the "cup of blessing," because the grace - or blessing - is pronounced over it.

Of the various accounts of the Last Supper in the New Testament those in 1 Cor 11 : 23-27, and in Lk 22 : 14-21, seem to agree best with the procedure at a Jewish meal. For an attempted reconstruction of the Last Supper it matters comparatively little if this formed part of the Passover liturgy or was a solemn Jewish community meal, such as a group of pious Jews would take together and which, at Qumran certainly but also among the haburoth of the Pharisees, assumed an almost liturgical significance. The idea that a meal taken in common links the companions into a fellowship and establishes intimate and inviolable relations among them was familiar to the peoples of the Middle East (as indeed to those of other civilisations). The treason of the friend "who ate of my bread" (Ps 14 : 10) is regarded as a particularly heinous crime. Moreover, it is deeply engrained in the Hebrew-Christian tradition and found in the Scriptures as well as in rabbinic literature that divine gifts are communicated by eating and drinking and that communion with God is established at a banquet. For instance, "blessed are those who are invited to, the marriage supper of the Lamb," says the Apocalypse (19 : 9), and the rabbis teach that "those who serve God unto death will eat of the bread of the world to come." These examples could easily be multiplied.

The rites performed by Christ as the head of his haburah were those of any solemn Jewish meal. At its beginning he took the cup, blessed it with the well-known customary formula, and they all drank (Lk 22 : 17). He then took the bread, gave thanks and blessed it (the Hebrew word berakah includes the notion of thanksgiving), but lending the rite a new transforming power, and distributed fit to his disciples. After this, as Paul and Luke clearly state - and as the right order of the ceremony demanded - the meal was served. The eating of the bread was therefore separated from the cup by the meal - a custom which was observed at the early Christian assemblies at least during the first years (cf. 1 Cor 11 : 25). After this supper not the youngest of the company but the Lord himself got up, took a towel and washed not the hands but the feet of his disciples, coming fast to the oldest, Peter.

The custom demanded that, before the great thanksgiving at the end of the meal, the celebrant should solemnly call the attention of the assembly to the eucharistic act about to begin and invite them to join him in these words: "Friends, let us say the blessing." This, with its answer "Be the name of the Lord blessed from now evermore" resembles the present dialogue which introduces the canon of the Mass. This invitation, only said when at least ten adult males were present, stressed the community character of the "Eucharist" about to be performed over the "cup of blessing" by one, but for all. As for the Jewish, so for the Christian liturgy the presence of a community joining in the corporate act of thanksgiving is essential.

In it God is praised for creating and sustaining the world; he is thanked for saving his people, and the hope for a future final redemptive intervention is expressed. Then the celebrant pronounces the blessing over the cup which he is to share with his companions. As with the blessing over the bread, this blessing also effected a total change. The gospels have not transmitted the actual words of the Hebrew blessing which Christ would have used. Such formulas formed an integral part of Jewish life and were said frequently. What the Evangelists stressed were the words of Christ which explained the entirely new significance of this rite of blessing and thanksgiving, beginning with "this is. . ." (Matt 26 : 27-28; Mk 1422-24; Lk 22:19; 1 Cor 11:24). Even in the choice of these explanatory words Christ remained within the Passover tradition, for when the celebrant interpreted the symbols prepared for this night he pointed in turn to each, beginning with "This is. . ."

Christ had no need to invent a new rite. He took the old universal Jewish custom and invested fit with a new meaning. Parts of the Hebrew grace go It is only in the light of this new
back to New Testament times. significance that his injunction to his apostles to continue to do this becomes intelligible, for as a matter of course they would have gone on to pronounce the blessing whenever they broke bread or drank wine. Yet in the light of the Passover tradition they understood what Christ had done: just as the Hebrew paschal liturgy was a living memorial of an act of God, accomplished once but remaining dynamically operative in the present, so from now on, whenever the disciples of Christ said the blessing over the bread and the cup, they knew they were reenacting the event by which the Lord had now accomplished the redemption of mankind, definitely and for all times.

The Blessing (berakah)

In the Bible the notion of berakah (whether fit carne directly from God or was given by man, God was always seen as its final source) implied that through fit a real effect was infallibly produced. An example of this can be found in the story of Isaac blessing the wrong man. However fraudulently, Jacob had received the blessing, he was now filled with fit and its effect could not be annulled (Gen 27: 33). The belief was that the one

blessed took up a new life, entered into an intimate relationship with God such as had not existed before. This is several times stressed by a change of name which accompanies the blessing: Abram is to be called Abraham (Gen 17); Jacob's name is henceforth Israel (Gen 32).

To be blessed meant "to be with God," as God said to Isaac: "I shall be with you and bless you" (Gen 26 : 33) - two expressions for the same reality. As for David, "the Lord is with him," and therefore he was chosen for the blessing, but Saul had lost fit for "God had departed from him" (1 Sam 18:12). In the Gospels Elizabeth proclaims Mary "blessed among women," (Lk 1:42) because she had recognised that the Lord was with her (Lk 1 :28). It is finally in Jesus himself that the full significance of the blessing is revealed and perfectly and substantially realised, for his humanity, blessed and consecrated, is united to the divine nature in the person of Christ, the Immanu-el, the God-with-man.

Not only human beings but also animals or objects could share in and transmit God's blessing. Even a day could be come sanctified as did the Sabbath, because "God blessed the seventh day" (Gen 2 : 3). Such a blessing carries with fit the idea of a change wrought, of an added sacral quality which had not been present before. This is the first aspect of the meaning of the berakah which is relevant to the understanding of Christ's "blessing" of the bread and wine. Here as so often Hebrew religious experience is both background and preparation for the Christian concept.

The second meaning of the term berakah is that of praise and thanksgiving. It is with this in view that the word is principally used in the many blessings said over food and other things. These formulas are very ancient and were evolved from the psalms (cf. Ps 104: 1 for instance). They are to be pronounced before man appropriates the things of this creation to his own use. According to the rabbinical midrash (interpretation) of Ps 24 : 1 "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof,” all who eat or drink or enjoy any pleasure of the senses without first offering a blessing commit a sacrilegious theft against God. It is only when man has acknowledged God's ownership by con secrating the thing to him with a blessing and thanksgiving that fit becomes his privilege to enjoy fit. Here again a proof-text from the psalms is given : "The heavens are the Lord's, but the earth he has given to the children of men" (Ps 115 : 16).

The twofold meaning of the berakah foreshadows the rite performed by Christ at the Last Supper. But Christ realises fit with a new and total efficacity. As representative of man he performs the God-ward action of offering and consecrating the elements of bread and wine. As the incarnate Word of God he blesses them, and by so doing fills them with the presence of him who is the source of all life and blessing. The Latin has two phrases to describe what is happening: gratias agens, benedixit. They are a rendering of the one Hebrew term berakah.

The psalms of the Hallel continue after the meal (Mk 14 : 26) and mark the end of the liturgical celebration of this night. The gospels tell us little about the urea) itself, because fit soon ceased to form an integral part of the Christian liturgy. After fit had been relegated to the beginning or the end of the Eucharistic act it was finally discarded altogether. Moreover, as the Passover could only be celebrated once a year, all the rites peculiar to it had to be left out if the Lord's Supper was to be enacted more frequently. This was also facilitated by the fact that after the year 70 A.D. the paschal sacrifice could no longer be offered. What was retained by the Church were the essential rites of the solemn Jewish meal: the Eucharist over the bread and the wine, and the concept underlying the whole Passover liturgy that it was a living memorial, dynamically active in the present, of a historical intervention of God himself in the life of his people.