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The
Historical Jesus
The Last Supper
A possible problem for many may be their familiarity with the accounts
in the four gospels of the events which led up to the crucifixion of
Jesus. That familiarity can tend to blind us to difficulties which present
themselves when trying to sort out history from tradition. I'm
concerned here primarily with "what really happened" - insofar
as we can discover that with reference to the Last Supper. It seems to me
that it is important to observe that the intensity of discussion tends to
increase in proportion to the importance attached to the Eucharist by
Christians today. Those who regard
the Eucharist as a sine qua non in the Christian life will no doubt
be upset with anyone who maintains that accounts of the Last Supper don't
meet the usual requirements of good history. The
accounts of events leading up to the suffering and death of Jesus do contain much which appears
intrinsically likely. Scholars who point out the many contradictions of
detail between the synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke) often don't take the trouble to emphasise the considerable likenesses between
them. At the same time, in
searching for "what really happened", one has to be hard-headed
and apply good standards of history as far as possible - even to a
"sacred" tradition as central as this.
In this
instance, there are some preliminaries to be got out of the way:
The preparations for the meal are
tinged with an atmosphere of mystery, as though the author was trying
to increase his readers' expectations of something out of the
ordinary. We must therefore be alert for possible modifications of original
sources. We know from elsewhere in the gospels that their authors did
not think as we do about historical "truth". Their method of
writing was entirely different. "Dressing up" or
substantially editing the information they had would not have been
dishonest in their eyes. They were writing theology, not history. Scholars point out that the gospel authors
may well be relating the preparations for the Last Supper back to 1 Samuel 10.
They and their fellow Christians, we must remember, thought that the Old
Testament pre-figured and predicted Jesus. If the word-of-mouth
information they knew of suggested that preparations were made for a
meal, they would naturally turn to the Jewish Bible for parallels.
They would then do what we couldn't honestly do today - rewrite their
data in terms which echoed the Old Testament. Supernatural foresight on the part of
Jesus (Mark 14.20) would have been put forward as proof to the author's readers of
his importance. Such powers were commonly thought throughout the
Middle East of the time to be possessed by those specially close to
God (or the gods). Many scholars today recognise how easily and
quickly unhistorical elements may have been inserted into the original
word-of-mouth tradition from which Paul (who didn't know Jesus
personally) and the Gospel authors would have drawn their information. There are convincing textual
indications that Mark 14.12-21, for example, contains later additions to the main strand
of the original material. (I have to take scholarly assurances for
this, my skills not being up to such an analysis.) It's therefore unlikely to be good history
because later additions tend to confuse and obscure the original
material too much. It's unlikely that Judas is an
historical figure - or if he is, the evidence amounts to little more
than a name. Even then, we should be aware of the play people of the
times tended to make on names. "Judas" is a Greek form of
"Judah" - which is a synonym for "Jewish". We know
that some early Christians had a polemical interest in denigrating the
Jews. Luke's Gospel, for example, has been widely noted to attempt to
place the blame for Jesus' crucifixion on the Jews, whereas it is
almost certain that the Roman authorities were responsible.
A majority of scholars seem to
agree on two most important points:
- Jesus and some of his followers
shared a last meal at some point very shortly before he was arrested.
- A meal was regarded by the earliest
Christians as an extremely important part of their community life and
connection with Jesus, regardless of "what really happened."
We're fortunate to have a source earlier
than all the gospels in Paul's first letter to the Christians of Corinth
(11.23-26) - a letter almost certainly written hardly more than 20-25
years after the death of Jesus (Mark's Gospel is usually dated at least 30
years after this, and the others even later).
We can place some extra weight on Paul's
version because he was setting out to instruct the Corinthians, who had
shown themselves ignorant of the meaning and seriousness of the Christian
meal. At the same time I note that Paul had little or no interest in
looking back to Jesus in terms of making good history. His main purpose is
to stress the authority of his account and therefore its significance and meaning
.
Some have supposed that the entire
mention in Paul's letter to the Corinthians is a later addition. If so,
the interpolation is so cunningly done that there is no way of knowing
whether or not this accusation is true. On the contrary, the section fits
perfectly with Paul's context and style.
I suppose each of us finally has to make
what he or she chooses of the so-called "Last Supper". Whatever
the choice, I think it important to note how much the Church over the ages
has inflated a simple meal into an often elaborate liturgical ritual
backed by voluminous and complex theology. Ecclesiastical authorities
therefore have
extremely powerful institutional reasons to perpetuate and enforce claims
for the historicity of the last meal.
The historical details of the last meal
present considerable problems:
Our other sources don't reinforce the earlier Markan account. John's
Gospel gives a completely different story. Matthew's Gospel seems to
have been copied from Mark, with some elaborations. Luke's version
includes
- two cups being passed around;
- one cup being passed around before the loaf;
- the addition of a memorial (as in Paul's version);
- textual variations galore, indicating considerable interference
by scribes who later copied out the Gospel texts.
One commentator remarks, with some justice, that Luke seems confused
about what usually happened at Jewish meals. This is perhaps not
surprising, as the author of Luke's Gospel seems to have been of Greek
origin. Our earliest source (known as "Q") leaves the meal out
altogether. The Gospel of Thomas also leaves it out. There are two independent lead-in phrases in Mark's Gospel (14.18 & 14.22). This
is strong evidence that the author of Mark welded the two parts
together, and that they were originally unrelated. Perhaps the first
part was originally associated with a different meal. The gospels tell it as though the meal was a Passover meal.
But, as one commentator
remarks, "... there is nothing in [the account], taken by
itself, even to suggest that the meal took place in Jerusalem."
This point is relevant because we know that all four gospel authors
took their material and fitted it together in very different ways.
Material found at the beginning of one gospel may appear towards the
end of another in an entirely different context. So the core of the
Last Supper material may have been artificially fitted together with
the assertion that it took place during a Passover Festival. If so,
there is an obvious theological connection with later theology which
saw Jesus' death as a sacrifice to appease the wrath of God. The point
is that this theology almost certainly - given the sacrifice theology
of Paul's writings - preceded the gospels, rather than the
other way around. Few people notice that John's Gospel presents the washing by Jesus
of his followers' feet at the last meal, but makes no mention of a
blessing of wine and bread. This is the latest of the four gospels. It
seems significant that at least one arm of tradition seems to have
placed little or no emphasis on the Eucharist even at a relatively
late date (John's Gospel is usually dated after the year 100). The Didache, a book of liturgical instruction dated around
100 and our earliest source about the Eucharist apart from the New
Testament, doesn't link the Eucharist (about which it gives instructions)
with a last meal. Its wording and approach are totally different from
what we find in the Synoptic Gospels and more in accordance with the
tenor of John's Gospel. Whatever the Church may teach about the ritual known as the
Eucharist, Mass or Communion, there is nothing in the gospels which
unambiguously demonstrates that Jesus intended to create or perpetuate
the Last Supper either as a memorial or as a ritual with mystical significance.
To sum up:
By strict criteria for an historical account of "what really
happened" the accounts in the gospels of the Last Supper do
not qualify as good history. Despite that, we can be certain that the Eucharist dates back at
least to the Christian congregation in Corinth to whom Paul wrote in
around the year 55, only 20-25 years after Jesus died. This puts it in
the very earliest strata of Christian tradition. Even though, strictly speaking, the Last Supper isn't "what
really happened", it's distinctly possible that a meal (whether
"last" or not) was an important, if not vital, element of
Jesus' relationship to his immediate followers. We know from elsewhere
in the gospels that meals seem to have been important to Jesus as a way of
relating to others.
It seems to me that too much can be made of the probability that, as a
matter of history, we don't know that there was a Last Supper. Few
Christians might ask, for example, "So what if there was no last
supper? What difference does that make to the importance of the
Eucharist?"
Only if it is elevated in importance beyond a meal, as it so often is,
does the Last Supper as something which did or didn't "really
happen" become a critical matter.
If you or I think that the Eucharist is more than a meal, if we give it
supernatural dimensions and magical efficacy, then its link back to Jesus
(as a supernatural God/Man) becomes important. If one thinks that Jesus
instituted the Last Supper as the first of a long line of Eucharists, that
he intended it to be an ongoing ritual "in memory of me", then
to find out that the accounts we have in the New Testament are not good
history may be disturbing.
This latter point involves a much larger discussion. Suffice it to say
here that even if the Last Supper is good history, there is no necessary
link between the meal and the kind of theology which has surrounded the
Eucharist for centuries. If it's not good history, as seems to be
the case, then the connection between the Last Supper and the Eucharist is
a matter of Christian practice, not a matter of history.
If the Last Supper happened - which we don't know for sure - it was a
meal at which Jesus said and did certain things. It is up to us to
interpret the event as best we can.
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