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  • From: Jeff Peterson <peterson AT austingrad.edu>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Eating with gentiles
  • Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 10:30:49 -0500


At 7:14 AM -0500 8/29/02, Hyam Maccoby wrote:
I think you are suggesting that of all the days of the year, the day on
which Peter visited Antioch happened to be the day of Passover, and that
therefore the meal was a Passover meal, which Peter would not ordinarily
share with uncircumcised people. I am afraid this suggestion seems to me
rather desperate, not only because there is no indication in the text that
the meal was anything other than an ordinary meal, but because the genuine
Passover meal took place only in Jerusalem, where the paschal sacrifices
took place at the Temple.

This strikes me as an unnecessarily hasty dismissal of a possibility that deserves exploration: viz., that the earliest Christians regarded their communal meals as analogous to Passover and adapted Passover halakah in their observance. In 1QS and other texts we find devout Jews adapting rules of purity from the temple cult to daily life. It's not then unreasonable to imagine that the devout, nay fanatical, Jews who formed the earliest communities of Jesus' devotees might similarly take customs from one context -- observance of the Passover at the temple -- and apply them to a new observance -- communal meals in commemoration of Jesus' eschatological sacrifice and in anticipation of his royal advent.

Bob McDonald asks the right question here: how early was the understanding of the communal meal that Paul alludes to in 1 Cor 5:7 (if in fact Paul is alluding to the communal meal here, as is suggested by the SYNACHTENTWN of 5:4, the SYNESTHIEIN of 5:11, and the development of the understanding of the meal as an observance of "Israel [not] according to the flesh" in 10:1ff and 10:16ff). In 5:7 Paul does nothing to justify or even explain the equation of Christ with Passover, suggesting that the image was already familiar to his converts from his missionary proclamation. Paul's claim in 15:1-11 that his understanding of the death of Jesus was a point of agreement with the apostles to Israel raises the possibility that pre-Pauline followers of Jesus too would have said, "Christ is our Pasch, through whom God has reconstituted his people Israel as he promised through Isaiah and the prophets," and would have sought means of recognizing this divine gift in their communal life. Exod. 12:43-49 is a likely text to have been considered in such a quest, especially as a percipient interpreter might well have noticed that the instructions for Passover given in that chapter do not reckon with the temple; they may well have reasoned that Exodus Urzeit corresponded with New Exodus Endzeit.

Not suggesting any of the above as proven of course, only that the possibilities merit consideration.

Cheers,

Jeff Peterson
--
Jeffrey Peterson
Associate Professor of New Testament
Austin Graduate School of Theology
Austin, Texas, USA




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