Corpus-Paul

["Hyam Maccoby" <h.z.maccoby AT leeds.ac.uk>]

Dear Loren,

I think your interpretation of Jesus' words in a non-Eucharistic sense is
ingenious if rather implausible.  I remember receiving a rather similar
interpretation from John Casey (in our discussion on the subject in Theology
some years ago).  If you are right, Jesus never offered his body to be eaten
or his blood to be drunk, and the whole subsequent Christian Eucharistic
tradition is without firm foundation.  Supporting the view that Jesus never
meant to offer his body and blood as sacrificial food is the evidence from
the Didache, which offers a ceremony similar to the Jewish Kiddush, without
any reference to eating body or blood.
    However, I do not think that such ingenuity as yours in interpreting the
Gospels is necessary, since, as it seems to me, the Gospel accounts of the
Last Supper are simply attempts to import the Pauline Eucharist into the
narrative - attempts which show their artificiality by their inconsistency
with each other.  The Gospel which shows the greatest enthusiasm of all for
the Eucharist is that of John, and he omits it from his Last Supper
narrative altogether.  Surely this fact is very significant, showing that
the Eucharist is an intrusion into the Last Supper narrative, since if it
had been an integral ingredient, John, of all people, would surely have
included it.  How do you explain his omission of it?
    Where we differ most is about Jesus' attitude towards the Temple.  I
think it is important to point out that his closest disciples, the leaders
of the Jerusalem Church, were strong supporters of the Temple, as is
stressed in Acts (e.g. Acts 2:46).   Nothing that Jesus taught them led them
to believe that the validity of the Temple had ceased.  Jesus himself sent
the leper he had cured to the Temple for purification;  and even when he
attacked the corruption within the Temple in the incident of the
money-changers, he did so on the ground that they were desecrating 'the
house of God'.  Jesus said that he would destroy the Temple, but people
always seem to omit the end of his pronouncement, that he would rebuild it
in three days.  It was expected of a Messianic claimant that he would
rebuild the Temple, and that Herod's Temple would not last into the
Messianic period.

    With all good wishes,

    Hyam
--------------------------------------------------

Dr.Hyam Maccoby
Research Professor
Centre for Jewish Studies
University of Leeds
Leeds.LS2
Direct lines: tel. +44 (0)113 268 1972
                   fax +44 (0)113 225 9927
e-mail: h.z.maccoby AT leeds.ac.uk


----- Original Message -----
From: "Loren Rosson" <rossoiii AT yahoo.com>
To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.metalab.unc.edu>
Sent: Monday, September 09, 2002 11:46 AM
Subject: [corpus-paul] Re: The blood of the covenant


> Hyam Maccoby wrote:
>
> >As for sacrificial blood, this was poured out on
> >the altar as an offering to God and the idea of
> >imbibing any of it by a human being would
> >have been regarded as abhorrent and even blasphemous
> >by Jews...
>
> >...so I do not believe that Jesus ever announced
> >a doctrine of salvation through drinking his blood,
> >whether literally or metaphorically.
>
> >If you are looking for precedents to the Johannine
> >and Pauline idea of drinking the divine blood, I
> >believe you will find them in the mystery
> >religions, but not in Judaism.
>
> Like Bob, I don't want to steer too off-topic, but
> there is another option which needs to be taken
> seriously here, and it has consequences for
> understanding the continuities/discontinuities between
> Jesus and Paul. What if, by saying, "This is my flesh,
> this is my blood," Jesus had been pointing neither to
> a literal nor symbolic ingesting of his own flesh and
> blood (contra John)? As Hyam rightly notes, whether
> understood literally or symbolicly, the doctrine of Jn
> 6 would have been morally repugnant to any sane Jew.
> Bruce Chilton has suggested that the eucharist is
> actually to be understood literally, but in a way
> which could have possibly made sense to pre-70
> Judeans/Galileans/Pereans. See his _Pure Kingdom_ (pp
> 124-126), where he argues that, "This is my flesh,
> this is my blood" meant, "This bread is my 'flesh' of
> sacrifice to Yahweh, and this wine is my 'blood' of
> sacrifice to Yahweh." In other words, bread was better
> "flesh" and wine better "blood" than any of the
> sacrifices associated with the Judean temple.
>
> I know you won't accept this, Hyam (in the past we've
> discussed this off-list), because you see no conflict
> between Jesus and the temple to begin with.
>
> But if Jesus had been setting up a "rival altar" in
> place of the Judean temple, with bread and wine
> offered as sacfrices in place of the flesh and blood
> of animals, then he was not advocating eating flesh or
> blood, literally or symbolically. The question then
> presses: What about someone like Paul, standing in
> between Jesus and the Johannine tradition? Does I Cor
> 11 preserve more affinities with the former (an
> alternate Jewish view of sacrifice) or the latter (the
> pagan ingesting of the flesh and blood of the adored)?
> I would like to hear what others have to say about
> this.
>
> Loren Rosson III
> Nashua NH
> rossoiii AT yahoo.com
>
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