Lessons in Greek
By Elisabeth Duckworth
Jewish Passover and the Last Supper
While they were eating, Jesus took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it He broke it, gave it to the disciples and said, “Take, eat, this is my body.” Then He took a cup and after giving thanks He gave it to them saying, “Drink from it all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins…”
When they had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.
– Matthew 26:26-30 [Mark 14:12-26; Luke 22:7-23; John 13:1-17:26; I Corinthians 11:23-26]
When I was a child, I was very unimpressed with the menu for the Last Supper: a few mouthfuls of dry bread and a swig of watered-down wine. Hardly an appetizing meal! Foolish child. Had I paid a bit more attention I would have noticed that the so-called Last Supper was actually part of the larger Passover meal. The shared cup and bread and the final hymn were elements of ancient Jewish ritual, and it is this ritual we're going to look at today.
In Matthew's account, he explicitly notes that the disciples made preparations for the Passover. Jesus sends two disciples ahead to book a large banquet room and “prepare the Passover meal” (Matthew 16:17-19). These preparations involved procuring a sacrificial lamb at the temple, as well as purchasing the bitter herbs and unleavened bread as described in Exodus 12:1-20. In Moses' day, the eight-day Passover festival began with the eating of unleavened bread and ended eight days later with the slaying and eating of the Passover lamb. By New Testament times, the Feast of Unleavened Bread and the Passover had been conflated into a single festival. During the Passover daytime, the priests were kept busy in the temple slaughtering all the lambs brought to them by the people in preparation for the evening meal.
In 26:20, Matthew says “when it was evening” Jesus “reclined with the twelve”. The Passover meal was always eaten in the evening, after sundown, and it had to be finished by midnight. Reclining at table was reserved for special banquets. Diners would recline on couches, lean on their left elbow and, using their right hand, eat the food served from communal bowls and platters on a central table.
Jesus raised the cup of red wine indicating the beginning of the official Passover meal. He then took a loaf of the unleavened bread. The person leading the Passover meal would relate the bread and wine to the “bread of affliction” and the blood of the lambs smeared over the door posts of the Jewish slaves in Egypt. Instead, Jesus identifies these historically significant items with His own blood and body. He tells his disciples to henceforth remember and re-enact His new sacrificial act of redemption rather than the old story of the escape from Egypt.
Part of the Passover meal involved “dipping” pieces of unleavened bread into bowls of bitter herbs. The person of highest status in the household would dip first. When Jesus and His disciples reached this stage of the ritual meal, Jesus announces that “the one who has dipped his hand into the bowl with me will betray me” (Matthew 26:23).
In 26:30, Matthew records that “when they had sung the hymn” they departed for the Mount of Olives. The “final hymn” of Passover was traditionally the singing of Psalms 113-118. This marks the conclusion of the Passover observance.
Most of the ritual elements of the Passover meal were formalized following the New Testament era, after animals could no longer be slaughtered and offered at the temple and when more and more Jews were living permanently away from Jerusalem. The Old Testament gives very few details on how the Passover was to be celebrated, beyond the eating of the lamb, bitter herbs, and unleavened bread. Actual Passover celebrations occur only rarely in the Old Testament.
The two greatest references to the Passover being celebrated in Old Testament times are found in II Chronicles 30 and 35, during the reigns of King Hezekiah and King Josiah. After Josiah had cleansed the land of idols, the high priest Hilkiah “found the book of the law in the house of the LORD.” Josiah read it and was so distressed that he rent his clothes “because our fathers have not kept the word of the Lord.” He then “made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord and to keep His commandment and His testimonies and His statutes.“ The Passover celebration initiated by Josiah exceeded the one given by his great-grandfather, King Hezekiah as it is recorded, “No Passover like it had been kept in Israel since the days of Samuel the prophet; none of the kings of Israel had kept such a Passover as was kept by Josiah, and the priests and the Levites, and all Judah and Israel who were present, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem” (II Chronicles 35:18).
It is only in the early Third Century AD that the observance of the Passover celebration was formalized and called the seder. The seder included questions and answers, the reading of the Exodus story, four cups of red wine taken at specific stages of the meal, and the singing of Psalms 113-118. The description of Jesus' Passover supper seems to indicate that many if not all of these elements were already part of the Passover meal in New Testament times. Luke's account mentions two cups (Luke 22:17, 22). The first cup mentioned by Luke could be the first of the four cups, while the “cup after they'd eaten” was probably the third cup of the Passover sequence and the only one mentioned by the other gospel writers. This cup is called the “cup of blessing” in I Corinthians 10:16.
Our observance of the Lord's Supper today is almost an exact copy of parts of the Jewish Passover seder as outlined in the Gospels and handed on by Paul in I Corinthians 11:
For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night He was betrayed, took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you, do this in remembrance of me.” In the same manner, He took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
– I Corinthians 11:23-25
~ Next time we'll look at transfiguration (metamorphosis) and transformation (synschematicism).
