Erwin Goodenough: John a Primitive Gospel
This is a terrific except from an excellent paper from 1945. Professor Goodenough was at Yale Divinity School, and was an expert in early Christian history, art and archaelogy, as well as Jewish art and practice. Read it all !!! It will be on the final!
C. The Institution of the Eucharist.
It seems equally clear that the author of Jn had no knowledge of the institution of the eucharist at the Last Supper as told by Paul and the Synoptists. The eucharistic discourse of Jn 6 has been mentioned for what seems to me the primitive character of its theology or philosophy as compared with the Pauline story. It seems incredible to me that an author who would have retold in such detail as he did the story of the Passion, and who felt it important to stress as he did the Last Supper, should have failed, had he known it, to rehearse the event which the Church has ever since thought to be the supreme act of the Christ of history, the institution of the eucharist at the Last Supper. The sixth chapter, with its long insistence upon the necessity of eating the flesh (and drinking the blood vss. 53-56), shows that the members of John's community were devout communicants who believed in the real presence. But they knew only the quite clumsy story of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes to justify their practice, quite clumsy because it made no place for the wine, while it included the soon to be discarded fish as part of the meal.
Now the art remains of early Christianity make it highly likely that the early eucharistic observance included fish with the bread and wine, and it has long been suspected that the Messianic fish which the Jews of the time ate, along with the bread and wine which they still partake of with "blessing" in a special way, was what lay behind the Christian observance. In so brief an essay there is not space to present or to discuss this evidence. What appears increasingly likely is that on Friday nights, as well as at the major feasts, faithful Jews were eating a Messianic meal, in which they partook of the Messiah in the form of fish, bread, and wine, in anticipation of his coming and of the great Messianic banquet of the future life. This banquet early Christians would have continued, since they were still observant Jews. Only, and this was the great step, since Jesus was now their Messiah, the Christians in partaking of the Messiah were partaking of Jesus Christ himself.
Myths are much more apt to be produced by cult acts than cult acts by myths. Christians in this early meal found themselves partaking of Jesus Christ in the blessed elements, and the practice cried out for a definitely Christian justification, arising from an act or command of Jesus himself. Two stories thus arose. The first story would appear to be that given in Jn. For this the analogy of the miraculous feeding of the ancient Israelites in the desert with manna, and their getting the divine drink from the rock of Sophia or Logos, of which mention has already been made, offered one element. Just why the fish took the place of the rock as symbol of the divine fluid in the new version of the story I cannot say. But Jesus took the place of Moses for the Christians now in a new feeding of the multitude in the desert, and this was a symbol of the new sacrament in which Jesus gave his flesh and blood to his followers, the heavenly food and drink, and made such partaking a general requirement for all Christians. With this, as we shall see at once, was fused another, a Messianic, element. That this stage in, or form of, the celebration of the eucharist is not purely imaginative on my part is definitely witnessed by the order for the celebration of the eucharist in the Didache. The passage, familiar as it is, is so important that it must be quoted entire:
IX. 1. And concerning the eucharist, hold eucharist thus: 2. First concerning the cup, "We give thanks to thee, our Father, for the holy Vine of David thy child, which thou didst make known to us through Jesus thy child; to thee be glory for ever." 3. And concerning the broken bread: "We give thanks to thee, our Father, for the life and knowledge which thou didst make known to us through Jesus thy child. To thee be glory forever. 4. As this broken bread was scattered upon the mountains, but was brought together and became one, so let thy Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into thy kingdom, for thine is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ forever." 5. But let none eat or drink of your eucharist except those who have been baptized in the Lord's Name. For concerning this also did the Lord say, "Give not that which is holy to the dogs." X. 1. But after you have been filled, thus give thanks: 2. "We give thanks to thee, O Holy Father, for the holy Name which thou didst make to tabernacle in our hearts, and for the knowledge and faith and immortality which thou didst make known to us through Jesus thy 173 Child. To thee be glory forever. 3. Thou, Lord Almighty, didst create all things for thy Name's sake, and didst give food and drink to men for their enjoyment, that they might give thanks to thee, but us hast thou blessed with spiritual food and drink and eternal life46 through thy Child. 4. Above all we give thanks to thee for that thou art mighty. To thee be glory forever. 5. Remember, Lord, thy Church, to deliver it from all evil and to make it perfect in thy love, and gather it together in its holiness from the four winds to thy kingdom which thou hast prepared for it. For thine is the power and the glory forever. 6. Let grace come and let this world pass away. Hosannah to the God of David. If any man be holy, let him come! if any man be not, let him repent: Maranatha, Amen." 7. But suffer the prophets to hold eucharist as they will.
Here are a number of very important Johannine reminiscences. The cup is the vine, "made known through Jesus thy Child." The bread is broken and scattered "on the mountains."The bread gives "life," "eternal life," and "knowledge," which again had been revealed in Jesus. In the story in Jn the fragments were gathered together into twelve baskets, and its gathering together in the Didache signified the reunion of the Church, a direct adaptation of a Jewish-Messianic prayer for the reunion of the scattered tribes. The concluding prayer echoes the Johannine idea that they are "filled and Jesus is "tabernacling," through the eucharist, in our hearts; but the allusion seems clear. Those who partake of the eucharist are different from all others, further, in that they take the "spiritual food and drink along with eternal life" through Jesus, which is an echo of the figure of the manna, though in the phrase with which Paul referred to it rather than Jn.52 The fishes have already disappeared, and in the final line the Didache shows that "prophets" could and did celebrate differently. Whether this is a reference to celebration according to the soon to become standard tradition of Paul-Mk we cannot say. Oesterley has made it quite clear that the Didache formula is itself an adaptation of Jewish liturgy, since unquestionable traces of identity still survive in spite of the number of editing hands through which the Jewish and Christian traditions have gone. When Jn 6 is considered with them, as it does not occur to Oesterley to do, parallels with the Jewish prayer increase. This evidence we cannot discuss here. The evidence which Oesterley presents, however, shows that the gathering together in the Didache of the Church from the four winds, as a result of the bread broken and brought together upon the mountains, is an adaptation of a Messianic prayer that the twelve tribes be gathered together from the four corners of the earth when the "ensign" appears upon the mountains.
In terms of Jewish mystic thought, which seems to me to have been the starting point of Christian formulations of the sacrament, the twelve baskets, continuing the twelve tribes of the Jewish prayer, would make the Christian ceremony a rite of what Philo and later the Christians called the "true Israel." When the twelve become the seven, and the loaves are seven, in the Markan account of the four thousand the whole is made more directly into a celebration of the Logos in terms of the mystic seven. The seven is definitely the more sophisticated number, and it is interesting that it is found in Mk, along with the original twelve, rather than in Jn which knows only the more primitive five and twelve. Had the author of Jn had the Markan seven before him I am sure he would have preferred it. The exact history of the rite will never be reconstructed from our evidence. But the evidence together indicates that the eucharist in the early Church was actually celebrated in terms of the miraculous feeding, and that the value of the rite as thus celebrated was that in it one partook of Christ's body and blood, which brought "eternal life" and "gnosis."
It is this celebration in a primitive form which the Johannine account reflects. Apparently its author had never heard of another form of celebration. Already by the time of the composition of Mk, however, this story had ceased in many circles to be the official account of the institution of the eucharist. Mark has heard another and much better account of the institution, and so, while the multiplication of the loaves was still to him a sacred story, carefully preserved in two versions (presumably as told in two different communities), it was no longer his story of the institution.
For Paul, under stress of inner disquiet, as such things usually happen, had meanwhile "received from the Lord" the tremendous revelation of the institution at the Last Supper. This story of the institution must rapidly have supplanted the other, and become the one rehearsed at the consecration of the elements. It was much better adapted to the purpose. Still, I suspect from Christian art that the fishes were long an actual part of the eucharistic food, and from this the Christ-fish symbol got its popularity. But that, I have said, is too long a story to rehearse here.
The point is that Jn presents us with the miraculous feeding as the story of the institution, while Paul and the Synoptics present the Last Supper. That the author of Jn knew but rejected or ignored the Pauline story, and created in its place a eucharistic meaning for the story of the feeding as told by Mk is possible. But in view of the later unbroken loyalty of the Church to the Pauline account, this is a much less likely hypothesis (and this is all we can hope to show) than that Jn actually tells the original story of the institution, tells it because it is the only one he knows. At the time Jn was composed Paul may have already told his version in the letter to the Corinthians, along with his passing allusion to the earlier account. But Paul's new story seems at once to have got such wide popularity that Jn would naturally be dated, if not earlier, at least not much later.
With this argument goes the generally admitted fact that Jn preserves the true (or original) date of the Last Supper in making it fall upon the evening before the day when the paschal lamb would have been killed and eaten, while the Synoptics all agree in making the Last Supper the Passover meal itself. The arguments for preferring Jn's date need not be rehearsed here. Enslin suggests that Jn changed the Synoptic date so that the death of Jesus would coincide with the killing of the paschal lambs, but this is highly artificial. For Jn did not change the date. Jn tells the right date because the author knew it and had no reason to change it. It was in the Paul-Mark tradition of the founding of the eucharist at the Last Supper that the date became changed, for it was in that tradition that the eucharist became the meal when the Christians ate not the manna from heaven but the "lamb that was slain."
True, Jesus was "The Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world" to Jn (1 29), but this was not a figure from the Jewish paschal lamb: it was the lamb led to slaughter of Is 53 7, which in turn was the lamb of sacrifice of Ex 29 38-41. Nothing in Jn associates Jesus with the lamb of Passover.
It is Paul, in the very letter in which he tells of the Last Supper, who insists that Christ is our Passover, killed or sacrificed for us. In saying this Paul has the eucharist in mind as appears from the way he goes on to discuss the true unleavened bread (I Cor 5: 7). The date of the Supper was changed, that is, to equate the eucharist with passover. The author of Jn, who knew nothing of all this, left the original date. From this again we should presume that Jn is an early account as compared with Mk.
Other details might be considered to indicate an early date for the Gospel, but they would be incidental, and the case must stand or fall with these.
C. The Institution of the Eucharist.
It seems equally clear that the author of Jn had no knowledge of the institution of the eucharist at the Last Supper as told by Paul and the Synoptists. The eucharistic discourse of Jn 6 has been mentioned for what seems to me the primitive character of its theology or philosophy as compared with the Pauline story. It seems incredible to me that an author who would have retold in such detail as he did the story of the Passion, and who felt it important to stress as he did the Last Supper, should have failed, had he known it, to rehearse the event which the Church has ever since thought to be the supreme act of the Christ of history, the institution of the eucharist at the Last Supper. The sixth chapter, with its long insistence upon the necessity of eating the flesh (and drinking the blood vss. 53-56), shows that the members of John's community were devout communicants who believed in the real presence. But they knew only the quite clumsy story of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes to justify their practice, quite clumsy because it made no place for the wine, while it included the soon to be discarded fish as part of the meal.
Now the art remains of early Christianity make it highly likely that the early eucharistic observance included fish with the bread and wine, and it has long been suspected that the Messianic fish which the Jews of the time ate, along with the bread and wine which they still partake of with "blessing" in a special way, was what lay behind the Christian observance. In so brief an essay there is not space to present or to discuss this evidence. What appears increasingly likely is that on Friday nights, as well as at the major feasts, faithful Jews were eating a Messianic meal, in which they partook of the Messiah in the form of fish, bread, and wine, in anticipation of his coming and of the great Messianic banquet of the future life. This banquet early Christians would have continued, since they were still observant Jews. Only, and this was the great step, since Jesus was now their Messiah, the Christians in partaking of the Messiah were partaking of Jesus Christ himself.
Myths are much more apt to be produced by cult acts than cult acts by myths. Christians in this early meal found themselves partaking of Jesus Christ in the blessed elements, and the practice cried out for a definitely Christian justification, arising from an act or command of Jesus himself. Two stories thus arose. The first story would appear to be that given in Jn. For this the analogy of the miraculous feeding of the ancient Israelites in the desert with manna, and their getting the divine drink from the rock of Sophia or Logos, of which mention has already been made, offered one element. Just why the fish took the place of the rock as symbol of the divine fluid in the new version of the story I cannot say. But Jesus took the place of Moses for the Christians now in a new feeding of the multitude in the desert, and this was a symbol of the new sacrament in which Jesus gave his flesh and blood to his followers, the heavenly food and drink, and made such partaking a general requirement for all Christians. With this, as we shall see at once, was fused another, a Messianic, element. That this stage in, or form of, the celebration of the eucharist is not purely imaginative on my part is definitely witnessed by the order for the celebration of the eucharist in the Didache. The passage, familiar as it is, is so important that it must be quoted entire:
IX. 1. And concerning the eucharist, hold eucharist thus: 2. First concerning the cup, "We give thanks to thee, our Father, for the holy Vine of David thy child, which thou didst make known to us through Jesus thy child; to thee be glory for ever." 3. And concerning the broken bread: "We give thanks to thee, our Father, for the life and knowledge which thou didst make known to us through Jesus thy child. To thee be glory forever. 4. As this broken bread was scattered upon the mountains, but was brought together and became one, so let thy Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into thy kingdom, for thine is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ forever." 5. But let none eat or drink of your eucharist except those who have been baptized in the Lord's Name. For concerning this also did the Lord say, "Give not that which is holy to the dogs." X. 1. But after you have been filled, thus give thanks: 2. "We give thanks to thee, O Holy Father, for the holy Name which thou didst make to tabernacle in our hearts, and for the knowledge and faith and immortality which thou didst make known to us through Jesus thy 173 Child. To thee be glory forever. 3. Thou, Lord Almighty, didst create all things for thy Name's sake, and didst give food and drink to men for their enjoyment, that they might give thanks to thee, but us hast thou blessed with spiritual food and drink and eternal life46 through thy Child. 4. Above all we give thanks to thee for that thou art mighty. To thee be glory forever. 5. Remember, Lord, thy Church, to deliver it from all evil and to make it perfect in thy love, and gather it together in its holiness from the four winds to thy kingdom which thou hast prepared for it. For thine is the power and the glory forever. 6. Let grace come and let this world pass away. Hosannah to the God of David. If any man be holy, let him come! if any man be not, let him repent: Maranatha, Amen." 7. But suffer the prophets to hold eucharist as they will.
Here are a number of very important Johannine reminiscences. The cup is the vine, "made known through Jesus thy Child." The bread is broken and scattered "on the mountains."The bread gives "life," "eternal life," and "knowledge," which again had been revealed in Jesus. In the story in Jn the fragments were gathered together into twelve baskets, and its gathering together in the Didache signified the reunion of the Church, a direct adaptation of a Jewish-Messianic prayer for the reunion of the scattered tribes. The concluding prayer echoes the Johannine idea that they are "filled and Jesus is "tabernacling," through the eucharist, in our hearts; but the allusion seems clear. Those who partake of the eucharist are different from all others, further, in that they take the "spiritual food and drink along with eternal life" through Jesus, which is an echo of the figure of the manna, though in the phrase with which Paul referred to it rather than Jn.52 The fishes have already disappeared, and in the final line the Didache shows that "prophets" could and did celebrate differently. Whether this is a reference to celebration according to the soon to become standard tradition of Paul-Mk we cannot say. Oesterley has made it quite clear that the Didache formula is itself an adaptation of Jewish liturgy, since unquestionable traces of identity still survive in spite of the number of editing hands through which the Jewish and Christian traditions have gone. When Jn 6 is considered with them, as it does not occur to Oesterley to do, parallels with the Jewish prayer increase. This evidence we cannot discuss here. The evidence which Oesterley presents, however, shows that the gathering together in the Didache of the Church from the four winds, as a result of the bread broken and brought together upon the mountains, is an adaptation of a Messianic prayer that the twelve tribes be gathered together from the four corners of the earth when the "ensign" appears upon the mountains.
In terms of Jewish mystic thought, which seems to me to have been the starting point of Christian formulations of the sacrament, the twelve baskets, continuing the twelve tribes of the Jewish prayer, would make the Christian ceremony a rite of what Philo and later the Christians called the "true Israel." When the twelve become the seven, and the loaves are seven, in the Markan account of the four thousand the whole is made more directly into a celebration of the Logos in terms of the mystic seven. The seven is definitely the more sophisticated number, and it is interesting that it is found in Mk, along with the original twelve, rather than in Jn which knows only the more primitive five and twelve. Had the author of Jn had the Markan seven before him I am sure he would have preferred it. The exact history of the rite will never be reconstructed from our evidence. But the evidence together indicates that the eucharist in the early Church was actually celebrated in terms of the miraculous feeding, and that the value of the rite as thus celebrated was that in it one partook of Christ's body and blood, which brought "eternal life" and "gnosis."
It is this celebration in a primitive form which the Johannine account reflects. Apparently its author had never heard of another form of celebration. Already by the time of the composition of Mk, however, this story had ceased in many circles to be the official account of the institution of the eucharist. Mark has heard another and much better account of the institution, and so, while the multiplication of the loaves was still to him a sacred story, carefully preserved in two versions (presumably as told in two different communities), it was no longer his story of the institution.
For Paul, under stress of inner disquiet, as such things usually happen, had meanwhile "received from the Lord" the tremendous revelation of the institution at the Last Supper. This story of the institution must rapidly have supplanted the other, and become the one rehearsed at the consecration of the elements. It was much better adapted to the purpose. Still, I suspect from Christian art that the fishes were long an actual part of the eucharistic food, and from this the Christ-fish symbol got its popularity. But that, I have said, is too long a story to rehearse here.
The point is that Jn presents us with the miraculous feeding as the story of the institution, while Paul and the Synoptics present the Last Supper. That the author of Jn knew but rejected or ignored the Pauline story, and created in its place a eucharistic meaning for the story of the feeding as told by Mk is possible. But in view of the later unbroken loyalty of the Church to the Pauline account, this is a much less likely hypothesis (and this is all we can hope to show) than that Jn actually tells the original story of the institution, tells it because it is the only one he knows. At the time Jn was composed Paul may have already told his version in the letter to the Corinthians, along with his passing allusion to the earlier account. But Paul's new story seems at once to have got such wide popularity that Jn would naturally be dated, if not earlier, at least not much later.
With this argument goes the generally admitted fact that Jn preserves the true (or original) date of the Last Supper in making it fall upon the evening before the day when the paschal lamb would have been killed and eaten, while the Synoptics all agree in making the Last Supper the Passover meal itself. The arguments for preferring Jn's date need not be rehearsed here. Enslin suggests that Jn changed the Synoptic date so that the death of Jesus would coincide with the killing of the paschal lambs, but this is highly artificial. For Jn did not change the date. Jn tells the right date because the author knew it and had no reason to change it. It was in the Paul-Mark tradition of the founding of the eucharist at the Last Supper that the date became changed, for it was in that tradition that the eucharist became the meal when the Christians ate not the manna from heaven but the "lamb that was slain."
True, Jesus was "The Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world" to Jn (1 29), but this was not a figure from the Jewish paschal lamb: it was the lamb led to slaughter of Is 53 7, which in turn was the lamb of sacrifice of Ex 29 38-41. Nothing in Jn associates Jesus with the lamb of Passover.
It is Paul, in the very letter in which he tells of the Last Supper, who insists that Christ is our Passover, killed or sacrificed for us. In saying this Paul has the eucharist in mind as appears from the way he goes on to discuss the true unleavened bread (I Cor 5: 7). The date of the Supper was changed, that is, to equate the eucharist with passover. The author of Jn, who knew nothing of all this, left the original date. From this again we should presume that Jn is an early account as compared with Mk.
Other details might be considered to indicate an early date for the Gospel, but they would be incidental, and the case must stand or fall with these.
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