The Greco-Roman Origins of the Eucharist

The Lord's Supper, Holy Communion, the

Eucharist. These all refer to one of the

most widespread Christian rituals.

Gathering together and eating some bread

and drinking a bit of wine, grape juice,

or in some cases, water, all in

remembrance of the death of Jesus. Now,

the exact details of how it's done can

look very different depending on the

Christian tradition, and the theology

behind it varies a lot, to put it

mildly. There are long-standing debates

about the degree to which Jesus is

actually present in the bread and wine

or whether the ritual is more symbolic.

But we're not focusing on those debates.

We're going to try to answer a more

basic question. Where did this ritual of

the Eucharist come from? Now, the name

itself derives from the Greek word

meaning to give thanks. And it actually

appears in the traditional origin story

of the ritual from the crucifixion

narrative found in the Gospels of

Matthew, Mark, and Luke. They describe

how on the evening before his death,

Jesus gathered with his 12 disciples for

a Passover meal. And 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." The Gospel of Luke

adds that iconic line missing from

Matthew and Mark. Do this in remembrance

of me. In his groundbreaking book,

Eukaristic Origins, the scholar Paul

Bradshaw remarks that historians of

Christian Liturgy have been anxious to

trace a single straight line from this

last supper described in the Gospels to

the lurggical Eucharist we see today.

The general idea is simple. Jesus

instituted the practice, his disciples

repeated it, and they passed it down to

the next generation of Christians,

eventually morphing into the ritual that

we see today. But in the last half

century of scholarship, historians have

started to complicate this idea. The

path from the last supper to today's

Eucharist is not so straightforward. As

we'll see, the Eucharist does not seem

to emerge from a single fixed ritual or

event. And in fact, some of our earliest

evidence makes no reference to the Last

Supper at all. So, where did it come

from? First things first, if we're

trying to understand the origins of the

Eucharist, forget the modern versions

with their micro calorie portions.

Nothing like a Catholic priest placing a

wafer on your tongue or a Greek Orthodox

priest spooning wine soaked bread into

your mouth or a Baptist preacher passing

around saltine crackers and tiny cups of

grape juice. This was something very

different. In the earliest centuries of

the Eucharist, Christians were not

consuming a token amount of bread and

wine. They were sitting down for a

proper meal, like a meal with actual

portions of food, enough to provide some

level of basic caloric needs. We see

this in what's possibly our earliest

reference to a Christian eucharistic

meal. Paul's first letter to the

Corinthians. Paul was writing to

Christians who apparently met at a home

of a local patron for a meal. But there

was a problem. It seems that the

wealthier members were showing up

gorging on their own food and wine while

the poor members went home hungry. He

writes, "When you come together, it is

not really to eat the Lord's supper. For

when the time comes to eat, each of you

proceeds to eat your own supper, and one

goes hungry and another becomes drunk."

Paul encourages to practice unity. He

reminds them that this meal is supposed

to commemorate the death of Jesus and

warns them that taking part in an

unworthy manner brings serious

consequences, even sickness and death.

Paul's description of the Eucharistic

meal is grounded in two statements he

says he received from the Lord, which

closely resemble the stories found in

the Gospels. For I received from the

Lord what I also handed on to you. that

the Lord Jesus on the night when he was

delivered up took a loaf of 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 way, he took the cup also after

supper, saying, "This cup is the new

covenant in my blood. Do this as often

as you drink it in remembrance of me."

Paul was writing several decades before

the gospels were composed. And scholars

still debate whether he was drawing on

an existing tradition or claiming direct

revelation. Some note that he uses the

title Lord to describe Jesus here, a

term he typically reserves for the risen

Christ. So scholars like Dr. James

Tabour argue this might suggest he

viewed the Eucharist as not a handed

down memory from eyewitnesses, but as

something revealed to him personally by

the glorified Jesus. But that debate

aside, what we're focusing on here is

what kind of communal ritual Paul is

actually describing. When Paul talks

about the Lord's Supper, it's tempting

to read it through the lens of later

Christian liturgies, structured scripted

rituals with set prayers and set

actions. But that's probably not what

Paul had in mind. As Dr. Bradshaw points

out, even if early Christians believe

Jesus literally said, "Do this in

remembrance of me." They probably did

not take that as, "Repeat this exact

sequence in this exact way. First, do a

bread ritual, then do a wine ritual."

more likely they understood it as a

broader command. When you gather for a

communal meal, whatever that looks like,

do it in remembrance of him. Dr.

Bradshaw writes, "Paul quotes the Lord's

supper tradition in order to remind the

Corinthians of the meaning that he

attaches to their celebration of the

Lord's supper and not of its ritual

sequence." In other words, Paul's goal

is not to lay down a lurggical script.

He's trying to correct their behavior,

reminding them of why the meal matters

in the first place. So if he's not

outlining a lurggical ritual, what kind

of meal is he describing? Paul refers to

this meal using the Greek word dapnown.

Often translated simply as supper, but

as the historian Andrew McGawan points

out, Dapenon is better understood as a

banquet, an evening meal with certain

expected formalities and a tradition of

proper conduct. These were not

incidental meals. They were formal

structured gatherings that played a

crucial role in Greco Roman social and

religious life. And these were not

fellowship meals tacked onto a separate

worship service. They were the worship

service. As the scholar Dennis Eye Smith

puts it, the entire gathering from the

food to the teaching to any hymns or

prayers that might have been done, all

of this happened at the table itself.

Generally speaking, a date known

involved two phases. A food phase and a

wine drinking phase called a symposium

or potos. But the details varied a lot.

Some were modest, others were lavish.

They might be a family affair or a

public event. They could be a solemn

religious ceremony or a wild drunken

party. Seating arrangements varied too.

Guests might recline on couches arranged

in a triclinium, a formal dining room

with three couches arranged around a

central table. Sometimes guests gathered

around a crescent-shaped table called a

stabbadium. Now, we don't exactly know

the setup for these eucharistic meals in

Corenth. Paul briefly mentions a few

chapters later that the Corinthian

church sat during worship. And since

we're talking about a meal here, they

were probably seated around a table,

either in a dining room or if the group

was too large in some more spacious area

like an atrium or courtyard. A date

known also included religious elements.

Some began with a prayer, a hymn, or a

libation of wine poured out to honor the

gods. After the food, it was common to

offer a toast or another libation to the

patron deity as the gathering

transitioned into the wine-rinking

phase. These events could also include

discussions of philosophy, theology, or

ethics. So any prayers, hymns, or

teachings conducted at a Christian

Eucharistic meal would not have been out

of the ordinary. And of course, you

can't have a banquet without food. Bread

was the cornerstone of most meals in the

ancient Mediterranean. And sometimes

bread was the entire meal. If you didn't

have much money back then, some bread

and water would have been considered a

normal, frugal meal in and of itself. So

the fact that Christian Eucharistic

meals revolved around bread wasn't

unusual. Even unleavened bread wasn't

particularly exotic. Despite its strong

association with the Jewish Passover,

leaven bread was more labor intensive

and was pricier. So for economic

reasons, plenty of people, Jews and

non-Jews alike, ate unleavened bread or

boiled or dry roasted their grain and

ate it like that. But Dr. Bradshaw

suggests that the strong emphasis on

bread at these meals was not only

economic. It was also likely a conscious

effort to avoid foods associated with

the pagan sacrifices. See, depending on

the wealth of the host, a date known

might also include small amounts of

cheese, olives, fish, or meat. But meat

was expensive and typically associated

with religious sacrifice since the meat

from sacrificed animals was typically

sold or distributed to the community.

This apparently was a big problem for a

lot of ancient Christians. Paul's

extended reflections elsewhere about

whether Christians could consume meat

sacrificed to Greor Roman gods suggest

this was a live issue. You can imagine

the tension. If the worship service

doubled as a shared meal and someone

brought a platter of leftover meat from

the temple of Apollo down the street,

suddenly the dinner becomes a

theological debate. Still, the meal in

Corinth probably included more than just

bread and wine, possibly other side

dishes, including meat. In fact, it's

possible that everyone brought their own

food to the gathering. The scholar Peter

Lampy argues that the Lord's supper in

Corinth resembled a type of dinner party

known as an eronos, a variation of the

traditional date known where guests

contributed their own food, something

like an ancient potluck. This might

explain why the host in Corinth was

apparently not controlling the meal and

why Paul complains that each one goes

ahead with his own meal without sharing.

Wine was also a staple of the ancient

Mediterranean diet and it was not

necessarily a luxury beverage. Everyone

drank wine from enslaved people all the

way up to the emperor himself. It was

actually a meaningful source of calories

and nutrition for a person living in an

agrarian society. Now, like I said, at a

date known, wine was usually served

after the food during a second, more

relaxed phase of the evening called the

symposium. This could feature

conversation or entertainment like

singing, dancing, or games. But the

lines between food and entertainment

were not rigid. Greek and Roman writers

mentioned guests conducting readings and

philosophical discussions before the

food or even during the meal. So, the

flow of the evening could vary. Nothing

was locked into a fixed sequence. So,

let's review. Paul himself uses the

Greek word dapenown to describe the

Lord's supper, the common term for a

dinner party. What did that involve?

Well, bread and wine were totally

normal. Prayers and religious songs not

unusual. Even philosophical or ethical

discussions after a meal were not out of

the ordinary. So, as one scholar puts

it, it is now widely held that early

Christians organized their community

meals along the lines of Greco Roman

dining, adapting the format to meet

their own ritual needs. In other words,

the Eucharistic meals did have distinct

Christian elements, but it looked and

felt like a standard banquet to anyone

in the Greco Roman world. Now, I'm not

saying that the Eucharistic meals were

not meaningful. These meals were

definitely meaningful. They were

ritualized and symbolic, but not much

would have struck your ordinary person

as unusual. Now, to be fair, the

symbolism of eating the body and blood

of Christ did attract negative

attention, ridicule, and even

accusations of cannibalism from outside

observers. So the symbolism did strike

many Greeks and Romans as odd, but the

form of the actual meal was common,

ranging from the menu of bread and wine

to the presence of religious elements

like hymns or prayers for a particular

deity. So Paul gives us what's possibly

our earliest window into Eucharistic

practice. And his description sounds a

lot like Greco Roman banquetss. But when

we fast forward a few decades to the

Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we

see a different framing emerge, one that

ties the ritual to a Jewish holiday,

Passover. And a lot of people are quick

to jump to the conclusion that the

Eucharist was in some way modeled on

Jewish Passover meals, something like a

Christianized Passover seder. In Hebrew,

the word seder means order or procedure.

And a Passover seder is a ritual meal

celebrated by Jews at the beginning of

Passover, featuring symbolic foods,

specific prayers, and the retelling of

the Exodus story in a set order. The

Gospels Matthew, Mark, and Luke, notably

not John, frame the Last Supper as a

Passover celebration, though it's

debated whether we can call it a seder.

The scholar of ancient Judaism, Jonathan

Clawans, argues that while Jesus may

have eaten a Passover meal with his

disciples, there's no clear evidence it

looked anything like the seder familiar

today. As in a structured meal with

multiple ritual cups, set blessings and

prayers and symbolic explanations. We

get the first detailed picture of this

version of a seder from a collection of

oral Jewish law called the Mishna, which

was compiled around 200 CE, over 170

years after Jesus. Now, the Mishna

probably does preserve some historical

evidence of Jewish practices that were

already in use during the time of Jesus,

but we just can't know for sure how

widespread or consistent those practices

actually were in the first century. Nor

can we assume that the seder in its

later form was already developed in the

time of Jesus. As Dr. Clans puts it,

most of the supposed parallels between

the last supper and a seder, like bread

and wine, reclining and singing, were

just typical features of any formal

Jewish meal. For example, Jesus opens

the meal with a cup in the Gospel of

Luke, which echoes meals described in

the Dead Sea Scrolls, which also open

with a cup of wine and a blessing, but

are not Passover saters. And as the

liturggical historian Andrew McGawan

points out, formal Jewish meals like the

Passover banquet were themselves part of

a broader Mediterranean banqueting

tradition. They shared many features

with Greco Roman dining, formal seating

arrangements, prayers over wine,

symbolic foods, and multiple courses.

Even the seder described in Mishna was

not a radical departure from this

cultural context. Rather, it turns the

meal into a series of structured mini

banquetss. So while Matthew, Mark, and

Luke frame the last supper as a Passover

celebration, and it does echo Jewish

practice on some level, it should not be

viewed as isolated from the wider Greco

Roman dining culture. That's why Dr.

McGowan warns us that it is misleading

to see the Eucharist as a sort of

Christianized seder in that later and

more developed sense. Jewish meals like

those described in the Dead Sea Scrolls

are useful comparisons, but none of them

provide a simple model adopted or

adapted for Christian use. The Eucharist

emerges in the same world as these

forms, but developing alongside rather

than merely out of them. And more to the

point, Paul's account in First

Corinthians doesn't mention Passover at

all. And the Gospel of John places the

meal several days before Passover. So

whether we even call it a Passover

celebration depends on whether we're

following the timeline in Matthew, Mark,

and Luke or the timeline in John's

gospel. And a lot of scholars question

the historicity of the Last Supper

altogether. Not only because of calendar

inconsistencies between John and the

other gospels, but because they argue it

would be highly improbable that an

observant Jew such as Jesus would use

the language of eating flesh or drinking

blood. The Torah strictly prohibits

consuming blood, and the idea of

symbolically consuming human flesh would

have been unthinkable. The scholar F.

Gerald Dowing writes, "There is no

plausible Jewish context in which this

might seem acceptable." The scholar Jay

Fenton argues that the taboo against

eating a human body and drinking any

sort of blood was so strong that it is

impossible to imagine any Jew of the

first or any other century seriously

inviting his friends to do it. And the

biblical studies scholar Michael Cahill

has gone so far as to criticize his

fellow scholars for glossing over this

issue, calling attention to how rarely

the Jewish dietary implications of the

Last Supper are taken seriously. To

complicate the issue even more, one of

the oldest eucharistic texts never even

refers to the Last Supper story from the

Gospels. Which raises the question, how

central could the story have been to the

origin of the ritual if early Christians

could perform it without mentioning the

last supper at all. Let's take a closer

look at the Eucharistic meal described

in the dedicay or the teaching. This is

a kind of early Christian handbook, a

practical guide for how early Christian

communities should live, worship, and

organize. The dedicay was compiled in

stages as early as the first century and

it contains instructions for the

eucharist that are very different from

what's described by Paul and the

gospels. Concerning the eucharist, give

thanks thus. First, concerning the cup,

we give thanks to you our father for the

holy vine of David your servant which

you have revealed to us through Jesus

your servant. And concerning the broken

bread, we give thanks to you our father

for the life and knowledge which you

have revealed to us through Jesus your

servant. As this broken bread was

scattered upon the hills and has been

gathered to become one, so gather your

church from the ends of the earth into

your kingdom. Here we have a ceremony

called a Eucharist that involves both

bread and wine. But the meanings

assigned to those symbols differ from

our Eucharist today. No reference to the

crucifixion, no reference to the last

supper of Christ, no body, no blood.

Instead, in the dedicay, the cup of wine

represents a grape vine, a metaphor for

King David. The exact meaning of this

metaphor is debated, but one plausible

interpretation that it reflects the

belief that non-Jewish believers can now

share in the blessings once promised to

Israel and its greatest king, David. The

bread, meanwhile, symbolizes the unity

of the Christian community. Just as

scattered grains are gathered and baked

into one loaf, so too are believers

spread across many different regions,

gathered into God's kingdom. So when the

dedicay community met for their

eucharistic meals, they apparently did

not consider themselves to be consuming

the body and blood of Jesus or even

commemorating his death. Rather, they

were celebrating the unity of their

membership and their devotion to Jesus

who they regarded as the faithful

servant of God foretold in the Hebrew

Bible. This is a very ancient form of

the Eucharist. Some scholars even think

it is the oldest eucharistic text,

possibly predating the Gospels and maybe

even predating Paul. Now, I think that's

a bit of a stretch. The consensus is

that the dedicay dates to the late 1st

century or maybe the early 2nd century.

But at the very least, the dedicay does

contain the oldest surviving eucharistic

prayer since Paul doesn't go into much

detail about the precise rituals and

prayers conducted during those meals. So

the dedicay shows that alternate forms

of the eucharist were being practiced as

early as the late 1st century. The

scholars who think that this version

might predate Paul suggest that the last

supper story was thus developed later,

providing a theological explanation for

an already existing ritual. Other

scholars like Andrew McGawan think that

the dedicay community probably did know

about the last supper tradition, but

they didn't see it as central to the

ritual. Either way, the dedicay

challenges the common assumption that

early Christians created the eukarist to

imitate the last supper. Instead,

Grecoman banquetss appear to be the

closest parallel and specifically

banquetss held by organizations that

scholars call Greco Roman associations.

These were social and religious

organizations that flourished in the

Grecoman world during the Hellenistic

period into the Roman Empire gathering

around a particular shared interest, God

or identity. Aristotle himself mentions

these organizations. Some associations

appear to be formed for the sake of

pleasure. For example, religious guilds

and dining clubs, which are unions for

sacrifice and social intercourse.

English has a lot of words that might

describe groups like this, clubs,

guilds, fraternities, societies, lodges,

and the Greeks and Romans had a variety

of terms too describing different types

of associations. The Greek term Theos

describes clubs that were mostly

religious in nature. Aranoi refers to

those potluck dining clubs I already

mentioned, and the Latin term calleagium

could refer to civil or religious

societies. Associations is the modern

academic term to refer to these groups.

Greor Roman associations typically

consisted of a few dozen members. Some

revolved around a shared profession or

trade, basically like an occupational

guild. For example, ancient inscriptions

mention ship builders associations,

blacksmith guilds. There's even a

gravestone from Greece that mentions a

guy named Alas Astes that says, "The

Society of Donkey Drivers set this up as

a memorial." So basically, the donkey

drivers in this town had a professional

guild and they pulled their resources to

pay for their members gravestone. Other

associations centered on an ethnic

identity like an immigrant community.

For example, this inscription from the

Black Sea coast west of Constantinople

mentions an immigrant community of

Alexandrian businessmen. The

Alexandrians engaged in business in

Pinthos set up this statue for the sake

of honor. Other associations were

basically religious organizations for a

particular god. For example, this

inscription in the Vatican Museum

contains the bylaws of an association

for the god Eskeipios. It names the

officers of the organization, including

a club president, supervisors, and

members who are exempt from paying dues.

It stipulates that the group has a fixed

cap of 60 members and explains how

members can bequeath their membership to

close relatives or other citizens and

also lays out a rich festival calendar

of banquetss where members received

measured portions of bread, wine, and

small cash handouts. One entry reads,

"On the 22nd of February, the

anniversary of our beloved pact, in the

same place near the temple of Mars, they

shall distribute the gifts of bread and

wine." So, in many ways, these Greco

Roman associations functioned a lot like

modern-day clubs or guilds. They had

elected officers, collected membership

dues. They drafted formal rules for

membership and behavior, especially at

their banquetss, and they managed shared

resources like funds and meeting spaces.

Some of the more established

associations even maintained dedicated

clubouses with banqueting halls and

shrines, and sometimes even doorkeepers

and bouncers to monitor access. Less

wellunded groups might have met in ins,

public forums, or members homes. So

whether organized around a trade, a

shared homeland or a particular god,

these associations offered a sense of

belonging and mutual support in the

urban fabric of the ancient

Mediterranean. And as we saw with that

Essipio association, communal meals were

arguably the most important part of

these associations. And these meals were

not just social. They were religious

events with offerings, prayers, and

hymns. Even the clubs oriented around an

ethnicity or an occupation like that

donkey driver's club had a more or less

religious character. Many of these clubs

were named after gods, even if the group

wasn't an explicitly religious group.

Their meeting places even sometimes

featured religious installations like

altars or divine statues. And the

associations often donated money to

conduct sacrifices in order to provide

meat for their communal meals. One

inscription from the second or third

century CE lays out detailed

instructions on how to organize a ritual

potluck for the god mentor. Those who

wish may convene an aronos for mentoros.

The club members shall provide what is

appropriate for the god. Then it lists

the items each member should bring.

Meat, wine, cakes, oil, and fruit.

Everyone contributes and the meal is

both a sacrifice and a feast for the

god. Another example comes from the

bylaws of association for Zeus in Roman

Egypt. You shall arrange one banquet a

month in the sanctuary of Zeus. There

they should pour libations, pray and

perform the other customary rights on

behalf of the god and lord the king.

These meals were ritual and social

gatherings. They followed specific

rhythms of prayer, discussions, and

shared food. Sometimes held in

sanctuaries, sometimes in dedicated

clubouses, and sometimes in the home of

one of their members. The Christian

Eucharistic meals fit neatly within the

broader Greco Roman tradition of

banqueting. Following the basic

structure and pattern of Greco Roman

associations, as the scholar Dr. Marcus

Oler puts it, "It is quite justified to

say that early Christian meals were

nothing else than association meals.

They gave bread and wine and probably

other complimentary food as a sacrifice

to the curios the Lord. They prayed,

sang hymns, heard readings and speeches,

and they had their cultic meal." Another

scholar, Dennis E. Smith, argues, "When

early Christians met for meals, they

were engaging in a practice common to

all religious people and sectarian

groups in the ancient world. Like other

such groups, they utilized the banquet

institution with its rich symbolism and

adapted it according to their own

special needs and emphases. Thus, the

origin of early Christian meals is not

to be found in any one type or

originating event, but rather in the

prevailing custom in the ancient world

for groups to gather at table. In fact,

the similarities annoyed some

Christians. Initiates of the religion

known as Mithriism apparently held

sacred meals. And writing in the second

century, the Christian theologian Justin

Martyr accuses the followers of Mithris

of imitating the Eucharistic meal during

their own meetings. Some 50 years later,

the apologist Tertullian made a similar

claim, arguing that the devil himself

had taught Mithrius to imitate the

Eucharist and other Christian

sacraments. Now, no one believes that

worshippers of Mithris stole the

Eucharist from Christians or vice versa.

And there's good reason to question if

Justin Martyr or Tertullian really had

accurate knowledge of mythic communal

meals, but they were both participating

in the same cultural phenomenon.

Scholars increasingly think that

communal meals and their associated

rituals were rooted in the ancient Greco

Roman phenomenon of voluntary

associations which were one of the

ancient world's most important social

institutions. The scholar John

Clottenborg has even argued that our

translation choices have obscured this

reality, making things sound more

churchy when we could just as easily

make them sound more like Greco Roman

associations. For example, Christians

called their groups eklesacia, which is

often translated as church, but it was

really just the standard Greek word for

a citizen assembly, a term used for

everything from local councils to civic

gatherings. Likewise, we tend to

translate the word episcopos as bishop,

but it just meant something like

supervisor, a role held in other Greco

Roman associations. According to

Kloppenborg, when we render these terms

in overtly ecclesiastical language, we

risk isolating early Christian groups

from the wider social world that they

were a part of, when in fact their

organizational vocabulary over

overlapped heavily with other voluntary

associations. And the same goes for

Paul's use of the word dapenown, often

translated as supper when it was just

the ordinary Greek word for a dinner

party or banquet. Calling it the

Eucharist adds a layer of lurggical and

theological weight that was not

necessarily there in the original

context. So if Christian Eucharistic

meals started as Greco Roman inspired

banquetss, when and how exactly did they

shift from a substantial evening meal to

token food rituals? In the earliest

decades of Christianity, there wasn't

really a distinction between the

Eucharist and the meal. As in, there's

no evidence in the earliest decades that

there was a special moment during the

meal when people ate consecrated bread

and wine. Dr. Bradshaw writes, "On the

contrary, it seems to be a pure product

of the minds of modern scholars who find

it impossible to imagine that early

Christians might have viewed the whole

meal as sacred, as the Eucharist." But

at some point, Christians did abandon

the full meal for a ritualized

consumption of a small amount of bread

and wine or water. More on that later.

We don't know exactly when and why that

shift happened. The Eucharist continued

to be a full meal for at least a few

hundred years. Around 200 CE, 150 years

after Paul, the Christian theologian

Tertullian describes a Eucharistic meal

that again sounds like any other

banquet. We do not recline until we have

first tasted of prayer to God. As much

as eaten as to satisfy the hungry, only

as much as drunk as is proper to the

chaste. After water for washing the

hands and lights, each is invited to

sing publicly to God as able from holy

scripture or from their own ability.

Thus, how each has drunk is put to the

test. Similarly, prayer closes the

feast. Tertullia makes no mention of a

separate ritual moment for eating a

small amount of bread and wine. Instead,

he describes a full evening meal

complete with food, drink, prayers, and

singing, though the food and wine must

be consumed in moderation. By the 4th

century, though, we have texts

describing separate eucharistic rituals

during the meal. The text called the

apostolic tradition describes such a

ritual. And let the faithful who are

present at the supper take from the

bishop's hand a small piece of bread

before they break their own bread.

Before they all drink once they have

wash their hands, it is fitting that

those who are present taste of the cup

over which thanks have been given and so

feast. This suggests a hybrid format, a

distinct eukaristic blessing inserted

into the overall meal. The faithful

still wash, eat, and drink together like

any other banquet. But now there's a

moment of lurggical differentiation. One

bite and sip set apart as sacred, even

as the rest of the supper continues in

typical communal fashion. Even though

this text dates to the 300 CE, some

scholars think that sections of it like

this section might date back as far as

the 2nd century. But we just don't

exactly know when this shift occurred.

Though it definitely happened by the

time Christians started using

purpose-built structures for worship.

Basilas like this one were designed for

communal ritual, not communal dining,

built for processions and preaching and

not reclining around a shared table.

Paul Bradshaw suggests that one of the

most likely reasons for abandoning the

full meal format was simply a matter of

logistics. See, it's manageable to host

a communal meal for a dozen people or so

in your dining room. But once the

Christian movement expanded to include

hundreds of people gathering in a large

basilica, feeding that many people

became complicated, expensive, and

increasingly impractical. Ritualizing

the meal, reducing it to symbolic

portions was likely a natural response

to that growth. This shift may have also

had something to do with the shifting

hour of celebration. Remember the word

dapnown refers to an evening meal and

most scholars think that the earliest

eucharistic meals were held on Saturday

nights which in the Jewish reckoning of

time marked the beginning of the week.

But by the mid-second century, we see

signs of that changing. Justin Martyr

writing around 100 years after Paul says

that Christians were gathering on

Sundays for the Eucharist. Now, he

doesn't explicitly mention the time of

day, but the context suggests a Sunday

morning gathering, perhaps part of a

broader shift away from a full evening

meal to a symbolic ritual. Writing

another 50 years after Justin, Tertullan

explicitly mentions the Eucharistic meal

being held on Sunday mornings. We take

also in congregations before daybreak

and from the hand of none but the

presidents the sacrament of the

Eucharist. Now, remember when I quoted

Tertullion a few minutes ago, he

described the Christian Eucharist as a

full-on evening banquet. So here this

doesn't seem to be describing the

central Christian liturgy. Dr. McGawan

argues that the Sunday morning Eucharist

was not the main event but just one

pious practice among others, an extra

ritual layered onto the Christian week

and not a replacement for the

traditional Saturday evening meal. This

may have been a transitional period when

the Eucharistic meal could be held on

either Saturday evening or Sunday

morning. And some scholars have even

suggested that the shift from evening to

morning may have led to smaller portion

sizes, moving from a full-on meal to

something more like a light breakfast.

And in the Grecoman world, drinking wine

in the morning would have been socially

out of place, which may have further

reduced the wine to a symbolic amount or

led to its omission altogether. A lot of

Christians drank water instead of wine

for their eucharistic meals. Though we

learn about these groups mostly from

their opponents. The early Christian

theologian Irenaeus attacks a group

called the Ebianites who used water

instead of wine. Similarly, the bishop

Epipanius attacked the Marcianites for

doing the same thing. and Clement of

Alexandria disapprovingly mentions there

are those who celebrate the Eucharist

with mere water. Although these groups

are frequently described as heretics by

their opponents, apparently some

otherwise Orthodox Christians were also

conducting eucharistic meals without

wine. Writing in the mid200s, Cyprien,

the bishop of Carthage, expresses

concern that bishops in his region were

offering water instead of wine. He

emphatically commands them to use wine

instead, arguing that wine symbolizes

Christ's blood and that offering water

alone cannot express the blood of

Christ. But notice he's not accusing

them of heresy. He's appealing to them

as fellow clergy. Otherwise, faithful

leaders who, in his view, simply

misunderstood or mishandled the

tradition. And the fact that he felt he

needed to publish such a detailed

rebuttal implies that water and bread

eucharists were very widespread in North

Africa in the 200s. In fact, while

wineless Eucharists are often pinned to

so-called heretical groups, this

practice might go back to the very first

Christian communities. We've already

mentioned how sacrificed meat was

controversial to early Christian meals.

But in Romans 14, Paul also mentions

wine. Do not for the sake of food

destroy the work of God. It is good not

to eat meat or drink wine or do anything

that makes your brother or sister

stumble. In other words, abstaining from

wine wasn't just tolerated. It could be

seen as a pastoral concession to protect

the unity of the community. This might

suggest that some early Christians may

have intentionally omitted wine from the

Eucharist and used water, not out of

heresy, but out of sensitivity to fellow

believers. As Dr. Bradshaw writes, water

and bread Eucharists may stretch back to

the very beginnings of Christianity

rather than being a later deviation from

a recognized norm. And even today, there

are some Christian groups who use water

and bread, such as Latter-day Saints.

Overall, reconstructing the origins of

the Eucharist requires us to overcome

one of the biggest hurdles in the study

of history. The difficulty of imagining

a world unlike our own. Our knowledge of

modern church rituals and inherited

theological frameworks can easily

obscure how differently early Christians

practice their faith. Like the Eucharist

mentioned in the dedicay that lacks even

a reference to the last supper. This

shift in thinking has been difficult

even for experts. As the scholar

Margaret Daily Denton notes, the

thinking of Christian scholars about

Eucharistic origins was profoundly

influenced and formed by their own

liturggical experience. That's why

recent scholarship has pushed us to zoom

out to situate Christian meals not just

within biblical texts, but within the

wider fabric of Greco Roman religious

culture, where communal meals were

common, social, and sacred. Once we do

that, the Eucharist starts to look less

like a ceremony designed to replicate a

single sacred moment and more like a

flexible evolving practice rooted in the

everyday rhythms of ancient life. And

that brings us to a broader point, not

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