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The Evolution of the Johannine Eucharist
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2009
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It is evident to any serious student of the Fourth Gospel that its treatment of the Christian sacrament of the Eucharist is anomalous. The meaning of John 6.51b-58 is decidedly, even stridently, eucharistic. Yet, despite such obvious eucharistic intent, there is no Johannine account of the eucharistic institution such as we find in 1 Cor 11.23–5 and the later Synoptic accounts of the Last Supper (Mark 14.22–5; Matt 26.26–9; Luke 22.3–6).
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References
1 Even Bultmann, R., who sees the Fourth Gospel as originally nonsacramental, agrees that 6.51–8 is sacramental. He thinks this passage was added by a sacramentalizing redactor. See his The Gospel of John (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971) 218–20, 234–7. Also see n. 27 below.Google Scholar
2 Cullmann, O., ‘The Meaning of the Lord's Supper in Primitive Christianity’, in Cullmann, O. and Leenhardt, F. J., Essays on the Lord's Supper, (Atlanta: John Knox, 1958) 8–16, esp. 22 n. 1.Google Scholar
3 O. Cullmann, Early Christian Worship, 10–12.
4 Cullmann, ‘Lord's Supper’, 5, 14,16. More will be said below about the Didache and its relation to the Fourth Gospel.Google Scholar
5 Cullmann, ‘Lord's Supper’, 17–23, esp. 22 n. 1.Google Scholar
6 My analysis of material selected from the Fourth Gospel will necessarily be limited to matters pertinent to the eucharistic themes being considered.
7 Haenchen, E., John 1 (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984) 274–6Google Scholar; Brown, R. E., The Gospel according to John 1–12 (AB 29; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966) 236–44.Google ScholarSchnackenburg, R., The Gospel according to St John (3 vols.; New York: Herder and Herder, 1968–82) 1.65.Google Scholar
8 Fortna, R. T., The Fourth Gospel and Its Predecessor (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988) 205–14;Google ScholarThe Gospel of Signs (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1970) 55–70.Google Scholar
9 Fortna, Signs, 225, 233–4; Fourth Gospel, 205–6, 215.
10 Martyn, J. L., History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel (Nashville: Abingdon, 1979) 109–14,124–5.Google Scholar
11 Fortna has reservations about ascribing Mosaic allusions to the Signs Source (Signs, 230, 232), but Martyn rightly recognizes that the fourth evangelist, following the author of the Signs Source, intends a midrashic correspondence between Jesus and Moses in 6.1–14 (see 124 in his History). Brown objects to the idea that Jewish Christian authors may be described as employing midrash. See his Birth of the Messiah (Garden City: Doubleday, 1977) 36–7, 557–62.Google Scholar
12 R. Schnackenburg (St John) also finds allusions to Moses in 6.1–14 (2.10, 14, 20), but has reservations about 6.16–21 (2.29–30). B. Lindars reminds us that a few exegetes think the events narrated in 6.17–21 are not intended as miraculous. See his The Gospel of John (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987) 245–6.Google Scholar
13 Fortna, Signs, 55–70; Fourth Gospel, 79–92. This article concurs with Fortna's view that most of the theological motifs developed explicitly by the fourth evangelist were already implicit in the material he inherited from the Signs author (the major exception being his anti-Judaism). See Fortna's Fourth Gospel, 228–9, 237–8, 257, 260.
14 Fortna does not include 6.26–71 in the material he assigns to the Signs Source. For his hypothetical reconstruction of John 6, see his Signs, 237–8, and his Fourth Gospel, 79–92.
15 For 6.22, see Brown, John I-XII, 257–9; for 6.25–6, see Bultmann, John, 218–22.
16 Lindars, John, 243; Barrett, C. K., The Gospel according to St John [London: SPCK, 1965)230–1.Google Scholar
17 Both Martyn, (The Gospel of John in Christian History [New York: Paulist, 1978] 98–102)Google Scholar and Fortna (Fourth Gospel, 215–16, 220) maintain that the Signs Source contains no indications of conflict with Judaism. U. C. von Wahlde disputes this (The Earliest Version of John's Gospel [Wilmington: Glazier, 1989] 161)Google Scholar. But the material on which he bases his position (for examples see 102–14 in the work just cited) has been convincingly excluded from the Signs Source by Fortna (and, by implication, Martyn).
18 Martyn thinks that while the fourth evangelist sometimes employs midrashic allusions for polemical purposes, in the last analysis the evangelist rejects midrash as a valid means of interpreting the messiahship of Jesus. Martyn's reasoning, however, is strained and collides with 5.45–7, which was written by the fourth evangelist; see his History, 121–8.
19 Brown, R. E., The Community of the Beloved Disciple (New York: Paulist, 1979) 22;Google Scholar Martyn, Gospel of John, 96–7.
20 Borgen, P., Bread from Heaven (Leiden, Brill, E. J., 1965) 154–8.Google Scholar
21 Haenchen, John, 1.294; Brown, John I-XII, 285–7. For Bultmann's somewhat different view, see his John, 218–20.
22 Martyn, History, 38–81. Brown, Community, 22–3, 40–3.
23 Fortna, Fourth Gospel, 303.
24 Brown, Community, 74. Is it possible that some of those who left the ranks of the Johannine church joined the community of the Didachist, and that they were the source of the Johannine language in the Didache?
25 Brown, Community, 86.
26 Schnackenburg briefly states the problem and provides an overview of its differing solutions in his St John, 2.56–9, 65–7.
27 Bultmann correctly recognized that the bread in 6.26–51a symbolizes the life-giving word of God brought by Jesus the Revealer, whereas the bread in 6.51b-58 is a sacramental sign of the crucified body (‘flesh’) of Jesus at the Lord's Supper. He assumed that a sacramentalizing redactor had added 6.51b-58 at a later time (see his John, 218–37). I have reasoned above that the addition was made by the Fourth Evangelist, not a redactor.
28 Fortna (Fourth Gospel, 65–70) thinks that 21.1–14 was originally the third of the signs in the Signs Source, but, in general, scholars have not responded favourably to his suggestion. See Lindars, John, 632.
29 Martyn, History, 124.
30 Higgins, Lord's Supper, 61; Brown, John XIII-XXI, 1098–100; Lindars, John, 623.
31 Brown, John XIII-XXI, 1084–5,1094–5.
32 Brown, John XIII-XXI, 1085–95. The teacher or hotnilist who combined the two traditions in 21.1–14 for the Johannine community may have replaced the ‘twelve’ with seven ‘disciples’ because he feared that the beloved ‘disciple’, who was not a member of the authoritative group called the ‘twelve’, might suffer by comparison. See Brown, Community, 81–2, 85–6.
33 Brown, John XIII-XXI, 1082–7,1094–5.
34 Fuller, R. H., The Formation of the Resurrection Narratives (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980)114.Google Scholar
35 Brown, John XIII-XXI, 1100.
36 Higgins, Lord's Supper, 57.
37 Haenchen, E., John 2 (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984) 233;Google Scholar Brown, John XIII-XXI, 1081–2; Lindars, John, 640. Haenchen observes that the number and kinds of inconsistencies found in John 21 make it highly unlikely that it could have been written by the Fourth Evangelist. See his John, 2.229–30.
38 Fuller, Formation, 146–54, esp. 149.
39 Brown, Community, 84.
40 Cullmann, ‘Lord's Supper’, 8–16. Cullmann gives the impression that he thinks the Risen Jesus not only appeared to the ‘twelve’ but also literally sat at table and shared a meal with them. Along with many others, I am persuaded that New Testament statements which speak of the Risen Jesus as ‘eating’ with his disciples (eg., Luke 24.30, 41–3, Acts 10.41) are theological, not historical in nature. See Fuller, Formation, 115.