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Continuity and Change in Early Eucharistic Practice: Shifting Scholarly Perspectives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Paul F. Bradshaw
Paul F. Bradshaw*
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA
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Extract

As a result of the great advances that have been made in liturgical scholarship in the last few decades, we now know much less about early eucharistic worship than we once thought that we did. Indeed, it sometimes appears that if things keep on at their present rate, it is possible that we shall soon find that we know absolutely nothing at all; for a large part of what current research has achieved has been to demolish theories that had been built on unreliable foundations. As this paper will demonstrate, the older consensus that there had existed a large measure of continuity between the eucharistic practices of the various early Christian communities is slowly giving way to the acceptance that there are considerable gaps in our knowledge of the period, and that what evidence there is points more towards variety than towards uniformity of practice.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 35: Continuity and Change in Christian Worship , 1999 , pp. 1 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1999

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References

1 See Bradshaw, Paul F., The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship: Sources and Methods for the Study of Early Liturgy (London and New York, 1992), pp. 131–6.Google Scholar

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6 See Bradshaw, , Search for the Origins of Christian Worship, p. 58 Google Scholar; and also Stringer, Martin D., ‘Style against structure: The legacy of John Mason Neale for liturgical scholarship’, Studia Liturgica, 27 (1997), p. 235.Google Scholar

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11 Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy, pp. 216-37.

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14 See in particular his essays, ‘The eucharistic prayer: tradition and development’, in Stevenson, Kenneth, ed., Liturgy Reshaped (London, 1982), pp. 48–64 Google Scholar; and The literary structure of the eucharistic prayer’, Worship, 58 (1984), pp. 404-19.

15 For recent contributions to this debate, see Crossan, John Dominic, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (San Francisco, CA, 1991), pp. 360–7 Google Scholar; Meier, John, ‘The eucharist at the Last Supper; did it happen?’, Theology Digest, 42 (1995), pp. 335–51.Google Scholar

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18 See further Paul F. Bradshaw, The evolution of early anaphoras’, in Bradshaw, Paul F., ed., Essays on Early Eastern Eucharistic Prayers (Collegevillc, MN, 1997), pp. 5–7 Google Scholar. For an English translation of the Strasbourg Papyrus, see R C. D. Jasper and G.J. Cuming, Prayers of the Eucharist: Early and Reformed, 3rd edn (New York, 1987), pp. 53–4.

19 See for example Connolly, R. H., ‘Agape and eucharist in the Didache’, Downside Review, 55 (1937), pp. 477–89 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dix, Shape of the Liturgy, pp. 48 n.2, 90-3; Joseph Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite, 2 vols (New York, 1951), 2, p. 12. For a summary of the various scholarly opinions on this question, see Kurt Nicderwimmer, Die Didache (Gottingcn, 1989), pp. 173-80.

20 Duchesne, Louis, Christian Worship: its Origins and Evolution (London, 1903), p. 54.Google Scholar

21 Willy Rordorf, The Didache’, in The Eucharist of the Early Christians (New York, 1978), p. 6.

22 See for example Bouyer, Louis, Eucharist (Notre Dame, IN, 1968), pp. 115–19 Google Scholar; Louis Ligicr, The origins of the eucharistic prayen from the Last Supper to the eucharist’, Studia Liturgica, 9 (1973), pp. 177-8; Mazza, Origins of the Eucharistic Prayer, pp. 12-97; Thomas J. Tallcy, The eucharistic prayer of the ancient Church according to recent research: results and reflections’, Studia Liturgica, 11 (1976), pp. 146-50.

23 See Rouwhorst, G., ‘Benediction, action de grâces, supplication; les oraisons de la table dans le Judaïsme et les célébrations eucharistiques des chrétiens syriaques’, Qtiestions liturgiques, 61 (1980), pp. 211–40 Google Scholar; Cyrille Vogcl, ‘Anaphorcs eucharistiques préconstantiniennes: formes non traditioncllcs’, Augustinianum, 20 (1980), pp. 401-10.

24 See for example the essays by Rowan Williams, ‘Docs it make sense to speak of pre-Niccne orthodoxy?’, and by Hanson, Richard, ‘The achievement of orthodoxy in the fourth century AD’, in Williams, Rowan, ed., The Making of Orthodoxy (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 1–23, 142–56.Google Scholar

25 See for example Winkler, Gabriele, ‘The original meaning of the pre-baptismal anointing and its implications’, Worship, 52 (1978), pp. 24–45 Google Scholar; Baby Varghcsc, Les onctions baptismales dans la tradition syrienne (Louvain, 1989).

26 See further Bradshaw, Paul F., ‘Rcdating the Apostolic Tradition: some preliminary steps’, in Baldovin, John and Mitchell, Nathan, eds, Rule of Prayer, Rule of Faith: Essays in Honor of Aidan Kavanagh, O. S. B (Collcgcville, MN, 1996), pp. 3–17.Google Scholar

27 See further Bradshaw, Paul F., ‘The homogenization of Christian liturgy - ancient and modern’, Studia Liturgica, 26 (1996), pp. 1–15.Google Scholar

28 Justin Martyr, First Apology, 67.3.

29 Didascalia Apostolorum, 2.58.3. See Michael Vasey and Sebastian Brock, The Liturgical Portions of the Didascalia, Grove Liturgical Study, 29 (Nottingham, 1982), p. 16.

30 Mazza, Origins of the Eucharistic Prayer, pp. 59-60, 221-30.

31 Johnson, Maxwell, The Prayers of Sarapion of Thmuis: A Literary, Liturgical, and Theological Analysis, Orientalia Christiana Analecta, 249 (Rome, 1995), pp. 224–6.Google Scholar

32 For example, the phrase in the Strasbourg Papyrus which links the petitionary material in the second half of the prayer to what precedes it, ‘over this sacrifice and offering we pray and beseech you’, is unlikely to be as old as what follows it, ‘remember your holy and only catholic Church …’, especially when we recall that the petitionary prayer in Didache 10 began simply: ‘Remember, Lord, your Church …’.

33 Dix, Shape of the Liturgy, p. 48.

34 See also the comments of Spinks, Bryan D., ‘Mis-shapen: Gregory Dix and the fouraction shape of the liturgy’, Lutheran Quarterly, 4 (1990), pp. 161–77.Google Scholar

35 For a recent analysis of the text from this latter point of view, see Mazza, Origins of the Eucharistic Prayer, pp. 66-97.

36 McGowan, Andrew, ‘“First regarding the cup …”: Papias and the diversity of early eucharistic practice’, JThS, 46 (1995), pp. 551–5.Google Scholar

37 McGowan, Andrew, ‘To gather the fragments: the social significance of food and drink in early Christian ritual meals’ (University of Notre Dame Ph. D. thesis, 1966), forthcoming as Ascetic Eucharists: Food and Drink in Early Christian Ritual Meals (Oxford, 1999).Google Scholar

38 The inclusion in the baptismal rites of some early Christian communities of a washing of the feet in addition to the immersion of the whole body in water appears to be another such liturgical compromise: see further Martin F. Conncll, ‘Nisi pedes, except for the feet: footwashing in the community of St John’s Gospel’, Worship, 70 (1996), pp. 20-30. The same may also be true of the combination of messianic anointing and water bath (in that order) in early Syrian baptismal practice, for which see the works cited in n.25 above.

39 Harnack, Adolf von, ‘Brod und Wassen Die cucharistischen Elemente bei Justin’, in Öber das gnostische buck Pistis-Sophia; Brod und Wasser: die eucharistischen Elemente hei Justin. Zwei Untersuchungen, Texte und Untersuchungen, 7 (Leipzig, 1891), pp. 115–44.Google Scholar

40 Lietzmann, Hans, Mass and Lord’s Supper: A Study in the History of the Liturgy (Leiden, 1979), pp. 193–208 Google Scholar. Among variations of this duality hypothesis, see Oscar Cullmann, The meaning of the Lord’s Supper in primitive Christianity’, in O. Cullmann and J. Lcenhardt, eds, Essays on the Lord’s Supper (London, 1958), pp. 5-23; A. J. B. Higgins, The Lord’s Supper in the New Testament (London, 1952), pp. 56-63; Eduard Schwcizcr, The Lord’s Supper According to the New Testament (Philadelphia, PA, 1967), pp. 56-63; Xavier Lcon-Dufour, Sharing the Eucharistic Bread (New York, 1987), pp. 90-101; Bernd Kollman, Ursprung und Gestalten der frühchristlichen Mahlfeier (Göttingen, 1990), pp. 142-52; and Gerard Rouwhorst, ‘La Celebration dc l’Eucharistic dans l’église primitive’, Questions liturgiques, 74 (1993), pp. 89-112.

41 See further Daley, Robert J., The Origins of the Christian Doctrine of Sacrifice (Philadelphia, PA, 1978)Google Scholar; Hanson, R. P. C., Eucharistic Offering in the Early Church (Nottingham, 1979)Google Scholar; Stevenson, Kenneth W., Eucharist and Offering (New York, 1986)Google Scholar; and Young, Frances M., The Use of Sacrifical Ideas in Greek Christian Writers from the New Testament to John Chysostom (Cambridge, MA, 1979).Google Scholar

42 Mystagogical Catechesis 5.9. English translation from Yarnold, Edward, The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation (Slough, 1971), p. 92.Google Scholar