3.1 Marcion/Luke 22 and 24
Read as texts from the second century, the Gospel accounts of the Last Supper (especially Luke’s) corroborate these observations. Marcion/Luke 22 describes Jesus’ last celebration of Pesach as a typical symposium. The account does not have any interest in a historical reconstruction of customs how to celebrate Pesach in Jerusalem in late Second Temple times. It is devoid of anything that points to a first century celebration of a pilgrim festival in Jerusalem. As any etiology, it is created in the image of the celebration that it should furnish with a dignified prehistory. As an etiology for the performance of Eucharists, it is entirely uninterested in Easter. If Eucharistic celebrations should always have been preceded by a liturgy of word, Marcion/Luke 22 would totally fail in this function. For, Jesus and his disciples enter the room and begin to eat their dinner immediately. There is not the slightest trace of reading or talking about scripture before the meal.
In a sympotic event, it befits a host to invite his guests to a learned conversation after the conclusion of the dinner. According to Marcion/Luke 22, Jesus abides by this rule.1 They discuss several stereotype topics of the literary repertoire of ancient table-talk. This chapter shows that Christians met for communal meals. They may have read and/or discussed biblical and exegetical topics after the meal. Sympotic Eucharists could not have been connected with a Liturgy of the Word preceding the meal. The etiology for the Eucharist does not support celebrations preceded by a Liturgy of the Word. Whatever the time of composition of the Gospels, their authors could not yet envisage a celebration like the third/fourth century combination of a Liturgy of the Word with a Eucharist.
Justin’s use of a paraphrase of the institution narratives corroborates this understanding. His group does not celebrate a form of sympotic Eucharist that could claim to derive from Jesus’ institution. For Justin, the institution narrative is only used in order to legitimize the exclusion of people who do not belong to his congregation from the consumption of the Eucharistic elements.2 Justin is not interested in an etiology for his celebration (which does not fit to the Gospel texts, especially not to Luke) but in a bit of scriptural support for the exclusion of non-members from the participation in the food.
This is corroborated by the observation that Justin could have used an alternative etiology for his celebration: the account of Jesus’ discussion with Emmaus and Cleopas after Jesus’ resurrection (Marcion/Luke 24:13–35). Yet, he does not quote this pericope for this purpose. The verse that makes Jesus discuss passages from “Moses and all the Prophets” (Luke 24:27) is Luke’s expansion of Marcion’s text.3 The idea that Jesus expounded the Torah and the Prophets in front of the two disciples on their way from Jerusalem and thus before they reclined for dinner did not occur to Marcion. However, Luke was interested in a purely theological, anti-Marcionite argument regarding the integration of Jesus’ life and death into a kind of Old Testament salvation history. Luke did not want to talk about the Eucharist, let alone about a compulsory Liturgy of the Word preceding it. This is borne out by the fact that Marcion/Luke 24 does not end in a meal. Jesus vanishes and the meeting is disrupted completely before the beginning of a meal. Neither for Marcion nor for Luke is the story of Emmaus and Cleopas an etiology for the structure or the meaning of the Eucharist.
Marcionite/Lukan descriptions of the Last Supper and the conversation of Jesus with the two disciples on their way from Jerusalem show that a Liturgy of the Word was just not imaginable, let alone regarded as a constitutive element of the Eucharist. However stylized, the Eucharist is a kind of meal. It could have been followed by sympotic table-talk (Marcion/Luke) or preceded by the study session of a group of philosophers (Justin, see below). Neither a Liturgy of the Word, nor a philosophic study session, nor a (perhaps archaizing) bit of standardized table-talk was regarded as an indispensable constituent of a Eucharist.
3.2 Luke (not Marcion) 4:16–22
In the same way as the author of Luke’s Gospel corrected the story of Jesus’ meeting with Emmaus and Cleopas, he also added Jesus’ reading and exegesis in the Synagogue of Nazareth as an argument against Marcion.1 Jesus reads and expounds a passage from the Old Testament prophets. There is no hint to a meal following the service in Nazareth. In a similar way as Justin wanted the Emperor to understand his own group, Luke depicts Jesus as a teacher who expounds a passage of what should be regarded as Holy Scripture. He explains its importance and meaning for the listeners. There is no reason to doubt that certain Jewish groups met for the reading and discussion of the Hebrew Bible in the first and second centuries C.E. (see below). Elements of a rabbinic Sabbath morning liturgy can be read into the background of this very brief text, not out of it. The claim that the text should reveal a faint inkling of rabbinic celebrations of Torah reading becomes more plausible, if Luke 4:16–22 originated in the second half of the second century.
3.3 1 Corinthians 11–14
Matthias Klinghardt has shown that 1 Cor 11–14 is a literary unit that also represents a sequence of ritual acts that was immediately comprehensible as a Greek or Roman banquet. The chapters 12–14 collect rules and allude to literary conventions about proper table talk.1 Thus, the structure of the Christian meeting according the First Letter to the Corinthians does not only rule out that a Liturgy of the Word should have been performed before the meal. It also shows that a kind of reading of a Gospel text (that would have been composed after this letter) did not have a logical slot in this event—neither after nor before the meal.
For the time being, it is the most important structural lesson that must be learned from Paul’s letter that reading texts, learned discussions, and other forms of table-talk would take place after the meal rather than preceding it. The letter collects rules for the proper behavior at Christian banquets along the course of a sympotic celebration. Although any kind of text could be read, recited, sung, proclaimed, etc. in Christian meetings, none of them contains a ritual slot that requires or just favors Gospel texts.
4 A Liturgy of the Word in Justin’s Congregation?
The preceding discussion led to the conclusion that Gospels were not needed for Christian liturgies for roughly a century after the destruction of the Second Temple—a date that is often associated with the time of composition of the Gospels.1 In the course of this argument, one author had been passed over: Justin, the Philosopher2 and Martyr. This omission requires rectification, because the description of the Eucharist in Justin’s First Apology appears to prefigure the structure of the medieval mass: a Liturgy of the Word followed by the celebration of the Eucharist.
4.1 Philosophers Reading Texts
Justin’s group is convened weekly, on the “Days of Helios”.1 At their meetings, someone reads the “memorabilia of the Apostles (apomnēmoneumata tōn apostolōn) or the writings of the prophets (syngrammata tōn prophētōn) as long as possible”2. After that, the presider “makes a verbal admonition and stimulation for the imitation of these good things”3. The whole congregation rises and prays. The celebration of the Eucharist follows.4 Like other groups of this epoch,5 Justin’s community did not regard this kind of scripture study as compulsory component of Eucharistic celebrations. The group also performed the Eucharist right after a baptism.6
According to the Acts of his Martyrdom, Justin denies knowing any other Christian group in Rome except for his own (which is obviously wrong).7 The ancient editors of a younger recension of the Acts expanded the significance of Justin’s testimony making it a statement about all Christians of Rome (which is no less absurd).8 Justin depicts his group as philosophers, open to outsiders and generous to members who did not participate in the meetings. The group reads texts, because philosophers are interested in texts.9
4.2 The Memorabilia of the Apostles
Justin’s congregation reads “the memorabilia (apomnēmoneumata) of the apostles or the writings of the prophets”.1 The latter group of texts seems to comprise parts of the Hebrew Bible besides other material like the books of Hystaspes and the Sibyl.2 Tatian mentions that those