Dateline had an interesting special last night that touched different views from different experts.
Gospel of John - Why no Emblems, no Bread and Wine?
by Greenpalmtreestillmine 42 Replies latest watchtower bible
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peacefulpete
How is that known to be true?
Verses 19 and 20 do not appear in many ancient manuscripts including the oldest and generally most respected. I had a discussion about this last year here but could not locate it, it had the specifics and the logic behind the dating it as a mid second century addition. It is likely that it is included in our modern Bibles without disclosing this fact BECAUSE it is the only Gospel passsage that refers to the sacrament of eating the flesh and blood of the godman and is then an essential support for the Church tradition.
I agree with Leolaia, that the bread was used as a symbol of knowledge or whatever, (even in Luke 22 preceeding verses) but since Paul was not a Pharisee, (this detail added to attract a Jewish audience) I don't think this element had any influence upon Paul. Also, the Jewish meals never resembled the covenant sealing and sacrament symbolism that the Pauline visionary meal had. Paul was creating a new cult after the model of those mystery cults he was familiar with, his casual interest in Jewish apocalypticism merely provided a new spin.
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Narkissos
Verses 19 and 20 do not appear in many ancient manuscripts including the oldest and generally most respected.
Actually (1) only the second part of (Luke 22) v. 19, and v. 20, are missing (2) in one Greek manuscript ("D" = Codex Bezae) which is not the oldest (5th century) and several Latin manuscripts. I.e., in the Western text.
The shorter (Western) lectio of D reads as follows:
Then he took the cup, and after giving thanks he said, "Take this and divide it among yourselves; for I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes." Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body."
So in this Western version (which is not necessarily the earliest, and probably not earlier than Mark's version) there is an Eucharist, but in the reverse order (cup / bread), and only the bread is given an explicit Eucharistic meaning ("this is my body"). -
XQsThaiPoes
Anyone notice that in real life (really happened instead of what the churches teach happened) most of this stuff was made up after the fact by adding to the bible. How competent is the Holy Spirit to allow so much "apostasy" in a relatively short time? Instead of these cults breaking off from a core group as the churches claim each congregation had its own understanding to begin with. I wonder how can people defend the Christianity, and attack the Watchtowers doctrine when both are just as fabricated. How can one fabrication be holy and the other unholy when both came about from the same methods, and when the watchtowers seems a lil more s crupulous ?
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Leolaia
I saw Brown's book and was appalled at the wild and obviously unhistorical and erroneous claims that were being made.
The false etymology of Middle English sangrail "Holy Grail" from a supposed Old French sang real "royal blood," with san graal "Holy Grail" (and the whole legend surrounding it referring to a cup or bowl) arising simply through a typographical error, is linguistically specious and ignores the whole early history of the Grail legend. Indeed it was the other way around: only in late medieval texts is an association between the two expressions made, while earlier texts only refer to a "saint graal" or just "graal" as the object sought by the knights, and these early texts clearly describe the "graal" as the platter or cup that captured Christ's "blood" (Middle French sanc, not sang) on the cross. The later association of sangrail and sancgrail with "blood" is thus due to this crucifixion tradition, and not to any fictitious "bloodline", which is utterly foreign to the thought such writers. The term sangraal, stipulated by Brown and Baigent-Leigh-Lincoln as the original form as a sang-raal compound, first appears in English (it does not have this form in French), as the transliteration of Middle French Saint Graal, in the works of Thomas Malory (c. A.D. 1450-1485) who spelled the term variously as "sangrayle", "sangrayll", "sancgreal", and yes, even "seynt Graal" (cf. Le Morte Arthur 10; Merlin 11.32; Arthur II. xi. 88). It is the "sancgreal" form that Malory punningly connected with the sanc "blood" of Christ; again, not as a "bloodline" but as the "Grail of Blood," the grail that held Christ's blood. The older French sources simply do not have a word "sangrayle," and neither do they refer to the sought-after "Grail" as the sanc real "royal blood" -- far from it, we always find allusions to the graal "Grail," le saint graal, le saint vaissel, la saint escule, la saint calisce, and so forth. In these sources we do not read of a san graal either, saint "holy" is not spelled san to my knowledge, at least in the Old French sources I have seen.
The older French works that Malory himself used only referred to "le saint graal" or just "graal" and even earlier English works about the Holy Grail attested the word also in the form "grail" a century before Malory introduced the term "sangrail"; Arthur and Merlin, written around A.D. 1330, thus says: "Til he wer born e greal" (2222, Kolbing). The Vulgate Cycle of legends on Merlin, Lancelot, and Arthur, dating to around A.D. 1250, included the "Estoire del Saint Graal" and the "Queste del Saint Graal", and these poetic stories leave no doubt that the "Grail" referred to a holy relic, the vessel of the Last Supper used by Joseph of Arimathea to catch Christ's blood. The first name given to the Grail in the Estoire del Saint Graal is escuele "bowl" which emphasizes the object's status as a relic. During the crucifixion, Joseph of Arimathea searched for "ces choses a quoi il avoit touchie corporelement en sa vie," the things Jesus had touched during his life, and found the bowl from which Jesus ate during the Last Supper (1:23-25). And then Joseph went to the cross and when he came to the body, "si concuelli le degout du sanc com il en peut avoir, si le mist en l'escuele, puis reporta l'escuele en sa maison, par qui Dieux fist en moustra puis maintes virtus et ne Terre de Promission et en maintes autres terres", he collected what he could of the dripping blood and put it in the bowl, and went home with the bowl, through which God later made his virtue manifest in the Promised Land and in many other lands (1:25), that is, as a holy relic. The story then goes on to relate three visions of Joseph regarding the blood, which invoke the mysteries of the Eucharist, and the blood of the calisce "chalice" being linked also with Christ's body and the bread partaken at Communion (1:86-88). Again, we are dealing with the blood shed by Christ -- not a "bloodline". The object referred to as the "holy bowl" and "holy chalice," is also called the "holy vessel": "Mais quant il virent la sainte escuele, si dist Nasciens ke tout chou qu'il avoit veu estoit noiens a veir encontre chel saint vaissiel," but when they saw the holy bowl, Nascien said that everything he had seen was nothing compared to this holy vessel" (1:163).
The Vulgate Cycle is itself dependent on the "Roman de l'Estoire dou Graal" by Robert de Boron (also called "Joseph of Arimathea"), written between A.D. 1190-1200. This is 250 years before Malory. And here we still find the notion of "grail" being a holy relic, without any whiff of a hint that a "bloodline" is really meant. The relic is first called a "chalise" in the text: "Cist veissiaus ou men sanc meis, quant de men cors le requeillis, calices apelez sera," this vessel in which you put my blood when you collected it from my body, shall be called a chalice (Joseph, 907-909). In addition to being called "vessel" and "chalice", the object is then given a third name:
'Et queu sera la renommée / Dou veissel qui tant vous agree? / Dites nou, comment l'apele on / Quant on le nomme par son non?' / Petrus respont: 'Nou quier celer: / Qui a droit non le vourra nummer / Par droit Graal l?apelera, / Car nus le Graal ne verra, / Ce croi je, qu?il ne li agree: / A touz ceus pleist de la contree, / A touz agree et abelist / En li vooir hunt cil deslist / Qui avec lui puennt durer / Et de sa compeignie user, / Autant unt d?eise cum poisson / Quant en sa main le tient uns hon / Et de sa mein puet eschaper / Et en la grant iaue aler noër.? / Quant cil l?oient, sel greent bien. / Autre non ne greent il rien / Fors tant que Graal eit a non; / Par droit agreer s?i doit on (Joseph, 2653?74).
Translated: " 'And what will be the new name / Of the vessel that pleases you so? / Tell us, what name do they use / When they call it by its name?? / Petrus replies: ?I will not keep this from you: / Whoever wishes to use its rightful name / Will call it the Grail, / For none shall see the Grail, / I believe, unless it agrees with him: / It brings satisfaction to all in the area, / It brings grace and beauty, / All those delight in the sight of it / Who are able to stay with it / And benefit from its company, / They are content as a fish / That manages to escape / From a man?s hand / And swim away into open waters.? / When they hear this, they agree. / No other name pleases them / But that its name should be Grail; / It is right that one should be satisfied by it." Here we have a folk etymology of graal "grail" from the verbs graer, agreer "satisfy, please", with no hint of a fictitious "bloodline" meaning.
The Grail legend itself was launched by Chrétien de Troyes, who wrote "Le Roman Perceval ou Le Conte del Graal" around A.D. 1175. This story stands much closer to the original Celtic legends (cf. the Welsh Mabinogion epic, the Preiddeu Annwfn, etc.) than the later romances of Robert de Boron, the Vulgate Cycle, and Malory. Chrétien described the adventures of Perceval who, journeying home to see his mother, stayed at the castle of the Fisher King and witnessed a procession of servants carrying a "lance that bleeds" and a Grail: "Once she had entered with this grail (graal) that she held, so great a radiance appeared that the candles lost their brilliance just as the stars do at the rising of the sun and moon... The grail was of pure refined gold and was set with many precious stones, the richest and most costly in sea or earth" (Conte del Graal, 2.43-46). Here is the earliest legend about the Grail in the Arthurian cycle, and clearly the Grail refers to a physical object. Interestingly, Chrétien refers to it as a "graal" (instead of le saint graal) and elsewhere mentions it holding a boar's head -- suggesting that it was something of a platter rather than a chalice. The larger part of the story relates how Perceval, Gawain, and others sought to find the Grail, but the origin of the Grail is never clearly explained; the grail is considered more of a magical than a "holy" thing, nor was Christ's blood mentioned with it or even hinted to be a container of Christ's blood. The "Continuations" of Chrétien's work develop these themes more explicitly and more fully Christianize the tales into stories relating to relics of the crucifixion of Jesus. But an examination of the Celtic sources that underlie the story shows that the Grail originated in pagan tradition and had nothing at all to do with Jesus. In the Welsh epic poem Preiddeu Annfwn, King Arthur sailed to the Land of the Dead to steal the "cauldron of the head of Annfwn," a powerful magical talisman which (like the Christianized "grail") was a metal container endowed with magical power. Another Celtic tale related the story of a pauper named Peronnik who learns from a journeying knight that two magical objects are found in a nearby castle: a diamond lance that destroys everything it strikes, and a golden basin, the contents of which would cure all ills. Like the knights of Arthurian legend, Peronnik then sets forth on a quest to find these miraculous objects. In the similar Welsh Mabinogion epic, the Fisher King is a lord encountered by the Welsh warrior Peredur (= Perceval in canonical Arthurian lore), who taught the youth etiquette and fighting techniques, whereas Peredur's uncle guarded a bleeding lance which was used to slay Peredur's cousin (which later became the spear that gashed the side of Christ in the "First Continuation" of Le Conte del Graal, written about A.D. 1200) and a silver vessel that held his cousin's severed head (which later became the Grail that held the boar's head and later a wafer in Le Conte). We can thus see that the Grail from the very beginning referred to a vessel, became associated with Christ only later on, and originated as a magical object in Celtic myth. The interpretation of the Grail as the bloodline of Christ is entirely foreign to the entire early Grail tradition, and itself depends on a very late form of the "le saint graal" as sangraal.
As for the etymology of Old French graal, which was first used in the cycle of Arthurian legends by Chrétien to refer to a platter, it is generally derived from Medieval Latin gradalis "shallow bowl, basin" (< Latin cratella "small bowl" < Greek krater). We may note, for instance, that Helinand, abbot of Froidmont, wrote in A.D. 1215 that "gradalis and also gradale means a broad and shallow bowl, in which sumptuous foods together with their sauces are served to the rich, gradually, one piece after the other, in various arrangements. It is also known by the name graalz in common speech, because it is pleasing ( grata ) to those who eat out of it, either for its attractive appearance, for it is of silver or other precious material, or because of its contents, i.e. the manifold arrangement of delicious foods" (cited in Vincent de Beauvais, Speculum Historiaie). This description is perfectly consistent with the earliest description of the Grail in Chrétien. In Old Aquitanian French, the word was phonetically grazala (preserving the original consonant), and the Burgundian dialect also allegedly ellided medial consonants (graal < grazal). The word is first attested in A.D. 873 in the will of Count Eberhard von Treviso, the grandfather of the German King Henry I, who left his son Adalardus V, among other items, three silver garalis. In another copy of the same will, the word calix (< chalice) is used for garalis; other wills use gradalis interchangeably with scutella, which later became escuele "vessel" (note again the loss of the intermedial consonant). We also find in A.D. 1010 an instance of gradal in Old Catalan.
The speculation by Baigent-Leigh-Lincoln and Brown is thus lacking in evidentiary support.
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Leolaia
JC anon...It is part of the Gospel of John's thoroughgoing attempt to identify the person of Jesus with the message.....as he is himself the Word (Logos). Thus while Matthew 4:4 designates "every word that comes from the mouth of God" as spiritual food, John makes Jesus himself as the incarnate Word the one who is consumed. This Logos idea comes lock-stock-and-barrel from Philo of Alexandria, a pre-Christian Jewish philosopher, who also identified this heavenly Word with manna:
"He calls it manna, that is, the divine Word (logos), oldest of beings" (Philo, Worse Attack the Better, 118)
"The food of the soul is not earthly but heavenly, as we shall find abundantly demonstrated in Scripture. 'Behold I rain upon you bread from heaven...' (Exodus 16:4). You shall see that the soul is fed not with things of earth, which are perishable, but with such words as God shall have poured like rain out of that supernal and pure region of life to which the prophet has given the title of 'heaven' " (Philo, Allegorical Interpretations 3:162).
In rabbinical literature, the Torah is likened to the manna which is eaten by the Israelites and "incorporated into their bodies" (Mekhilta de R. Ishmael, Wayhi 1).
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JCanon
Hi Leolaia:
I know it seems convenient to claim that NT references to OT ritual related to Christ was a late invention to recover, I suppose, some disappointments of the Jewish Christians regarding the second comnig or something.
But the idea of the Christ being the sacrificial lamb, the whole concept of Passover was already in JEWISH RITUAL. Even the WAVE OFFERINGS of barley and wheat, with the second wave offering WITH LEAVEN from the homes, in contrast with the first that was the unleavened barley associated with UNLEAVENED BREAD of Passover.
This contrast between leavened and unleaved WAVE OFFERINGS, with the SECOND being WITH LEAVEN represents the first and second coming of Christ in the flesh, first sinless as a sacrifice, second, obviously as an ordinary man. This theme is carried out through the NT references for the second coming and supported by OT references that the king-priest Melchizdekian second coming would be of an ordinary man, even one with many sins as Zechariah 3 clearly shows Joshua/priest becoming a king with befouled garments that need to be replaced, those garments representing his many forgiven past sins.
So, sorry, a better informed Biblicalist who sees the consistency between messianic reference in the OT compared with that merely expounded upon by the NT can't be considered a late invention by outsiders.
That is, I can confirm the second coming as different from the first via the OT. THE BREAD of the second wave offering is WITH LEAVEN, unlike the first. Is this an insignfiicant meaning for you? Regardless it's OT reference. Bread means the BODY. BREAD without leaevn clearly a sinless body, bread WITH leaven one of an ordinary sinner.
Sorry, the NT references to the Messiah are well-founded in the OT tradition. Unless you're missing something?
Thanks for your commentary, but it's not sufficiently substantiated.
JC
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Greenpalmtreestillmine
I sincerely thank everyone for their thoughts. My feeling is that the writer of the Gospel of John must have been opposed to the bread and wine ceremony. This ceremony was too important to the Christian congregation in Paul's day for the writer to not include it in his Gospel just because the Synoptics had included it already. Especially if, as many Christians believe, the Gospel of John was written by the Apostle John himself, an eyewitness to the events of that night. Of all the particulars of that night, surely the covenant agreed upon would have been the high point of the evening! Yet it is missing from the Gospel of John.
The question most Christians need to consider is: do the Synoptics represent the true Jesus or does the Gospel of John represent the true Jesus? Also, Mark's avoidance of the birth narratives coincides with Paul's warning of not looking to geneologies and the stories old women tell.
We Christians need to sift out the improbable from the probable, in my opinion.
Sabrina
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XQsThaiPoes
Amen. People need to basicaly treat the bible as what it is a book writen by ancient men that knew very little about anything, and may have not even have been writen by the bible characters themselves. The names of the writers were not added until much later BTW so John may not be by John and let lone be apostle John or John of Patmos writer of Revalations.
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peacefulpete
Thanks narkissos for correcting my statement, i was relying upon memory at work again. However it is of serious note to find that D and nearly all early Latin manuscripts do not contain 19b-20 (including 2nd century ones). Furthur the nonLukan vocabulary found only in this passage betrays a later hand. Also Luke nowhere else refers to Jesus death as sacrificial. It seems that the words written by "Luke" were simply a reference to his betrayal, that is his body would be broken at the hand of a betrayer, in the image of many legendary heros and saviors of legend. For these and documentary reasons many top scholars (including Westcott and Hort and present scholars like Bart Ehrman) consider 19b-20 as late additions.