SOURCE (TRADITION) CRITICISMNAME/S:

When doing tradition criticism, we are interested in seeing how a text or tradition has developed through the course of time. For this exercise, we will focus on the tradition of the Lord’s Supper.

The first thing to recognize is that Jesus and his disciples are celebrating a Passover meal together, a tradition based on the Passover described in Exodus 12.

  • Where will you look for information about the Passover in pre-Christian Jewish practice? Check the footnotes in your Bible. Unfortunately, their is not much in the OT which explicitly talks about how one was supposed to celebrate Passover. Here is a point when you might want to turn to something like the Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible and look up “Passover” in order to get a better idea of what is known.Particularly relevant for this study, the modern Passover ritual (e.g., see: comparison to the first century ritual, is accurate in having four “cups” of wine celebrated and three matza (unleavened bread).

Do a quick synoptic underlining of Matthew, Mark and Luke.(NB: You may do this work using the English translations I have provided, but they are not a substitute for a comparison of the Greek!) It should become immediately obvious that Luke is quite a bit different from Matthew and Mark.

Since we are interested in all the traditions about the Lord’s Supper, look at the passage from 1Corinthians 11:23-25. Recall that Paul’s letters are the earliest documents we have in the NT. (1Corinthians is dated in the early 50’s CE.) Using your color coding, indicate any parallels in 1Corinthians to any of the gospels.

  • What do you discover to be the key similarities and differences?
    Common to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and 1Cor:
    Common to Matthew and Mark alone:
    Unique to Luke:
    Common to Luke and 1 Cor:
  • Look at the critical apparatus for Luke 22.17-20. What do you find?
  • What is the διαθήκη of which Jesus speaks? Why do Paul and Luke call it a “new” one? (Hint: look for “new and covenant” or “καινος and διαθήκη” in the LXX.)

Note that a passage from John 6 has also been included.

  • How does this passage relate? Is it truly part of the tradition of the Lord’s Supper and therefore properly included at this point?

Also included is chapter 9 of the Didache, an early Christian work which dates from perhaps as early as 100 CE.

  • What information does this text provide which might help us better understand what we find in the other texts?

We have before us now six different passages which reflect how the tradition of the Lord’s Supper was understood or practiced.

  • In terms of the development of the tradition, do you think that bread or wine was first?
  • How similar is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11.26 to what Jesus says in Mark 14.25, Matthew 26.29, and Luke 22.18? John 6.54b? Didache 9.4?

Finally, having worked with the relationship between the sources, we want to begin to do a bit of redaction criticism.

  • Very briefly, what is the theological significance or a key theme of this meal according to each tradition? That is, how did each author edit = redact the account to highlight some particular concern?
    Matthew:
    Mark:
    Luke:
    John:
    1 Cor:
    Didache: