IX.
“1. Now with regard to the Thanksgiving, thus give ye thanks.
“2. First concerning the cup:—We give thanks to thee, our Father, for the holy vine[1] of David thy servant, which thou didst make known to us through Jesus thy servant;[2] to thee be the glory for ever.
“3. And concerning the broken bread:—We give thanks to thee, our Father, for the life and knowledge which thou didst make known to us through Jesus thy servant; to thee be the glory for ever.
“4. As this broken bread was (once) scattered on the face of the mountains and, gathered together, became one,[3] even so may thy Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into thy kingdom; for thine is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ for ever.
“5. But let no one eat or drink of your Thanksgiving (Eucharist), but they who have been baptized into the name of the Lord; for concerning this the Lord hath said. Give not that which is holy unto the dogs.[4]
X.
“1. Then, after being filled, thus give ye thanks:—
“2. We give thanks to thee, holy Father, for thy holy name, which thou hast caused to dwell in our hearts, and for the knowledge and faith and immortality which thou didst make known to us through Jesus Christ thy servant; to thee be the glory for ever.
“3. Thou Almighty Sovereign, didst create all things for thy name’s sake, and food and drink thou didst give to men for enjoyment, that they should give thanks unto thee; but to us thou didst of thy grace give spiritual food and drink and life eternal through thy servant.
“4. Before all things, we give thee thanks that thou art mighty; to thee be the glory for ever.
“5. Remember, Lord, thy church to deliver it from all evil, and to perfect it in thy love, and gather it together from the four winds,[5] the sanctified, unto thy kingdom, which thou hast prepared for it; for thine is the power and the glory for ever.
“6. Come grace, and pass this world away. Hosanna to the God of David! If any one is holy, let him come. If any one is not, let him repent. Maranatha.[6] Amen.
“But allow the prophets to give thanks as much as they will.”
From a subsequent section, ch. xiv. 1, we learn that the Eucharist was on Sunday:—“Now when ye are assembled together on the Lord’s day of the Lord, break bread and give thanks, having first confessed your transgressions, so that your sacrifice may be pure.”
The above, like the uninterpolated Lucan account, places the cup first and has no mention of the body and blood of Christ. But in this last and other respects it contrasts with the other synoptic and with the Pauline accounts. The cup is not the blood of Jesus, but the holy vine of David, revealed through Jesus; and the holy vine can but signify the spiritual Israel, the Ecclesia or church or Messianic Kingdom, into which the faithful are to be gathered.
The one loaf, as in Paul, symbolizes the unity of the ecclesia, but the cup and bread, given for enjoyment, are symbols at best of the spiritual food and drink of the life eternal given of grace by the Almighty Father through his servant (lit. boy) Jesus. The bread and wine are indeed an offering to God of what is his own, pure because offered in purity of heart; but they are not interpreted of the sacrifice of Jesus’ body broken on the cross, or of his blood shed for the remission of sin. It is not, as in Paul, a meal commemorative of Christ’s death, nor connected with the Passover, as in the Synoptics. Least of all is it a sacramental eating of the flesh and drinking of the blood of Jesus, a perpetual renewal of kinship, physical and spiritual, with him. The teaching rather breathes the atmosphere of the fourth gospel, which sets the Last Supper before the feast of the Passover (xiii. 1), and pointedly omits Christ’s institution of the Eucharist, substituting for it the washing of his disciples’ feet. The blessing of the Bread and Cup, as an incident in a feast of Christian brotherhood, is all that the Didache has in common with Paul and the Synoptists. The use of the words “after being filled,” in x. 1, implies that the brethren ate heartily, and that the cup and bread formed no isolated episode. The Baptized alone are admitted to this Supper, and they only after confession of their sins. Every Sunday at least they are to celebrate it. A prophet can “in the Spirit appoint a table,” that is, order a Lord’s Supper to be eaten, whenever he is warned by the Spirit to do so. But he must not himself partake of it—a very practical rule. The prophets are to give thanks as they like at these “breakings of bread,” without being restricted to the prayers here set forth. In xv. 3 the overseers or bishops and deacons, though their functions are less spiritual than administrative and economic, are allowed to take the place of the prophets and teachers. The phrase used is λειτουγεῖν τὴν λειτουργίαν, “to liturgize the liturgy.” This word “liturgy” soon came to connote the Eucharist. The prophets who normally preside over the Suppers are called “your high-priests,” and receive from the faithful the first-fruits of the winepress and threshing-floor, of oxen and sheep, and of each batch of new-made bread, and of oil. Out of these they provide the Suppers held every Lord’s day, offering them as “a pure sacrifice.” Bishops and deacons hold a subordinate place in this document; but the contemporary Epistle of Clement of Rome attests that these bishops “had offered the gifts without blame and holily.” The word “liturgy” is also used by Clement.
Pliny’s Letter (Epist. 96), written A.D. 112 to the emperor Trajan, about the Christians of Bithynia, attests that on a fixed day, stato die (no doubt Sunday), they met before dawn and recited antiphonally a hymn “to Christ as to a god.” They then separated, but met again later to partake of a meal, which, however, was of an ordinary and innocent character. Pliny regarded their meal as identical in character with the common meals of hetairiae, i.e. the trade-gilds or secret societies, which were then, as now, often inimical to the government. Even benefit societies were feared and forbidden by the Roman autocrats, and the “dominical suppers” of the Christians were not likely to be spared. Pliny accordingly forbade them in Bithynia, and the renegade Christians to whom he owed his information gave them up. These suppers included an Eucharist; for it was because the faithful ate in the latter of the flesh and blood of the Son of God that the charge of devouring children was made against them. If, then, this afternoon meal did not include it, Pliny’s remark that their food was ordinary and innocent is unintelligible.
Ignatius, about A.D. 120, in his letter to the Ephesians, defines the one bread broken in the Eucharist as a “drug of immortality, and antidote that we should not die, but live for ever in Jesus Christ.” He also rejects as invalid any Eucharist not held “under the bishop or one to whom he shall have committed it.” For the Christian prophet has disappeared, and with him the custom of holding Eucharists in private dwellings.
In the Epistle to Diognetus, formerly assigned to Justin Martyr, we read (v. 7) that “Christians have in vogue among themselves a table common, yet not common” (i.e. unclean). In Justin’s first apology (c. 140) we have two detailed accounts of the Eucharist, of which the first, in ch. 65, describes the first communion of the newly baptized:—
“After we have thus washed the person who has believed and conformed we lead him to the brethren so called, where they are gathered together, to offer public prayer both for ourselves and for the person illuminated, and for all others everywhere, earnestly, to the end that having learned the truth we may be made worthy to be found not only in our actions good citizens, but guardians of the things enjoined.
“We salute one another with a kiss at the end of the prayers. Then there is presented to the president of the brethren bread and a cup of water (and of a mixture,)[7] and he having taken it sends up praise and glory to the father of all things by the name of the Son and Holy Spirit, and he offers at length thanksgiving (eucharistia) for our having been made worthy of these things by him. But when he concludes the prayer and thanksgiving all the people present answer with acclamation ‘Amen.’ But the word ‘Amen’ in Hebrew signifies ‘so be it.’ And when the president has given thanks, and all the people have so answered, those who are called by us deacons distribute to each of those present, for them to partake of the bread (and wine)[8] and water, for which thanks have been given, and they carry portions away to those who are not present. And this food is called by us Eucharistia, and of it none may partake save those who believe our teachings to be true and have been washed in the bath which is for remission of sin and rebirth, and who so live as
