Eucharist and Lord's Supper

EUCHARIST AND LORD'S SUPPER 69
originally put together with no other motive than of recording exactly
what our Lord did and said at that supper, regardless of its 'point' for any
later situation. It is pure recollection, or it would never have retained those
words 'Do this for the re-calling of Me' over the broken bread, absolutely
necessary at that point on that oneoccasion, and absolutely superfluous on any
other.
Nevertheless, the historian is entitled to press the theologian a little
further yet. Those superfluous words 'Do this for the re-calling of Me' are
in the text of 1 Cor. xi. 24 for one of two possible reasons: either because
they are true, they were actually spoken; or else because someone-a jew
familiar with chabUrah practice-has deliberately (and quite brilliantly)
thought himself back into the circumstances which could only have
occurred on that oneoccasion. The hypothesis of accidental elaboration in
good faith is certainly excluded. But what of deliberate invention?
Ancient inventors of legends were not as a rule so ingenious. But in any
case the theory that at Jerusalcm, in the society of Peter and those other
ten witnesses who had been present at the supper, an entire fabrication
could gain credence and be foisted off on S. Paul without their connivance
seems altogether too fantastic to be discussed. And if all those who
actually were present at the supper were party to a conspiracy to deceive,
then there never was any means of convicting them of falsehood, either for
S. Paul or for the modern student.
Those christians, however, who may feel bound to defend this hypothesis
ought first to address themselves to three questions, which so far as I
know (and I think I have read all the relevant literature) they have never
hitherto faced seriously in all that they have written either in England or
abroad. (I) How did these orthodox jewish-christians first come to associate
their absolutely normal chabUrah supper so specially with the idea of a
death, an idea \vhieh is utterly remote from all connection with the chabUrah
meal in judaism? (2) If their chaMirah meeting was exactly like that
of dozens of other clzabur8th, and had originally no special connection with
the last supper of Jesus, why did it first come to be called 'the Lord's
supper', and in what sense did they first come to suppose that it was
specially 'His'? (3) How did these exceptionally pious jewsfirst come to hit
on the idea of drinking human blood (even in type or figure)-to a jew
the last conceivable religious outrage-as the sign of a 'New Covenant'
with a God, Who, with whatever new understanding of His character and
purpose, was still unhesitatingly identified with the Jehovah of the Old
Testament?l Indeed, could any authority less than known and certain
1 In saying that lib~ral speculation 'has not seriously faced' these questions, I do
not mean that they have not recognised their existence, but that they have not as yet
produced any answers worthy of the name. Dr. Hunkin, for instance, expends a
series of fifteen-no Jess!-accumulated 'conjectures' in surmounting the third
Cop. cit. pp. 18-20). The decisive point is passed thus: 'It was an easy step to take the
wine as representing the Lord's blood; not indeed a step that would have been