The Last Supper: What Did Jesus Say?

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The Last Supper: What Did Jesus Say?

By Rowland Croucher and others ⋅ January 4, 2003 ⋅ Post a comment

From:  (Nigel B. Mitchell)
Newsgroups: aus.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Denominations
Date: Sat, 24 Oct 1998 01:53:18 GMT

In <3631fc5e.183447720>,  (Able)
wrote:

> The death of Judas would be a good one. I have done quite a bit of my
>own research on it.I never like to look at these things with
>Christians however, surprisingly a lot of them are on your side as far
>as trying to prove the Bible is a load of cobblers. Or more
>specifically they use the fact that there are "contradictions" to
>establish a case for something they want to do, that the Bible says
>don't do quite clearly.

Here is another for your collection of Bible "contradictions".

Exactly what words did Jesus say over the bread and wine at the last
supper? We have four accounts
Matthew 26:26-28
Mark 14:22-25
Luke 22:19-22
1 Corinthians 11:24-25

All of these have slightly different words in the mouth of Jesus as he
distributed bread and wine. The differences are greater in the
original Greek, as most English translations try to bring some harmony
to the accounts, but even so I am not aware of any English translation
of the scriptures which has Jesus saying exactly the same words, in
the same order, in every account of the Last Supper. 

We also have an account in John 13, where the words Jesus used over
the bread and wine are not recorded at all. The author of the fourth
gospel either did not know the words, or did not think they were
important. On the other hand, none of the other authors thought the
"foot washing" was important enough to record - if they knew about it.

Those of us who believe that the Bible was written by divinely
inspired fallible human beings who recorded their understanding of
what was important about Jesus, his teachings and ministry, would have
no problem with the fact that these four accounts contain different
words. The essential meaning of the event is unchanged.

BUT - those who think that the Bible is "infallible" must exmplain the
differences. Did the last supper take place four times? Otherwise, a
maximum of one author "infallibly" recorded the words of Jesus, and
the other three ( I would say more likely all four) recorded the
general sense of [what the early Church understood to be] his words
and intentions.

This is, and always has been, a vital issue, because the re-enactment
of the Last Supper in what came to be the Eucharist/Mass/ Holy
Communion, and the understanding of what takes place and what it means
when we cenebrate this sacrament,  is at the heart of Christian
worship, and tragically one of the issues which divides us into
denominations. 

Surely, if the early Church had been aware of the exact words that
Jesus used, they would have been careful to record them accurately.

Cheers

N+

Nigel B. Mitchell