The Lost Supper: Revisiting Passover and the Origins of the Eucharist

What did Jesus intend when he spoke the words, “This is my body”? The Lost Supper argues that Jesus’ words and actions at the Last Supper presupposed an already existing Passover ritual in which the messiah was represented by a piece of bread: Jesus was not instituting new symbolism but using an existing symbol to speak about himself. Drawing on both second temple and early Rabbinic sources, Matthew Colvin places Jesus’ words in the Upper Room within the context of historically attested Jewish thought about Passover. The result is a new perspective on the Eucharist: a credible first-century Jewish way of thinking about the Last Supper and Lord’s Supper— and a sacramentology that is also at work in the letters of the apostle Paul. Such a perspective gives us the historical standpoint to correct Christian assumptions, past and present, about how the Eucharist works and how we ought to celebrate it.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1 The Historical Project Chapter 2 The Passover Background Chapter 3 Evidence from Jews and Greeks Chapter 4 Layers of Meaning Chapter 5 Mechanics and Misinterpretations Chapter 6 Rereading John 6 Chapter 7 The Festal Meal in Corinth Chapter 8 Experiencing the Lord's Supper Today

About the Author :
Matthew Colvin is a presbyter in the Reformed Episcopal Church.

Review :
Matthew Colvin has written an outstanding study of the Lord's Supper. Deploying a vast knowledge of ancient Rabbinic and biblical sources, and of modern scholarly literature, he argues that at the Last Passover Supper Jesus redefines an existing bread rite to identify himself as Israel's long-awaited Messiah. Not content with tracing origins, he explains the theological consequences of seeing the Last Supper through ancient Jewish eyes, rather than through the lenses of Aristotelian metaphysics or ancient semiotics. There is some dynamite hidden in these carefully argued pages, and I hope Colvin's book receives the wide readership and lively discussion it deserves. It has become fashionable to find the roots of the Last Supper in the many other meals of Jesus together with the Roman Symposium. Drawing on more recent studies on the Jewish Passover in the Second Temple period, and the arguments of Maurice Casey on the Aramaic that may well underlie much of St. Mark's Gospel, Matthew Colvin revisits the earlier studies of Eisler, Daube and Jeremias, corrects them in the light of new evidence, and cogently argues for the Passover as the backdrop to the origin and understanding of the Last Supper narratives and the Lord's Supper of the Church. Those concerned with Eucharistic origins will need to engage with Colvin's book.