Paul and Jesus

We have every reason to take him at his word. Though it might sound strange to us that anyone would claim to have received by revelation a narrative of Jesus’ last meal with his disciples years after the event, Paul considered that sort of thing a normal manifestation of his prophetic connection with the Spirit of Christ. One of the gifts of the spirit was a “word of knowledge,” and such a revelation could apply to the past, the present, or the future. In the same way Paul claims to have received a detailed scenario of precisely what will happen in the future when Jesus returns. He prefaces his revelation with the claim “For this I declare to you by the word of the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:15). Paul says that he hears from Jesus. To speculate as to where Paul derived the ideas he claims were given to him by revelation is to enter into his personal psychology to a degree to which we have no access. To try to do this would be outside the realm of historical inquiry.

Since Paul’s account is the earliest we have of the Last Supper, we have to be very careful in reading the gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke, all of which record a similar account but were written decades later. In other words we can’t begin with Mark, our earliest gospel, and assume that Jesus actually said these words at the Last Supper, and then go to Paul, who comes after Jesus, as if he were just echoing the primary account. Things are precisely the other way around. We have every reason to believe that Mark got his tradition of the words of Jesus at the Last Supper from Paul. Matthew and Luke, who then use Mark as a source, also repeat what Paul had said decades earlier.¹⁹

One way of sharpening this inquiry is to ask two questions that take us beyond Paul and back to Jesus. Is it historically probable that Jesus held a Last Supper with his disciples on the night before his death? Is it historically probable that Jesus uttered words about the bread being his body and the cup of wine his blood?

For the first question we have two independent ancient sources: Mark (who is echoed by Matthew and Luke) and the gospel of John. Both report that Jesus ate such a meal and it is reasonable to assume such is the case. For the second question Paul is our only source reporting that Jesus spoke of the bread as his body and the wine as his blood—assuming that Mark, Matthew, and Luke derive their accounts from him. John reports an intimate meal Jesus had with his disciples but never says anything about words such as these spoken over bread and wine. It is difficult to imagine John, who was aware of the other gospels, leaving such an important tradition out of his gospel except by intention. His silence is essentially his “no” vote on the historical reliability of our single source—Paul.

But there is another reason for doubting the historical validity of Paul’s account. Other than Paul, our earliest record of the words spoken at a Christian Eucharist celebration over the bread and the wine come from the Didache, mentioned previously, and they have no correspondence whatsoever to the words of Jesus that Paul reports:

You shall give thanks as follows: First, with respect to the cup: “We give you thanks, our Father, for the holy vine of David, your child, which you made known to us through Jesus your child. To you be the glory forever.” And with respect to the fragments of bread: “We give you thanks our Father, for the life and knowledge that you made known to us through Jesus your child. To you be the glory forever.” (Didache 9:2–3)²⁰

This precious text provides us with clear evidence that early Christian communities were gathering together for a common thanksgiving meal called the Eucharist, blessing bread and wine, but with no connection whatsoever to the Pauline words associated with the Lord’s Supper that became the norm within Christianity. It is also noteworthy that both Jesus and David are equated in this prayer as “your child,” showing the fully human understanding of Jesus as a bloodline descendant of David and thus heir of his royal dynasty. As we have seen, the Didache as a whole shows no influence of Paul’s teachings or traditions. It fits well with the broader picture we have seen based on the Q source, the letter of James, and the scattered texts that we can identify from later Jewish-Christian sources.