It is clear that teaching about the Eucharist and the enactment of it were occurring prior to the earliest reference to it in the New Testament.
See also The Eucharist in the First Millennium (Amsterdam University Press, 2025).
By John Moorhead
Emeritus Professor, School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry
University of Queensland
September 2025
As far as we can tell, the celebration of the Eucharist has been central to Christian practice since its earliest days. All three synoptic Gospels describe Jesus uttering words over bread and a cup and performing actions with them at the Last Supper, and his command to do this in memory of himself has generally been taken to have inaugurated the celebration of the Eucharist. But before the Gospels were written, Paul had already provided a similar narrative in his First Letter to the Corinthians, in a passage that constitutes what is by far the most sustained account in his writings of the words and actions of Jesus. But before he wrote this letter, Paul had already delivered to the Corinthians an account of what Jesus said and did at the Supper, which he claimed to have received from the Lord (1 Cor 11:23), a two-stage process of transmission exactly paralleled in his passing on teaching on the resurrection to the same people (1 Cor 11:23; 15:3). However we are to understand Paul’s assertion that he had received instruction from the Lord concerning this matter, it is clear that teaching about the Eucharist and the enactment of it were occurring prior to the earliest reference to it in the New Testament. This circumstance raises the possibility that what we can learn about early eucharistic practice from non-biblical sources can be used to throw light on the Bible, and vice versa.
Let us consider the officials involved in the celebration of the Eucharist. It seems that leadership in the early church devolved upon people known as bishops and deacons. These were those whose qualifications were specified in the First Letter to Timothy (3:1-13), and when Paul wrote to the Philippians he began by addressing the bishops and deacons of that church (Phil 1:1; the reference to “bishops” in the plural is unexpected). It could be taken for granted by a slightly later author that wherever the apostles went they appointed bishops and deacons (First Letter of Clement, 42.4f.), and the Didache implies that leadership was in the hands of elected bishops and deacons who had been elected (15.1). While the Didache does not expressly associate these people with the enactment of the Eucharist, the First Apology of Justin Martyr describes how the Eucharist was celebrated in Rome around the middle of the second century. Bread and a cup of water, or wine mixed with water, were brought to a president, who uttered prayers and thanksgivings. All the people then said “Amen,” and deacons distributed the bread and wine and water to all who were present (Justin, Apologia Maior, 65-67). An account provided in a work known as the Apostolic Tradition that contains early material of uncertain date describes deacons bringing an offering, over which a bishop would give thanks (Apostolic Tradition, 4).
Perhaps their liturgical functions were central to the way in which people thought of the roles of bishops and deacons. This seems very clear in the case of deacons. When the Bible refers to the angels who attended Jesus after his temptation by Satan as having “ministered” to him (Matt 4:11; Mark 1:13) it uses a word that literally means “deaconed,” and the servants who filled pots with water at the wedding feast in Cana are described as “deacons” (John 2:5, 9). The role of deacons was to serve. Hence, when the twelve apostles found that serving at tables (literally “acting as deacons”) was keeping them from prayer and the ministry of the word, they appointed seven men who would carry out this task (Acts 6:1-7), and while the text does not explicitly state that the seven were made deacons, a longstanding tradition has assumed that this is what they were. It therefore made perfect sense for a word used for people who waited on tables to be used for people who stood by the table at which a bishop celebrated the Eucharist and assisted him, whether by bringing the bread and cup to the table or distributing them after the thanksgiving prayer. The use of the word “deacon” for someone who assisted a bishop at the table from which the Eucharist was administered suggests that a liturgical frame of reference could be helpful in understanding this word when it was used in the New Testament of people holding that office. After all, the New Testament elsewhere mentions angels as liturgical spirits exercising a ministry (diaconia, Heb 1:14), and a tradition in Eastern Christianity would associate the ministry of deacons with that of angels. There may be a hint of something diaconal in a phrase that occurs in the canon of the Roman mass. Of course, it is difficult to date the final form of the canon of the Eucharist that came to be used in Rome. It had certainly assumed its well-nigh definitive shape by the time of Pope Gregory the Great (590-604 CE), but it remains an open question just when it was composed. Perhaps it was the work of Pope Damasus (366-384 CE). Immediately after repeating the words Christ uttered over the bread and cup, the canon refers to “the mystery of faith” (Le Canon de la messe Romaine, 40). The expression recalls words used by the author of the First Letter to Timothy, who wrote of deacons “holding the mystery of the faith with a pure conscience” (1 Tim 3:9). Similarly, when deacons were referred to at the beginning of the second century as “deacons of the mysteries of Jesus Christ,” the word “mysteries” suggests their involvement with the Eucharist (Ignatius, To the Trallians, 2.3).
Our discussion so far has not mentioned the officials who, for most of Christian history, have generally presided, frequently alone, at celebrations of the Eucharist, those known as presbyters or priests. In early days, as evidence from the New Testament shows, unlike bishops and deacons they were thought of as being members of a group. In the New Testament they are referred to as being this (Acts 14:23; 20:17; cf. 1 Tim 5:17, Titus 1:5; Jas 5:14), and as people who could operate together to lay their hands on someone, functioning as what Paul called a presbyterion (1 Tim 4:14). This understanding is replicated in liturgical texts. A church could be thought of as being like a ship, with the bishop’s throne in the middle, the presbyterium seated around it on both sides, and the deacons giving assistance (Constitutions apostoliques, 2.57.3f.). A bishop of the fourth century had a vision in which he saw elders sitting on either side of him, while magnificently clad deacons, images of the splendour of the angels, were standing round about (Gregory of Nazianzus, Carmen 16, 1255); note the association of deacons with angels). The exercising of such a liturgical function by presbyters, while not explicitly mentioned in the New Testament, may help explain another reference to elders that occurs there. A description of heavenly worship in the last book of the Bible describes elders being seated on thrones around a throne (Rev 4:4). While there is no reason to believe that elders sat on individual thrones while the Eucharist was being celebrated, their being seated as a group around a central throne must have recalled to early readers their role in eucharistic worship.
Alongside celebrations of the Eucharist, the early church practiced what were known as agapes, or love feasts, that were frequently characterized by riotous behavior, and the problem of distinguishing between them and Eucharists is apparently insoluble. But references to agapes in the early literature can be set against Paul’s criticism of the conduct of the Corinthians when they came together (1 Cor 11:17-22). Perhaps Paul had in mind something that could elsewhere have been described as an agape, and we may speculate whether it is significant that Paul’s longest discussion of love (agape) comes shortly afterwards (1 Cor 13; it may, however, be drawing too long a bow to connect these). But as agapes fell into disuse in late antiquity, people began to forget what the word meant when applied to them, which may explain a feature of the two references to agapes in the New Testament. In both these (2 Pet 2:13; Jude 12) the text is corrupt. Perhaps copyists amended the text to try to make sense of something that could no longer be understood.
The ancient world was one in which people were very aware of distinctions between classes. These were on full display on occasions when people came together to eat, which provided both opportunities for boastful display and sources of anxiety. Whether a diner reclined in a high or low place was a matter of concern, and when the Roman author Petronius described a dinner party of astonishing vulgarity, he made much of the places which people were allocated (Satyricon, 31.8, 65.7; see further Plautus, Stichus, 492f.; Martial, Epigrams, 6.74). A preoccupation with such matters was addressed by Jesus when he counselled his followers not to sit in the best place when invited to a wedding feast, but to choose the lowest place. The host would then say “Friend, go higher,” and the modest guests would receive glory (Luke 14:7-11). A letter in the New Testament advised against telling a well-dressed person to sit in a certain place, and one who was badly dressed to stand somewhere (Jas 2:2-4). At about the time Petronius was writing, Paul placed the way in which the Corinthians celebrated the Eucharist in the context of such issues, claiming that it was not the Lord’s supper that they came together to consume. Some people ate ahead of others, and one person went hungry while another was drunk, in a way that shamed those who had nothing. It was necessary to avoid partaking unfittingly, which entailed a failure to discern the Lord’s body (1 Cor 11:10f, 27, 29). Paul’s belief that those who participated unfittingly failed to discern the Lord’s body has often been taken to refer to a kind of moral unworthiness to participate in communion, and stands at the beginning of a long tradition among Christians to doubt their worthiness to take communion; alternatively, Paul may have had in mind a failure among the Corinthians to discern the Lord’s presence in the Eucharist. But he immediately went on to tell them that, despite the diverse gifts of the Spirit that operated among them, all the believers constituted one body, and that they were the body of Christ (1 Cor 12: esp. vv. 12, 17). The repetition of the phrase “the body of Christ” is noteworthy, and suggests that the failure of the Corinthians was an inability when they came together to discern the unity of the community of which they formed a part, which Paul believed was the body of Christ. In this case, Paul may have been dealing with an issue similar to that mentioned by his contemporary Petronius, and offering a radical way of rethinking it.
The passage of Paul we have been considering raises another matter, with which we shall conclude this brief survey. What term did members of the early church use for the Eucharist? In the long history of the church this act of worship has been called by many names, and it seems impossible to tell from the New Testament what term was used for it by the first believers. As we have seen, Paul believed that when the Corinthians came together they did not consume the Lord’s supper (1 Cor 11: 20), and it is apparently on this basis that some Christians refer to what we have called the Eucharist as the Lord’s Supper. But when Paul mentioned the Lord’s supper he may not have been using a term that functioned as a synonym for the Eucharist and so could be expressed as the Lord’s Supper, but contrasting the practice of the Corinthians for each one to take their own supper, so that one was hungry while another was drunk (1 Cor 11: 21) with what would have been entailed by sharing in the supper of the Lord that they should have been celebrating together. Hence, after discussing the Eucharist Paul immediately proceeded to discuss the unity of the community (1 Cor 12). But if the earliest Christians did not refer to the Eucharist as the Lord’s Supper, what did they call it? An unbroken practice already evident in the Didache, which was written at the time the New Testament was being composed, was to call it the Eucharist, and while the usage does not occur in the New Testament, there is one piece of evidence that suggests that it would not be surprising had they done so. Later in his letter, Paul mentions the saying of “Amen” at a giving of thanks (1 Cor 14:16). As we have seen, the First Apology of Justin summarizes the verbal content of the Eucharist as prayers and thanksgivings followed by an Amen, and other evidence from the early period suggests a basic format of thanksgiving followed by an Amen. The Greek word used for “thanksgiving” is, of course, “eucharist.” There is no reason to believe that Paul had the Eucharist in mind in the last passage we have mentioned, but it expresses the rhythm known from elsewhere to have characterized eucharistic worship, and may provide indirect evidence to support that from non-biblical sources. Perhaps the word Eucharist was already being used at the time that Paul was writing in the mid-50s.
Our brief sampling of evidence suggests that scholars of the New Testament and those of early Christian liturgy have much to learn from each other. The barriers between scholars of early Christianity and those of the ancient world are higher, and could well be dismantled. A long tradition of church history approached its subject as a self-contained field of study that could be made sense of without much reference to the surrounding non-Christian world. On the other hand, students of the ancient world sometimes give the impression of disdaining any interest in Christianity. We learn from the Publisher’s Note at the beginning of the Oxford Latin Dictionary that “A Proposal that the Dictionary should be extended to include Christian Latin had been finally rejected in 1951.” In this respect the dictionary is a distinct regression from the earlier work of Lewis and Short, let alone the mammoth Thesaurus Linguae Latinae in course of publication. Scholars who cast their nets widely could have every expectation of a great catch.
References
The Apostolic Tradition: A Commentary, Paul F. Bradshaw, Maxwell E. Johnson, and L. Edward Phillips, ed. Harold W. Attridge (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002).
Le Canon de la messe Romaine: édition critique, ed. Bernard Botte (Louvain: Abbaye du Mont César, 1935).
Constitutions apostoliques, ed. and trans. Marcel Metzger (Sources chrétiennes 320, 329, 336; Paris: Editions du cerf, 1985-1986).
Didache, Ignatius, and First Letter of Clement, in Apostolic Fathers, vol. 1, ed. and trans. Bart D. Ehrman (Loeb Classical Library 24; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).
Gregory of Nazianzus, Carmen 16, ed. J.-P. Migne (Patrologia Graeca 37, cols. 1255-1258; Paris: Imprimerie Catholique, 1862).
Justin, Apologia Maior, in Iustini Martyris Apologiae pro Christianis, ed. Miroslav Marković (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005).
Martial, Epigrams, vol. 2, books 6-10, ed. and trans. D. R. Shackleton Bailey (Loeb Classical Library 95; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).
Petronius, Satyricon, ed. and trans. Michael Heseltine et al. (Loeb Classical Library 15; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1913).
Plautus, Stichus, ed. and trans. Wolfgang de Melo (Loeb Classical Library 328; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013).