The Christian Supper: Better Understanding James 2:1-6; 1 Cor. 11:17-34 & Eph. 5:3-20

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*With specialized research interests in the social world of early Christianity, Dennis E. Smith is a recognized authority on ancient Greco-Roman meal customs. He has maintained throughout his career an active research interest in various aspects of the study of Christian origins.

B.A., Abilene Christian University
M.A., Abilene Christian University
M.Div., Princeton Theological Seminary
Th.D., Harvard University Divinity School 

Dennis E. Smith writes,

"Whenever they met as a church, early Christians regularly ate a meal together. In this they were no different from other religious people in their world: for when any group of people in the ancient Mediterranean world met for social or religious purposes, their gatherings tended to be centered on a common meal or banquet."

"It did not matter whether it was a social or religious occasion; nor what the ethnic group might be, whether Jewish or Greek or some other ethnic group; nor what the social class might be. If it were a special occasion, whether religious, social, or political, more often than not a formalized meal functioned as a centerpiece of the gathering." [see Luke 22:14-29; Acts 20:7; cf. 1 Cor. 11:17-34, sp].

"Scholarship on early Christian meal traditions has tended to concentrate on the issue of the origins of the Eucharist [Lord's Supper, sp] and to define that issue in a deceptively narrow way. It is a perspective that does not develop naturally out of the ancient evidence, but rather represents a retrojection onto the ancient sources of the form taken by the Eucharist in the later "orthodox" church."

"Models are constructed for analyzing the ancient data based on the form of the Eucharist in the later church. The ancient data is not studied in its own right and on its own terms. Early Christianity was made up of varied groups, however, who adapted the common banquet tradition to their own situations [see Romans 14-15; 1 Cor. 10-11, sp]. This proposal fits the form of our data, which witnesses to a variety of ways in which early Christians practiced communal meals. The process eventually led to the collapsing of all these traditions into one orthodox form and liturgy."

"Many studies of early Christian meals attempt to compare them with forms of meals in their pagan environment. Invariably, however, what is compared is the assumed essence of the early Christian Eucharist, namely, its nature as a 'sacramental' meal. The larger category into which the 'sacramental' meal is generally placed is that of the 'sacred' meal. But the category of sacred meal also lacks clarity. There is an assumption that it has little relation to the form of an ordinary banquet. Indeed, scholars in history of religions studies typically see sacred and secular as existing in two different realms. They then analyze the data based on this model."

"To be sure, they base this idea on foundational premises of the sociology of religion. Emile Durkheim, for example, defined the sacred and the profane as two separate realms of human existence. It is my contention, however, that the sacred versus secular model is not appropriate for ancient meals. Instead I consider meals to have an integrative function in ancient society in which they combine the sacred and the secular into one ritual event."

Smith continues,

"Here I use the terms sacred and secular to refer to the degree to which meals might exhibit a religious purpose or might lack any religious emphasis at all. Most Greco-Roman meals would fall into a middle category in which they exhibit characteristics of both sacred and secular. Indeed, in ancient Mediterranean culture in general sacred and secular are interwoven and tend to be indistinct.