2. In 1 Corinthians. — We now come to the ac- count given in 1 Co III8-34 ^f ^he Eucharist at Corinth : ' When ye assemble yourselves together, it is not possible to eat the Lord's supper : for in your eating each one taketh before other his own supper ; and one is hungry, and another is drunken. What ? have ye not houses to eat and drink in ? or despise ye the church of God, and put them to shame that have not ? . . . When ye come to- gether to eat, wait one for another. If any man is hungry, let him eat at home ; that your coming together be not unto judgement.' The most pro- bable interpretation of the passage is that St. Paul blames the Corinthians for misbehaviour at the supper, which should be the Lord's Supper, but cannot be so regarded in view of their be- haviour. It seems that the rich men brought their own food, and immediately on arrival formed groups, and began to eat their supper without waiting to see whether there were any poor men present who had nothing to eat. St. Paul suggests that if they are hungry, they had better have something to eat before they come. The whole supper is the Lord's, for He is the host. And St. Paul reminds them of the significance of what takes place at the supper, namely the Eucharist — a real Communion with the Body and Blood of Christ, and a memorial of His Death,
Batiffol, on the other hand, maintains that St. Paul blames them for associating the Eucharist with a meal at all, and the same view was previously taken by John Lightfoot.§ It must be admitted that his language in v.--, ' Have ye not houses to eat and to drink in ?' seems logically to imply
* See art. Eucharist. t Op. cit. p. 285.
} Art. ' Agape ' in Cabrol's Diet, d'archdologie ehritienne et de liturgie, vol. i., Paris, 1907.
§ Works, ed. Pitman, London, 1822-26, vol. vi. p. 232 fl.
ri8
LO\^-FEAST
LUKE
that the assembly of Christians is not a suitable occasion for a meal. But his exhortation to them to 'wait one foi* another' seems to have no point unless there is to be a meal. WTiile the consider- ations adduced by St. Paul no doubt were ulti- mately operative in bringing about a separation of the Eucharist from the Agape, yet it is highly probable that they were not carried to their logical conclusion at once, nor indeed intended to be so carried. There is no doubt that there was a supper at Corinth at the time when St. Paul wi-ote ; that all the members of the Church came together to it, bringing their own contributions. This was apparently a sort of funeral memorial feast, sacred in its associations, but especially sacred because in the course of it the Eucharist was celebrated. This meal was desecrated by the Corinthians, who ignored its sacred character, making it no longer an expression of the brotherhood of the community, but an ordinary meal, and an occasion for display and gluttony.
3. In Jade and 2 Peter.— The writer of the Epistle of Jude speaks (v.^-) of certain heretics who are 'hidden rocks in your love-feasts when they feast wath you.' In the parallel passage in 2 P 2^^ the bulk of the MSS read dTrdrais for dydTran. J. B. Lightfoot* regards dTrdrais as an obvious error for dydirais, and Biggf follows him in this view. The matter is of no importance for our purpose, as it is the opinion of the majority of scholars that 2 Peter is dependent on Jude, and there can be no reason- able doubt that in Jude dydirats is the right reading. Batiffol maintains that Jude is in the habit of using plurals instead of singulars, and understands him here to mean 'love' with no reference to the Agape. But this translation of the word does not seem possible ; and we are clearly di-iven to the conclusion that, among the people to whom Jude wrote, the Agape was an estabhshed institution, and the name had already been given to it. But the destination of the Epistle is very doubtful. M. R. James t wa-ites : 'We may place the com- munity to which he writes very much where w^e please : Dr. Chase's conjecture! that it was at or near the S>Tian Antioch is as good as any.' There is nothing to indicate the relation of the Agape mentioned by Jude to the Eucharist. It seems most probable that, as in Corinth, the Eucharist took place at or near the end of the supper. St. Paul's words (leTo. t6 Senrviiaai in 1 Co 11'-^ make it fairly certain that Chrysostom is WTong in his statement that the Eucharist was followed by a meal. No doubt Chrysostom based his view on the customs of his o^ti time, when fasting com- munion was the rule.
4. Analogies with Love-Feast.— A great deal of information has been collected by Leclercq || about tlie prevalence of funeral banquets all round the Mediterranean. These banquets were originally for the benefit of the dead, though later they became simply memorial meals. These supply us with an analogy to the Agape. But it is probable that even more operative was the example of the common meals of the various gilds which were a prominent feature of social life in Greek cities. It would be most natural that converts to Chris- tianity should welcome a Christian common meal, on the lines of those to which they were accustomed. Parallels are also to be found among the Jews.*f Unfortunately, our evidence is not sufficient to enable us to draw a clear picture of what the Christian Agape was Uke. It was not purely a