RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Ethics Eucharist
genarch (a word practically the same as ethnarch) Augustus established a gerousia, this may mean only that a gerousia was constituted, presided over by a plurality of heads. But ethnarch is not substantiated as a general title among the Jews of the diaspora.
It was a title borne by the Hasmoneans (q.v.),in the first case by Simon. His brother and predecessor Jonathan was called by Alexander, son of Epiphanes, strategos and meridarches, titles which imply the union of military and civil power. That Simon had in mind a higher title is clear from the connection in I Mace. xiv. 28 sqq., cf. xv. 1 sqq., and the idea of the titles conferred on him as stated in I Mace. xiv. 42 is that of hereditary right. In spite of this, in the case of John Hyrcanus the title failed to follow succession. The coins of Hyrcanus I. mention alongside " John the High Priest " the " Commonwealth of the Jews," or name him " Head of the Commonwealth of the Jews," from which it follows that John regarded his office as less than that of a political ruler, and considered himself the priestly head of a theocratic state. Yet the sense of the well-known anecdote of the encounter with Eleazar, the spokesman of the Pharisees, in which the latter asked John to lay aside the high-priesthood and be contented with the political rulership, implies the position of ethnarch. His son Aristobulus was the first after the exile to take the title of king, in which he was followed by Alexander Jannseus (Josephus, Ant. XIII. xi.-xii.). Alexandra also assumed the title of queen, and is so called by Josephus. Her son Hyrcanus, when he retired to private life, passed the title of king to his brother Aristobulus. Pompey gave to Hyrcanus the high-priesthood and also the title of king. But a later decree of Csesar made Hyrcanus ethnarch and high priest, the former title as compensation for the loss of the royal name. Herod obtained from the Roman Senate the royal title, but his son Archelaus was only ethnarch.
Of special interest is the mention of the ethnarch of King Aretas in Damascus (II Cor. xi. 32). It is the Nabataean King Aretas IV who is meant, and the ethnarch is not a governor of the Jews but the ruler of the city. This could have been only in the days of Caligula or Claudius, since under Tiberius and Nero Damascus was under Roman control. Paul's flight therefore could not have been before 37 a.d. (Johannes Weiss.)
Bibliography: The best discussion will be found in Schurer, Geschichte; consult the Indexes. Consult also: J. Derenbourg, Histoire et geographic de la Palestine, pp. 67, 450- 451, Paris, 1867; H. Graetz, Geschichte der Juden, iii. 30-31, 163, 371, 417, Leipsic, 1888.
ETTWEIN, et'vain, JOHN: Moravian bishop; b. at Freudenstadt (40 m. s.w. of Stuttgart), Wiirttemberg, June 29, 1721; d. at Bethlehem, Pa., Jan. 2, 1802. In 1754 he emigrated to America. In ]772 he led the Christian Indians from Susquehanna County in Pennsylvania to the Tuscarawas River in Ohio. He was a friend of Washington, and devoted himself to the care of the sick soldiers in the general army hospital at Bethlehem, Pa. In 1787 he founded the Society of the United Brethren for Propagating the Gospel among the Heathen, to which Congress granted several townships on
the Tuscarawas, in trust, for the Christian Indians. He was consecrated bishop June 25, 1784, and stood at the head of his Church till his retirement, on account of ill health, in 1801. He prepared a vocabulary of the language of the Delaware Indians, which has been published by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
Bibliography: J. T. Hamilton, Hist, of the Unitas Fratrum, in American Church History Series, vol. viii., New York, 1895; idem, Hist, of the Church Known as the Moravian Church, Bethlehem, 1900.
EUCHARIST, yu'ea-rist.
Combination of the Evening Agapae and the Morning
Service (§ 1). The Early Liturgical Development (§ 2). The Service in Justin's Time and Later (§ 3). The Oblation (§ 4). The Prayers (§ 5). The Communion (§ 6). Frequency of Celebration (§ 7). The Elements (§ 8). Various Customs (§ 9). The Heretical Sects (§ 10). Eucharist is a term employed for the celebration of the Lord's Supper, especially in the primitive Church, to which the present consideration is restricted. (For the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church see Mass, II.; of the Churches of the Reformation, Lord's Supper, IV For the doctrine of the Lord's Supper see Lord's Supper, I.-IIL; Mass, I.; Transubstantiation.) In early Christian literature, however, the word is also applied (1) to the prayer of thanksgiving spoken over the elements (in the East; only once in the Latin West, Tertullian, De oratione, xxiv.); (2) to the elements themselves; (3) by an extension of meaning, to any consecrated element or sacramentum — as in Cyprian, Epist. lxx. 2, to the consecrated oil. The application to the entire celebration of the Lord's Supper continued only so long as it was an actual meal (cf. especially Ignatius), and then reappeared only in the Middle Ages.
The eucharistic celebration of the primitive
Church underwent a very important change about
the middle of the second century. Originally,
either as a common meal or in connection with one,
it formed a separate observance which took place in
the evening, while the congregation assembled in the
morning to hear the Word. At the date mentioned
these two were fused into one service, a change which
made possible the development of the later mass (see
Mass, II., 1, §l)and still exercises an influence even
upon Protestant liturgical conceptions. The first
witness for the combination of the Eucharist with
the morning service is Justin (I Apol. lxv.-lxvii.,
written c. 150). Though the famous letter of Pliny
(x. 96, c. 113) attests the prevalence of the older
custom in Bithynia, the Didache (ix.,
i. Combi- x.) at least for Egypt, and Clement
nation of (I Cor. xliv.) for Rome, Justin shows
the Even- the new as universally adopted, even
ing Agapae if the old for a while existed along-
and the side of it. The grounds for the
Morning change have been sought in the accu-
Service. sations of the pagans, who charged
the Christians with the commission of
hideous abominations at their agapce. But this
is an improbable theory; both the evening agapm
Eucharist