Ascetic Eucharists: Food and Drink in Early Christian Ritual Meals
Andrew McGowan
Abstract
The early Eucharist has usually been seen as sacramental eating of token bread and wine in careful or even slavish imitation of Jesus and his earliest disciples. In fact the evidence suggests great diversity in its conduct, including the use of foods, in the first few hundred years. Eucharistic meals involving cheese, milk, salt, oil, and vegetables are attested, and some have argued that even fish was used. The most significant exception to using bread and wine, however, was a ‘bread-and-water’ Christian meal, an ancient ascetic form of the Eucharist. This tradition also involved rejection of ... More
Keywords: early Eucharist, bread, wine, Jesus, diversity, cheese, milk, salt, vegetables, pagan sacrifice
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 1999 | Print ISBN-13: 9780198269724 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2011 | DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198269724.001.0001 |
