The Life of the Primitive Disciples

2.3.3 - A History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age

Primitive Jewish Christianity

The Life of the Primitive Disciples - Their Gatherings

The feeling of brotherhood voiced itself perhaps most clearly in the breaking of bread, which the author of the Acts (Luke) refers to in Acts 2:42, 46. He undoubtedly employs the expression to denote the Lord’s Supper, for the phrase was a technical one in his day.

The accuracy of his report, that the primitive disciples of Jerusalem ate the Lord’s Supper, can hardly be questioned. The general prevalence of the rite from Paul’s time on, and not in Pauline churches alone, but in all parts of Christendom, makes it almost necessary to assume that the custom was already observed in the very earliest period.

[Professor Percy Gardner, in a very suggestive pamphlet entitled The Origin of the Lord’s Supper (1893), maintains that the Supper was introduced by Paul. But it is inconceivable that the Jewish wing of the church would have taken it up had it originated with him. Its general prevalence at an early day in all parts of the church can be accounted for only on the assumption that it was pre-Pauline. At the same time, the fact must be recognized that it is not absolutely certain that Jesus himself actually instituted such a supper and directed his disciples to eat and drink in remembrance of him. Expecting as he apparently did to return at an early day, he can hardly have been solicitous to provide for the preservation of his memory; and it is a notable fact that neither Matthew nor Mark records such a command, while the passage in which is occurs in Luke is omitted in many of the oldest manuscripts, and is regarded as an interpolation by Westcott and Hort. Even if the words belong in the Gospel of Luke (as some maintain), they are evidently dependent upon Paul, and supply no independent testimony as to the original utterance of Christ. It is difficult to understand how Matthew and Mark can have abridged the more elaborate formula of Paul and Luke, and especially how they can have omitted the words in question. On the other hand, the enlargement of the briefer and simpler formula is easier to explain. There can be little doubt that Mark and Matthew, so far as they agree, represent the primitive tradition as to Christ’s works.

There can be no doubt that Jesus ate the last supper with his disciples, as recorded in all three of the Synoptic Gospels, and that he said of the bread which he broke and gave to his companions, "This is my body," and of the wine which he gave them to drink, "This is my blood of the covenant which is shed for many," and that he did it with a reference to his approaching death. It was apparently not the institution of a memorial feast that he had in mind so much as the announcement of his impending death and the assurance that it would result not in evil but in good to his disciples. He had already told them that he must die, and that his death would bee in reality a means of blessing to them. He now repeated that prophecy and promise in vivid and impressive symbol. As the bread was broken and the wine poured out, so must his body be broken and his blood shed, but not in vain; it was for their sake, and not for theirs alone, vut for the sake of many. To read into this simple and touching act unpremeditated and yet summing up in itself the whole story of his life of service and of sacrifice subtle and abstruse doctrines is to do Jesus a great injustice; for it takes from the scene all its beautiful naturalness, which is so characteristic of him and so perfectly in keeping with his direct and unaffected thought and speech. He was not teaching theology, nor was he giving veiled utterance to any mysterious truth concerning his person and work. He was simply foretelling his death and endeavoring to impart to his disciples something of that divine trust and calmness with which he approached it. But after his death, when his followers ate bread and drank wine together, they could not fail to recall the solemn moment in which Jesus had broken bread in their presence, and with a reference to his impending death had pronounced the bread his body and the wine his blood; and remembering that scene, their eating and drinking together must inevitably, whether with or without a command from him, take on the character of a memorial feast, in which they looked back to his death, as he had looked forward to it. They knew that they were fulfilling his wish in thus gathering in brotherly fellowship, and they must have felt from the beginning, whether they had his explicit command for it or not, that they were doing only what he would have them do, when they repeated his reassuring words for their own comfort and in fond remembrance or their Master.

Even if one were to question whether Christ actually did institute a memorial feast, which his disciples were to continue celebrating until his return, it can hardly be doubted that Paul was reproducing what he had received from the earlier disciples when he represented Jesus as saying, "this do in remembrance of me." It can hardly be doubted, in other words, that it was believed, at any rate at an early day, if not from the beginning, in the church of Jerusalem, that Jesus had commanded them to do as they actually were doing when they ate and drank together.]

That the disciples held a special service and partook of a special communion meal there is no sign. It is far more likely that whenever they ate together they ate the Lord’s Supper. Not that it preceded or followed the ordinary meal, but that the whole meal was the Lord’s Supper; that they partook of no ordinary, secular, unholy meals, of none that was not a Lord’s Supper.

The Koinonia (community) to which reference is made in Acts 2:42, thus found its chief expression in their common meals, but it voiced itself also in all the gatherings of the disciples. It is said in the same passage that they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching and in the prayers.

It goes without saying that their gratitude to God for the peculiar blessings which they enjoyed as his elect people must have found utterance whenever possible in prayer and hymn, and the example which Luke has given us in Acts 4:23 (as following) may be taken as fairly representative of all the occasions on which any number of them met together.

At all such times they doubtless felt the Spirit of God working mightily among them, and prophecy and speaking with tongues were very likely of daily occurrence. But they must also have dwelt much upon the utterances of their Master, as Luke indicates when he says that the continued steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching. [The Apostles’ teaching had to do primarily with the Messiahship of Jesus; but within the circle of the disciples it cannot have been confined to this.]

To the personal disciples of Jesus, and above all to the Twelve, they of course looked for their knowledge of his saying and for such explanation and interpretation of them as might be needed. His prophecies of the future must have interested them especially and invited careful thought, and his words dealing with their duties as children of the kingdom could seem scarcely less important. It cannot have been long, then, before a comparatively fixed body of teaching took shape, embracing the most striking and characteristic, and therefore the most easily remembered, of his utterance, and the tradition thus gradually formed ultimately recorded itself in the Logia, and perhaps in other similar documents. [We will discuss the Logia later.]

The Scriptures the early Christians would of course hear read in the synagogue, but they must have made large use of them also when they came together by themselves, pointing out the new sense in which this and that passage was to be read in the light of the Gospel, and thus gaining increased instruction and inspiration.

The tradition early tended to become fixed along this line as well, and it is not surprising that we find in the literature of the first and second centuries many Old Testament passages occurring and recurring, and nearly always with the same application and interpretation.

Used by permission of the publisher.

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