In antiquity, like today, eating and drinking were foundational activities of daily living. In ancient agrarian societies, the production of food, including the planting and harvesting of crops; the hunting of game or fish; the collection of honey and milk; the breeding, raising, and domestication of animals; as well as the preparation of that food, was a major focus of daily activity for all members of the family. As important as food and drink were for nutritional sustenance, however, the acts of collectively engaging in meals with family members or in larger communal banquets also performed important social and religious functions.[1] In the Old Testament, meals were served as a sign of hospitality (see Genesis 18:1–8; 2 Kings 4:8–11), and they were used to consummate treaties of peace and goodwill between family members (see Genesis 31:43–54) and with economic or political competitors (see Genesis 26:26–33; Joshua 9:1–15). At times, meals such as the Passover were also understood to have sacred purposes that initiated and maintained both vertical and horizontal covenantal relationships for the family and community with God (vertical) and within the family and community themselves (horizontal; see Exodus 12:1–17; 24:3–11; 29:31–37).

In the ancient world, food and drink were also indicators of social status and identity. As one scholar has noted, “What one ate and drank, as well as what one refrained from eating and drinking, contributed to how individuals and groups defined and understood themselves, how they viewed others, and how they were perceived by other individuals and groups.”[2] This seems to be the case in Judaism in the centuries before and after the change of the eras where the eating of “clean” food is sometimes identified in the literature as a marker of Jewish identity.[3]

Food in Palestine during the Roman period, like other Mediterranean countries, relied heavily on bread—the Hebrew word leḥem means both “bread” and “food.” It has been estimated that in ancient Palestine, bread accounted for somewhere between 55 and 75 percent of a person’s daily caloric intake.[4] The bread could be supplemented with olive oil; legumes; vegetables such as cabbage and cucumbers; eggs; honey (from wild and domestic bees as well as from dates); cheese; fruits such as olives, grapes, figs, dates, carobs, melons, pomegranates, and plums; and spices such as salt and garlic.[5] Wine was the most common drink, at least for men. It was probably safer to drink than the water.[6] The Jewish Wisdom of Sirach, dating from approximately 200–175 BC, lists the principal foods for a human’s life as salt, wheat flour, honey, milk, the blood of the grape, and oil (39:26). Noticeably missing from this list is meats. It has often been held that, except for the elites and the priestly families who ate parts of the temple sacrifices,[7] meats were generally consumed only during festivals or at banquets and that even those who owned flocks of goats or sheep primarily used them for their milk and wool.[8] But there is some archaeological evidence that meat eating may have been more routine than previously thought, although it is difficult to judge the extent to which this happened.[9] Those who lived near the Mediterranean coast or the Sea of Galilee would have also had some access to fresh fish. But those who lived away from these areas would have had only fish that was preserved in brine—a water solution with a high concentration of salt.

Of course, one’s economic status greatly impacted a family’s access to many of these foods, and there were different gradations of quality with the bread and wine. The finest bread was made from wheat flour, which was well sifted. Bread made from barley meal, however, was considered inferior because it does not rise well, it does not taste as good as bread made from wheat flour, and it is difficult to digest. By the first century AD, barley bread had become the food of the poor.[10] Likewise, the quality of wine was determined by factors such as the type of grapes used, the time of fermentation, and the spices and fruits that were added to it, as well as the ratio of mixture with water. Israel had a long history of viticulture, and in New Testament times wine was even exported to Rome.[11] According to Pliny the Elder, in the Mediterranean world the best wines were reserved for the wealthy, who in turn served inferior wines, often diluted with water, to their guests (Pliny, Natural History 14.91; compare John 2:1–11).

Meals played an important role in Jesus’s ministry and the early Church. Jesus used communal meals to show compassion to those in need of both physical and spiritual strengthening. He fed multitudes because they were hungry, even though he refused to use his power to feed himself (see Mark 6:33–42; 8:1–9; Matthew 4:3–4). There were times when the nourishment of the meal was more spiritual than physical (see Luke 7:36–50; John 6:22–58). In addition, he used communal meals to encourage unity among the members of his fledgling church (see John 17:11, 21–23). Unlike John the Baptist, who lived an ascetic type of life, Jesus was criticized as “a gluttonous man, and winebibber,” because he came “eating and drinking” (Luke 7:33–34) and participated in banquets (doxē; Luke 5:29). He was also criticized because he ate with sinners (see Mark 2:15–16; Luke 5:30; 15:2). In so doing, he challenged some of the social, cultural, and religious hierarchical practices that were sometimes associated with banquets.[12] Perhaps most significantly, according to the Synoptic Gospels, he purposely and deliberately used the Passover meal to institute the sacrament (see Mark 14:16–23 and parallels) and to point his disciples toward the future kingdom of God, which he described in terms of an end-time banquet. In doing so, Jesus drew upon and adapted both Israelite and Greco-Roman meal customs that would have been familiar to his audience. To better appreciate the use of meals in the New Testament, this paper will first briefly look at the social function of banquets in the Greco-Roman world as a springboard for understanding the central role that meals played in the practices and teachings of Jesus and the early Church.

Greco-Roman Communal Meals or Banquets

Greco-Roman banquets were often viewed as a luxury of the elite, but lower classes participated in their own banquets as members of associations.[13] As scholars have studied Greco-Roman banquet practices, they have identified several areas that may shed light on some of Jesus’s and his followers’ actions in their communal meal settings. Although Greco-Roman meals functioned in a variety of ways, scholars have argued that there are significant commonalities with which to build a general typology of key elements in their communal meals. For example, Greek communal meals generally consisted of two main portions, the meal proper known as the deipnon, which was followed by the symposium. The deipnon started with a libation, or a drink poured out as an offering to a god, and a thanksgiving prayer and ended with dessert. The second part of the banquet was the symposium, which was sometimes described as “a drinking party,” but it was much more than that.[14] It also consisted of some form of entertainment, which may have included music recitals, poetry, mimes, and even juggling contests among the diners—it was expected that each of the guests would contribute to the entertainment. Of all the possible forms of entertainment, the prized activity which the diners most anticipated was the conversation among the guests. Plutarch, a first-century Roman biographer and philosopher, claimed that “the most truly godlike seasoning at the dining-table is the presence of a friend or companion or intimate acquaintance—not because of his eating and drinking with us, but because he participates in the give-and-go of conversation.”[15]

The purposes of these banquets were threefold.[16] First, it was to foster a sense of community, or koinōnia, among the guests, and the best way of doing that was to eat the meal while reclining. The Roman dining room was known as a triclinium. It consisted of three couches that were arranged in the shape of the Greek letter Pi (Π). Each couch had room for three or four guests to recline on their left elbows, all facing a central table. This arrangement allowed all the diners to see and interact with one other.[17] Dennis E. Smith argues that this practice of reclining was “virtually universal throughout the Greco-Roman world as a marker of a formal banquet of significance.”[18]

The feeling of community also came from dining and being entertained as part of a relatively small group of people. With larger groups, the preference was to multiply the number of triclinia rooms rather than to increase the number of couches in a single dining room. The sense of community was further enhanced by the shared experience. As Matthias Klinghardt has noted, “Usually, all the participants ate the same food, drank the same wine from the same kratēr, sang the paean together in unison, and contributed their share to the sympotic entertainment and sometimes even to the food (as in a potluck party).”[19] The communal experience that developed through these shared activities created bonds between the participants, leading them to feel that they could rely on one another during times of crisis.[20]

The second purpose of these banquets, equality, is tied to the first, but with some tension. In the second century AD, Lucian, a Greek satirist, described the ideal for equality at banquets:

Each man shall take the couch where he happens to be. Rank, family, or wealth shall have little influence on privilege.

All shall drink the same wine, and neither stomach trouble nor headache shall give the rich man an excuse for being the only one to drink the better quality.

All shall have their meat on equal terms. The waiters shall not show favour to anyone, but shall neither be too slow nor be dismissed until the guests choose what they are to take home. Neither are large portions to be placed before one and tiny ones before another, nor a ham for one and a pig’s jaw for another—all must be treated equally.[21]

Lucian was a Greek, reflecting a value of a more egalitarian view among citizens, but all banquets did not always measure up to his standards. The Romans, for example, generally focused on paying tribute to people of rank and stature.[22] This tension between Greek and Roman values is highlighted particularly in the way that guests were seated at banquets. At Greek banquets, the seating arrangement was fairly egalitarian and was decided by the individual guests. In Roman banquets, however, seating arrangements were frequently determined by rank, with the most prestigious seat being the third place on the middle couch. The place next to it was then reserved for the banquet’s host. According to G. Anthony Keddie, “This pattern placed the guest of honor and host at the center of the conversation and gave them the best view.”[23]

Even though we have differentiated the two approaches of determining seating arrangements into the Greek and Roman methods, there seem to have still been disputations about which method to use. For example, Plutarch tells the story of a disagreement that his brother, Timon, and father, Lamprias, had over how to seat their guests at one of their banquets. His brother argued for the Greek ideal, recommending that the guests should be able to choose where they sat, while his father insisted that it should be hierarchical, according to the Roman ways of arranging the seating. Eventually they had to settle on a compromise.[24]

The third purpose of these banquets was to establish good order, quietness, and peace. If the Roman seating arrangements were not always conducive to equality at the banquet, and the entertainment fostered competition between the diners, to which was added the free-flowing use of alcohol, it is not surprising that a number of ancient writers complain about the licentiousness of the banquets.[25] This negative press on banquets inevitably put pressure on the host to maintain good order throughout the banquet.[26] Many associations established bylaws, in part to govern behavior at the banquet.[27]

Meals in Palestine and the New Testament

Communal meals also played an important role in life in Early Roman Palestine. We find archaeological evidence for several different types of banquet rooms, including three structures that we know were triclinia because of the permanent couches that were found still in place. Even though only three triclinia rooms have been identified thus far, Keddie argues that “they were surely more widespread.” He mentions other sites on Jerusalem’s Western Hill in today’s Jewish Quarter as well as in Tiberias and Sepphoris in the Galilee, where the couches have not been found but where the rooms include architectural features or decorative elements that are known from other mansions with triclinia.[28] In each of these examples, the Palestinian triclinia spaces were found in elite domestic quarters.

Some practices from Greco-Roman banquets are also evident in the New Testament. The practice of reclining at a meal is well known in the New Testament where the Greek words anapiptō, anaklinō, anakeimai, kataklinō, and katakeimai all refer to the practice of reclining at a meal, although the KJV usually translates them as “sat” (see Mark 2:15; 6:39–40; 8:6; 14:3, 18).[29] Being aware of the posture of reclining at meals helps readers make sense of how Jesus “sat down to meat” (KJV) or more literally “reclined at dinner” (kataklinō) in Simon’s house and therefore how the woman could enter and stand at his feet washing, kissing, and anointing them with ointment (see Luke 7:36–38). This would have been difficult to do if Jesus had been seated. The posture of reclining is also helpful in understanding how at the meal gathering after Jesus had washed the feet of his disciples, John is able to privately ask Jesus who would betray Jesus. The KJV says that John was “leaning [anakeimai] on Jesus’ bosom” (John 13:23) and then “lying on [anapiptō] Jesus’ breast” (John 13:25), but the Greek words are standard terms to indicate that they were reclining at a banquet.

Jesus was also aware of the Roman hierarchy of placing guests according to their status in his parable of the wedding guests: “When thou art bidden of any man to a wedding, sit not down in the highest room; lest a more honourable man than thou be bidden of him; and he that bade thee and him come and say to thee, Give this man place; and thou begin with shame to take the lowest room. But when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest room; that when he that bade thee cometh, he may say unto thee, Friend, go up higher: then shalt thou have worship in the presence of them that sit at meat with thee” (Luke 14:8–10).[30] Jesus, however, encouraged his followers to invite “the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind,” with the promise that they would be blessed not by those invited to the feast, but they would “be recompensed at the resurrection of the just” (Luke 14:12–14).

Jesus, the Passover Meal, and the Sacrament

Mark, followed by Matthew, places Jesus’s final meal with his apostles on “the first day of unleavened bread, when they killed the Passover lamb (Greek pascha)” (Mark 14:12; parallels Matthew 26:17; Luke 14:7).[31] The Passover was a time when the family gathered and shared a meal that had both social and religions connotations. By the time of Jesus, the Passover had been celebrated by Jewish families for generations. According to the Mosaic instructions, each household held its own Passover meal, unless the household was too small for a lamb, and then they joined with another family (Exodus 12:4). Although each household sacrificed their own lamb, they did it collectively (Exodus 12:6). The sacrifice represented a “rite of protection for God’s people”[32]—they had been saved from the destroying angel—and thus became the symbol of Israel’s deliverance from the bondage of Egypt (see Exodus 12:16–27).

The meal associated with the celebration, then and now, is a sacred meal that recalls Yahweh’s command that Israelite families sacrifice a year-old male lamb without blemish, take the blood, and put it on the two side posts and the upper door post of their dwelling, and then eat the roasted flesh of the lamb along with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. They were told to eat the meal in haste and be prepared to leave in a hurry with their shoes on and with their staffs in their hands. It was described as “a feast to the Lord throughout [their] generations” and was to be celebrated as an ongoing statute that they were to live by and to teach their children (Exodus 12:5–14, 26–27; see also Deuteronomy 16:1–8). Thus, the Passover played an important role in Israelite identity that was to be re-created and celebrated in each new generation. Moses directed the Israelites that they were to keep the Passover once they entered the promised land (see Exodus 12:24–25), which they did when they crossed over the Jordan River and camped at Gilgal, although there is no mention of a sacrificed lamb (see Joshua 5:10–11).

Over the years the Passover meal underwent different developments, and, notwithstanding the Joshua description, was probably celebrated as an elaborate meal built around the sacrificed lamb. There is much that we do not know about the details of how it was celebrated in Jesus’s day,[33] so we must be careful about retrojecting later rabbinic practices onto the Last Supper. In the King James translation, none of the New Testament accounts of the Last Supper specifically mention the eating of a lamb, although it is implied by the Synoptic Gospels’ portrayal of the events as a preparation for eating the Passover (see Mark 14:12, 14, 16; Matthew 26:17–19; Luke 22:1, 7–8, 11, 13, 15). In addition, the phrase “eat the passover” (hina phagēis to pascha) (Mark 14:12; see also Matthew 26:17) can also be translated as “to eat the passover lamb.”

Mark and Matthew describe Jesus’s introduction of the sacramental emblems as occurring “as they were eating” (Mark 14:22; Matthew 26:26), reminding readers that his actions were just one part of a larger meal experience. This larger meal would have included eating lamb, unleavened bread, and bitter herbs and drinking cups of wine. Taking the bread, pronouncing a blessing on it, then breaking it and distributing it to the disciples, followed by pronouncing a second blessing on a cup of wine that he shared with them, and concluding with singing a hymn, probably from Psalms (see Matthew 26:26–27, 30), would have been a natural part of the Passover meal.[34]

For Jesus, however, this particular Passover meal was much more than simply a time to recite the Exodus Passover story and thus reinforce the “corporate solidarity of Jews.”[35] Rather Jesus used it as a springboard to create a new covenantal community or family that was to be founded not on the blood of a lamb placed on the lintel of doors but on his own imminent sacrifice: the broken flesh and blood of Jesus, who, in John’s writings in particular, is identified as the “lamb of God” (John 1:29, 36).[36] Our earliest biblical account of Jesus’s teachings at the Last Supper are recorded in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians:[37] “And when he had given thanks, he break it [i.e., the bread], and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. And after the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped saying, This cup is the new testament [or ‘covenant’; Greek diathēkē] in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me” (1 Corinthians 11:24–25; emphasis added).[38]

Whereas the Passover meal gathered family together, Jesus celebrated this particular Passover not with his earthly family—even though we know that his mother, Mary, was alive and that he had siblings—but with his disciples, who had become the foundation of a new spiritual family consisting of those who “do the will of God” (Mark 3:31–35 and parallels).[39] In addition, Jesus took normal everyday activities such as breaking bread and drinking wine, and infused them with sacramental significance of his personal sacrifice that would be repeated and would become the central value of the new Christian family. In antiquity, meals had that kind of vertical and horizontal power in families and communities.

After Jesus’s death and resurrection, early Christians continued their efforts to nurture their new Christian family ties. Paul taught, “For in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:26–29 NRSV). To reinforce those ties they gathered regularly to remember Jesus’s sacrifice and to reenact the communal meal. Paul made explicit what the Gospels intimated: “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us” (1 Corinthians 5:7). The book of Acts describes the communal life of the early saints as continuing “stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship [koinōnia], and in breaking of bread and in prayers” (Acts 2:42) and further in “breaking bread from house to house,” where they did “eat their food [Greek trophē] with gladness and singleness of heart” (Acts 2:46). It is not at all clear in these passages whether the references to “breaking bread” signaled a sacramental meal, since breaking bread was a regular feature of ancient Jewish meals (see Luke 24:30, 35; Acts 20:11; 27:35).[40]

The earliest clear account of a Christian communal meal that included the sacramental emblems is found in 1 Corinthians 11:17–34. Unfortunately, it is a negative example of how the Corinthian saints had, according to Paul, totally missed the point of why they gathered together to share the sacramental meal. Earlier in the epistle, Paul had already introduced both the symbolism of drinking and eating in terms of Christ’s sacrifice, and the unifying power [koinōnia] that resulted when Christians partook: “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not communion [koinōnia] of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion [koinōnia] of the body of Christ? For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread” (1 Corinthians 10:16–17). Paul’s purpose was to emphasize this unity that the sacrament should bring to the new Christian family. But that focus had become lost and instead it was causing divisions among them (see 1 Corinthians 11:18). One of the reasons for these divisions may have been that the members were treating “the Lord’s supper,” as Paul calls it (1 Corinthians 11:20), like a Greco-Roman banquet. Although the KJV translates it as the Lord’s supper, the Greek word behind the translation of “supper” is deipnon, which we have already noted was the technical term used to describe the meal portion of a Greek banquet.[41] Paul complained that when the Corinthians saints came together, “it is not really to eat the Lord’s supper” (1 Corinthians 11:20 NRSV). Instead, they seem to have put more emphasis on the meal than on the sacramental emblems. The divisions developed because some participants in the meal were treated differently from others, probably according to their social status.

The causes of the varied treatment of some participants may have been twofold. First, the Church members may have been treated differently because of spatial constraints. We have already noted that Greco-Roman dining rooms were generally set up for a small, intimate number of guests to recline at the table. If more members of the church arrived than could be accommodated at the tables, the remainder of them would have to eat outside in the courtyard.[42] Because Roman meals, in particular, were to honor people of wealth or position, we can reasonably assume that they would be the ones invited to recline at the table. A second, related cause for the divisions, and the one that Paul particularly emphasizes in his critique of the Corinthian practice, concerns what the individuals were able to bring to contribute to the meal. It stands to reason that the poorer members of the branch would not be able to contribute to the same extent as the wealthier members. Paul complains, “When the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper” (1 Corinthians 11:21 NRSV) and, instead of sharing their food so that everyone ate equally, “one is hungry, and another is drunken” (1 Corinthians 11:21 KJV).[43]

Even though Lucian had claimed that “rank, family, [and] wealth” had no place at a banquet, clearly not all banquets lived up to his ideal. Paul’s description in 1 Corinthians seems to reflect the type of banquet described by the Roman poet Martial (ca. AD 38–102), who moans to his friend Ponticus, “Why don’t I get the same dinner you? You take oysters fattened in the Lucrine pool, I cut my mouth sucking a mussel. You have mushrooms, I take pig fungi. You set to with turbot, but I bream. A golden turtledove fills you up with its outsize rump, I am served with a magpie that died in its cage. Why do I dine without you, Ponticus, when I am dining with you? . . . Let us eat the same meal” (Epigrams 3.60).[44] Clearly, Paul was upset with the way that the Corinthians had chosen to remember Christ’s sacrifice. He chastises them: “What! Do you not have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What should I say to you? Should I commend you? In this matter I do not commend you!” (1 Corinthians 11:22 NRSV). He directs the Corinthians to eat in their own homes before gathering to partake of the sacramental emblems of Jesus’s broken body and blood so that the focus of the ritual is not diluted or lost.

Paul’s description of the practices in Corinth suggests that at least one branch of the church was not immune to some of the critiques, like Martial’s, leveled against Greco-Roman banquets. The situation in Corinth may be an example of Jude’s agape meals, or “feasts of charity,” where he describes people “feeding themselves without fear” (Jude 1:12).[45] Paul’s critique of the dividing practices in Corinth are in alignment with Jesus’s open table fellowship of including the poor and the marginalized when he dined. Paul also viewed the new covenantal family using the sacramental meal for the union, or koinōnia, of people across the social and economic spectrum.

Sacramental Teachings in John’s Gospel: The Spiritual Meal

Unlike the Synoptic Gospels, John’s Gospel refers not to a Passover meal but to a meal that took place “before the feast of the passover,” where Jesus washed the feet of the disciples (John 13:1–30). His Gospel emphasizes the sacramental teachings, in part, in chapter 6’s Bread of Life discourse. John placed the discourse in the context of the meal of feeding the five thousand (John 6:1–14). The day following the meal, the people came looking for him (seeking more free food). Jesus used sacramental language of eating the bread of life to teach them about the spiritual aspect of eating. He declared, “I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst” (John 6:35). Then he declared,

I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat of the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. (John 6:51–56)

Jesus’s teachings here are more expansive than his recorded teachings at the Last Supper and may help us consider one way of understanding his directions to “take eat: this is my body, which was broken for you” and “this cup is the new testament in my blood” (1 Corinthians 11:24–25; see also Mark 14:22–23 and parallels). Just as food and drink are essential for maintaining our physical lives, Jesus emphasizes the importance of his atoning sacrifice bringing not just physical, mortal life but, more importantly, eternal life. Just as bread was broken in antiquity so that it could be consumed, Jesus’s body was broken so it could be consumed spiritually. By partaking of the sacramental emblems, a person symbolically partakes of a portion of Jesus’s divinity. Such a sacramental act is meant to change a person, slowly to be sure, to symbolize their being transformed into divine beings like Jesus. In John’s Gospel this is a central part of our “indwelling” with God and his son that Jesus speaks of in his intercessory prayer (see John 17). He prays, “Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are” (John 17:11), and further, “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word. That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou has sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me” (John 17:20–23; emphasis added). Given our discussion on meals, it should not be surprising that this transformation is also celebrated in a meal setting.

The Eschatological Banquet

Both Jewish and Greco-Roman texts anticipate a time when humans could participate in a sacred meal with the gods.[46] These texts generally understand partaking of divine food as the means to receiving immortality.[47] Jews specifically believed that in the last days the Messiah would come and participate in a banquet with them.[48] This concept is based in Isaiah 25:4–8, where Isaiah anticipates a future time when the Lord is “a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat, when the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall. . . . And in this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined” when “He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth.”[49] Although Isaiah anticipates that “all people” will be invited to participate, later Jews interpreted it to be a Jewish gathering.[50]

In the New Testament, Jesus and his family of disciples also anticipated an eschatological, or end-time, banquet. This seems to be what he is referring to at the conclusion of Jesus’s Last Supper when both Mark and Matthew record Jesus teaching his disciples, “Verily I say unto you, I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine, until that day that I drink it new in the kingdom of God” (Mark 14:25; parallel Matthew 26:29). In other places he also seems to anticipate it, even if the food or a meal is not specifically mentioned. For example, after Jesus heals the centurion’s servant in Matthew 8, he praised the centurion for his “great faith” that he had “not found . . . in Israel.” He then he goes on to teach, “That many shall come from the east and west, and shall recline [Greek anaklinomai] with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 8:10–12). Like the passage in Isaiah 25, Jesus emphasizes that a broad group of people, particularly gentiles with faith, will participate, even when some Jews who expected to be invited would be excluded. Even though Jesus makes no reference to food or a meal in this passage, he does describe the guests as reclining (Greek anaklinomai), one of the technical words used for reclining, and in this case emphasizes “dining in style, not simply ‘eat[ing].’”[51] That the participants will recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob indicates that Jesus is not talking about an ordinary meal. Later Jewish texts have Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob play an important part in the eschatological banquet.[52]

Jesus places the gathering, after a period of judgment, in the kingdom of heaven, a Matthean equivalent with Luke’s kingdom of God (see Luke 13:29). He often describes the kingdom of heaven as a place of righteousness (see Matthew 5:20; 7:21; 18:3; 21:31). He then uses the centurion’s faith as a critique of those “children of the kingdom” who think that they will participate in the gathering, but will instead “be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 8:12).

Thus, Jesus uses the image of the banquet meal as a symbol for a future time when the dining community will be identified by their covenantal relationship with God and Jesus. The communal meal is an “experience that transcends the limitations of everyday life.” It represents a time when the inequities of mortality are overcome when, as the Revelator says, “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away” (Revelation 21:4). It is a time when the participants partake of the spiritual food that will bring them immortality and eternal life.

Conclusion

Meals were an important means that Jesus used to show his love and compassion for those around him. Sometimes that love and compassion was displayed as extended to those in need of both physical and spiritual nourishment. He also used meals to establish and consolidate his new spiritual family. Unlike some of the cultural customs of his day, Jesus showed an inclusive approach to meals. He openly and frequently shared meals with those who otherwise were often uninvited: the poor and the sinners. Sharing meals with the poor and the sinners was his way of acknowledging them and showing them that he was aware of their needs. He used meals to create a new spiritual family based on a person’s commitment to do the will of God. Sharing meals was more than a way of nourishing the body, it was a way of establishing koinōnia, a sense of belonging among the early Christians. It gave them an identity. Like a family, it helped them develop shared commitments to each other that included looking out for both their physical and spiritual welfare. It helped them develop shared goals and a shared way of life. Perhaps most importantly, it gave Christians hope for a better future when God would succor them and extend to them the invitation to inherit immortality by inviting them to participate in his banquet.

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints today are also invited to attend his banquet every Sabbath. Each week he invites us to come to the sacrament table and participate in a sacred meal with him as a member of his covenant family. It is an opportunity for each one of us individually to come together in a spirit of koinōnia. The purposes are the same as they were anciently: to remember his sacrifice on our behalf, to renew our personal and communal commitment to him, and to build a community committed to him and his covenant path. It is an opportunity to remember our place in his family. It is a time to receive spiritual nourishment that, if we allow it, enables us to symbolically partake of a portion of Christ’s divinity; it has the power to change our very natures.

Notes

[1] Dennis E. Smith, “The Greco-Roman Banquet as a Social Institution,” in Meals in the Early Christian World: Social Formation, Experimentation, and Conflict at the Table, ed. Dennis E. Smith and Hal Taussig (New York: Palgrave/ Macmillan, 2012), 23–36; John T. Fitzgerald, “Food and Drink in the Greco-Roman World and in the Pauline Communities,” in Paul and Economics: A Handbook, ed. Thomas R. Blanton IV and Raymond Pickett (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017), 205–44; Katheryn Twiss, “The Archaeology of Food and Social Diversity,” Journal of Archaeological Research 20, no. 4 (2012): 357–95.

[2] Fitzgerald, “Food and Drink,” 206.

[3] See, for example, 1 Maccabees 1.62–63; 2 Maccabees 7.1–2; Acts 11:5–9; Galatians 2:12–13. This is, however, a complex issue because literary discussions on food intake does not always align with the archaeological research. See Justin Lev-Tov, “‘Upon What Meat Doth This Our Caesar Feed . . . ?’ A Dietary Perspective on Hellenistic and Roman Influence in Palestine,” in Zeichen aus Text und Stein: Studien auf dem Weg zu einer Archäologie des Neuen Testaments, ed. S. Alkier and J. K. Zangenberg (Tübingen: Francke, 2003), 420–46.

[4] Magen Broshi argues for 53–55 percent in Bread, Wine, Walls and Scrolls, Journal for the Study of Pseudepigrapha Supplement Series 36 (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 123. L. Foxhall and H. A. Forbes, however, suggest 70–75 percent for the Roman world as a whole in “Στιχομετρία: The Role of Grain as a Staple Food in Classical Antiquity,” Chiron 12 (1982): 41–90. See also Nathan MacDonald, What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat? Diet in Biblical Times (Grand Rapids, MI & Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2008), 19–21.

[5] David Kraemer, “Food, Eating, and Meals,” in The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Daily Life in Roman Palestine (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 405; Broshi, Bread, Wine, Walls and Scrolls, 123–32.

[6] Wine mentioned in the Bible refers to fermented drinks, since there was no means to prevent it from fermenting. There were some groups who abstained from wine. The Nazarites did not drink it for the period of their vow (Numbers 6:1–3) and priests were forbidden from drinking it before entering into the tabernacle of the congregation (Leviticus 10:8–10). Broshi, Bread, Wine, Walls and Scrolls, 159–63.

[7] Amos condemns the elites who “lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock, and calves out of the midst of the stall; that chant to the sound of the viol, and invent to themselves instruments of musick like David; that drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with the chief ointments: but they are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph” (Amos 6:4–6).

[8] Philo, who lived in Egypt, mentions the “innumerable herds of cattle in every direction” that were milked daily to make cheese and condemns those who seethe young animals in their mother’s milk as a perversity. On the Virtues 144, English translation from The Works of Philo: Complete and Unabridged; updated version, trans. C. D. Yonge (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1993), 654.

[9] Lev-Tov, “Upon What Meat Doth This Our Caesar Feed,” 429: “Taken together, archaeological evidence from animal bones, human bone chemistry, agricultural economics, and even ceramic analysis strongly suggest that the Hellenistic and Roman period populations of Palestine ate meat on a regular basis.” For a description of archaeological evidence for meat eating in Israel in the Iron Age, see MacDonald, What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat?, 61–72.

[10] Gil Marks, Encyclopedia of Jewish Food (Hoboken, NJ: J. Wiley & Sons, 2010), 40–41.

[11] The importance of viticulture in Palestine is evidenced by the number of wine presses that have been found dating from the Early Bronze Age down into the Byzantine period. See Broshi, Bread, Wine, Walls and Scrolls, 147–49.

[12] For example, see Luke 14:8–10. See also G. Anthony Keddie, “Triclinium Trialectics: The Triclinium as Contested Space in Early Roman Palestine,” Harvard Theological Review 113, no. 1 (2020): 83.

[13] Greco-Roman associations based on family ties, ethnic identity, cultic deities, or trades were organized throughout the Greco-Roman world. They gathered together for sociability and afforded certain social, economic and political benefits to its members. These associations often participated in communal meals. See Richard S. Ascough, “Social and Political Characteristics of Greco-Roman Association Meals,” in Smith and Taussig, Meals in the Early Christian World, 59–85; John S. Kloppenborg, Richard S. Ascough, Greco-Roman Associations: Texts, Translations, and Commentary: I. Attica, Central Greece, Macedonia, Thrace (Berlin & New York: De Gruyter, 2011), 1–13.

[14] At the Roman banquets, the distinction between the meal proper and the entertainment was less rigid, “with wine drinking taking place throughout the meal.” Smith, “The Greco-Roman Banquet as a Social Institution,” 24–25.

[15] English translation from Plutarch, Moralia, Volume IX, Table-Talk 7.697D, trans. Edwin L. Miinor, F. H. Sandbach, and W. C. Helmbold, Loeb Classical Library 425 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961), 5.

[16] Matthias Klinghardt, “A Typology of the Communal Meal,” in Smith and Taussig, Meals in the Early Christian World, 14–16.

[17] Smith, “The Greco-Roman Banquet as a Social Institution,” 24–27. There were also some variations on the size and arrangement of the couches, but the triclinium is the classic example. See also Keddie, “Triclinium,” 67.

[18] Smith, “The Greco-Roman Banquet as a Social Institution,” 24.

[19] Klinghardt, “A Typology of the Communal Meal,” 14. In the Greek world, a paean was a choral song or chant celebrating a triumph or a victory. Henry George Liddel and Robert Scott, comp, “Παιάν; paian,” in A Greek-English Lexicon, with a Revised Supplement, 9th ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 1286.

[20] Ascough, “Social and Political Characteristics,” 62.

[21] Lucian, Saturnalia, 17. English translation by K. Kilburn, Loeb Classical Library 430 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959), 113.

[22] Keddie, “Triclinium,” 83. See also John H. D’Arms, “The Roman Convivium and the Idea of Equality,” in Sympotica: A Symposium on the Symposion, ed. Osywn Murray (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 308–20.

[23] Keddie, “Triclinium,” 67.

[24] Plutarch, Moralia, Volume VIII, Table-Talk 1.615C–616F, trans. Paul A. Clement and Herbert B. Hoffleit, Loeb Classical Library 424 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,) 24–45.

[25] For example, Philo writes, “There are a vast number of parties in the city whose association is founded in no one good principle, but who are united by wine, and drunkenness, and revelry, and the offspring of those indulgencies, insolence.” Flaccus, 136; see also Allegorical Interpretation, 2.29. English translation from Yonge, The Works of Philo,736–37. In the third century, Tertullian distinguishes Christian practice from that of associations when he argues that financial donations by Christians are not spent on “feasts and drinking-bouts, and eating houses.” He goes on to describe their feasts as “parasites [who] aspire to the glory of satisfying their licentious propensities, selling themselves for a belly-feast to all disgraceful treatment.” Apology 39.6–7, 15–19.

[26] Klinghardt, “A Typology of the Communal Meal,” 15–16.

[27] Plutarch, Moralia, Volume VIII, Table Talk, 1.2.616A–B; Ascough, “Social and Political Characteristics,” 62–63.

[28] Keddie, “Triclinium,” 71–74. “The earliest . . . is an open-air triclinium in the lower wing of the Hasmonean complex at Jericho.” The second is in a “mansion from the late Hasmonean period (built 75 BCE–50 BCE).” The third is in a rural mansion at Khirbet el Muraq (in Idumaea, near modern Hebron).” An inscription from the building “suggests that it might have belonged to a Jewish elite named Ḥilkiya.”

[29] Walter Bauer, William F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 55, 56, 59, 411.

[30] See also Plutarch, Moralia, Dinner of the Seven Wise Men 148F–149B; Lucian, The Carousal (Symposium), 9. Lucian claimed that such disputes over place of honor were even experienced at the table of the gods. Dialogues of the Gods 15.

[31] In John’s Gospel the events are described as taking place on the day of “preparation of the Passover” (John 19:14), and the dinner is portrayed as simply Jesus’s final meal with his disciples and not necessarily as a Passover meal. For a discussion of this difference, see David Rolph Seely, “The Last Supper According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke,” in From the Last Supper through the Resurrection: The Savior’s Final Hours, ed. Richard Neitzel Holzapfel and Thomas A. Wayment (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2003), 64–74.

[32] Ben Witherington III, Making a Meal of It: Rethinking the Theology of the Lord’s Supper (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007), 6–7.

[33] John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew, The New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge: Eerdmans; Bletchley: Paternoster Press, 2005), 1044; R.T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2007), 986–89. For an example of one reconstruction the Jesus’s introduction of the sacrament with in the context of the Passover Seder, see Gordon J. Bahr, “The Seder of Passover and the Eucharistic Words,” Novum Testamentum (1970): 181–202.

[34] Joachim Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1966), 84–88.

[35] Witherington, “Making a Meal,” 4.

[36] For a discussion on Jesus symbolized as a lamb, see David Rolph Seely and Jo Ann H. Seely, “Behold the Lamb of God,” in “Behold the Lamb of God”: An Easter Celebration, ed. Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, Frank F. Judd Jr., and Thomas A. Wayment (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2008), 17–48.

[37] Scholars generally date the earliest Gospel, Mark, as written sometime in the mid 60s AD. First Corinthians, however, is dated to the mid 50s, a decade earlier than the writing of Mark’s Gospel. For a discussion of the dating of 1 Corinthians, see Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, The New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2000), 29–32.

[38] See the accounts of Jesus’s introduction of the sacrament in the New World (3 Nephi 18:1–11; 20:1–8).

[39] For a discussion on Jesus’s spiritual family, see Eric D. Huntsman, “The Family of God in the Gospel of John,” in this volume.

[40] For a discussion of various interpretations, see Reta Halteman Finger, Of Widows and Meals: Communal Meals in the Book of Acts (Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2007), 55–61.

[41] See also 1 Corinthians 11:25, where he uses the verbal form of deipnon, deipnēsai, which is translated as “when he supped.” Josephus uses a similar verb to refer to eating the Passover meal. Antiquities 2.312.

[42] Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987), 533–34.

[43] Finger, Of Widows and Meals, 61. Lucian advocated inviting the poor to the banquets. “Tell them to invite the poor to dinner, take in four or five at a time, not as they do nowadays, though, but in more democratic fashion, all having an equal share, no one stuffing himself with dainties, with the servant standing waiting for him to eat himself to exhaustion, . . . only letting us glimpse the platter or the remnant of the cakes. And tell him not to give a whole half of the pig and its head to his master when it is brought in, leaving for the others just the bones. And tell the wine servers not to wait for each of us to ask seven times for a drink, but on one request to pour it out and to hand us at once a big cup, like they do for their master. And let all the guests have the same wine. Where is it laid down that he should get drunk on wine with a fine bouquet while I burst my belly on new stuff?” Saturnalia, 22, English translation by K. Kilburn, in Loeb Classical Library 430 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959), 119–21. Suetonius tells of an occasion when the Roman emperor Domitian gave a public banquet inviting senators, and knights, as well as common people, but the former received “large baskets of victuals” and the commoners received “smaller ones.” Domitian 4.5, English translation by John Carew Rolfe, Loeb Classical Library 38 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 332–33.

[44] English translation by D. R. Shackleton Bailey, in Loeb Classical Library 94 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 231.

[45] Agape meals, like the description in 1 Corinthians 11, consisted of a full meal combined with the celebration of the sacrament. The earliest use of the terminology is found in Jude and may be reflected in 2 Peter 2:13, where some versions specifically use the word agapē. See Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 3rd ed. (London and New York: United Bible Societies, 1971), 704. These meals became prevalent in the early Christian church (Ignatius, Letter to the Smymaeans 8.2 and Pliny’s Letter to Trajen 10.96), although the meal and the sacrament later split into two separate events. See “agape” in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed., ed. Frank L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 26–27.

[46] See Johannes Behm, “δeῖπνον” (deipnon), in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 10 vols., ed. Gerhardt Kittel; trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans), 2:34–35.

[47] This concept is well attested in Greek and Jewish texts. Homer describes those who partake of the food and drink of the gods, as leading to immortality. Homer, The Odyssey 5.93; The Illiad 19:38–39. In the Jewish text Joseph and Aseneth 16:14, honeycomb is called the food of angels and provides immortality to all who eat it. Likewise, in his letter to the saints at Ephesus, the Revelator describes the righteous at the end of time, “To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God” (Revelation 2:9; see also 22:2, 14). Particularly in John’s Gospel Jesus describes the “living water” that he gives “springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:6–14), and the “bread of life” as that which “giveth life unto the world.” Further, “he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst” (John 6:22–35). See also Dennis E. Smith, “Messianic Banquet,” in Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, 6 vols., ed. David Noel Freedman et al. (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2008), 4:788–89.

[48] For a detailed discussion on the eschatological banquet and Jesus’s use of it in the Synoptic Gospels, see Phillip J. Long, “The Origin of the Eschatological Feast as a Wedding Banquet in the Synoptic Gospels: An Intertextual Study” (PhD diss., Andrews University, 2012).

[49] First Enoch describes an eschatological time when the Son of Man will judge the “rulers of the earth” and then he describes the righteous and the elect eating a meal with the Son of Man after he has judged the wicked. The text then goes on to describe “the righteous and the elect ones shall rise from the earth and shall cease being of downcast face. They shall wear the garments of glory” (62; compare Zephaniah 3:13). See also 4 Ezra 9:1–13 that talks of an end-time judgment followed by a time that it described as an “unfailing table.”

[50] 1QSa 2:11–22. See also France, The Gospel of Matthew, 317.

[51] A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed., ed. Walter Bauer; rev. and ed. Frederick William Canker (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 2000), s.v. ἀνακλίνω (anaklinō).

[52] b. Pesachim 119b.4–6; France, The Gospel of Matthew, 317.