Overview

This book is concerned with the central act of Christian worship, call it Eucharist, Holy Communion, Liturgy, Last Supper or Mass. First it investigates in some detail the New Testament accounts of its institution at the Last Supper, dealing with the problems of scholarship involved. Professor Kilpatrick argues that Mark XIV and I Corinthians XI are basic, Mark being more archaic. Secondly, the book examines three themes of the Eucharist which are foreign to Western thinking of today: sacrifice, the sacred meal and the pattern of charter story and ritual. This pattern is common ground to anthropologists and biblical scholars. It is argued that the observance is not a Passover but a sacrifice in Biblical terms and certain features which we find in Biblical sacrifice have parallels in the religion of ancient Rome and Greece. The bearing of these conclusions on present-day liturgical revision is then discussed.