Commenting
on the command to celebrate the Eucharist “in remembrance of [Christ]” (Luke
22:19; 1 Cor 11:23-24), A.J.B. Higgins wrote:
The Lord’s Supper in the New Testament,
however, is in fact far more than a memorial feast. It possesses a strong
eschatological outlook; and on his last night our Lord looked forward with
confidence to a rendezvous with his friends in the Kingdom of God. Moreover,
the Last Supper was in all probability a Passover meal, and therefore a firm
feature of that festival may explain the injunction that the Last Supper was to
be repeated as a remembrance.
The following key passages illustrate the
centrality of the idea of remembrance in the Passover.
Ex. 12.14: ‘And this day shall be unto you
for a memorial (lezikkaron, LXX μνημοσυνον), and you shall keep it a feast to the Lord:
throughout your generations you shall keep it a fast y an ordinance for ever.’
Deut. 16.3: ‘That thou mayest remember the day when thou camest forth
out of the Lord of Egypt all the days of thy life.’
Ex. 13.3: ‘Remember this day, in which you came out from Egypt.’
Ex. 13.9: ‘And it shall be for a sign unto
thee upon thine hand, and for a memorial (lezikkaron, LXX μνημοσυνον) between thine eyes.’
The precept to tell the children the meaning
of the festival (Ex. 12.26f; 138) is the basis of the Passover Haggadah, by
which the memory of the event is to be kept fresh, and each individual in every
generation is to feel that he shares in the deliverance from Egypt.
It is held by W.D. Davies, but from quite a
different angle than that of Lietzmann, that the command to repeat ‘in remembrance’
is due to Paul, who, regarding the Last Supper as a new Passover, has imported
into it the element of remembrance which is characteristic of the latter. One
wonders, however, how Paul could have been the first to do this, though Davies,
it is true, does allow that he was but making explicit what was already
implicit, and even in the mind of Jesus himself.
Strongly in favour of the possibility that
the words ‘Do this in remembrance of me’ should be attributed not to Paul, but
to a tradition used by him is the un-Pauline language of the whole pericope. (A.J.B.
Higgins, The Lord’s Supper in the New
Testament [Studies in Biblical Theology 5; London: SCM Press, 1952, 1964], 35-36)
