Saturday, June 11, 2022

The Eucharist having an Apotropaic Power (cf. Mark 16:18) in The Apostolic Tradition

In chapter 36 of The Apostolic Tradition, we read the following in the various recensions of the text (the following comes from Paul F. Bradshaw, Maxwell E. Johnson, and L. Edward Phillips, The Apostolic Tradition: A Commentary [Hermeneia—A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002], 180-81):

 

 

Latin: every faithful [person] take care to receive the Eucharist before he tastes anything else. For if he receives in faith, even if something deadly shall be given to him after this, it cannot harm him.

 

Sahidic: Concerning that it is proper to receive the Eucharist (ευχαριστια) early at the time it will be offered up, before they taste anything.

 

And (δε) let every faithful [person] (πιστος) hasten (σπουδαζειν) to receive the Eucharist (ευχαριστια) before he tastes anything. For (γαρ) if there are some faithful (πιστος) who receive it, if someone gives him (sic) a drug, it will not affect him.

 

Arabic: That they should receive the Eucharist first, at the time when it takes place, before tasking anything

 

Every believer should make it his practice that he should receive the mysteries before tasting anything. If there is faith in him and he receives it, if someone gives him deadly poison, it will not hurt him.

 

Ethiopic: Concerning that it is proper for them to receive the Eucharist first when they go up, before they taste anything.

 

Every believer is to carry out the admonition that he receives from the mystery before he tastes anything. If he has faith and receives it, if there is someone who gives deadly poison to him, it will not harm him.

 

Testamentum Domini 2.25: . . . But always let the faithful take care that, before he eats, he partakes of the Eucharist, that he may be incapable of receiving injury . . .

 

In the Hermeneia commentary, we read that

 

. . . the term “Eucharist” is used here to denote the consecrated elements themselves rather than as the name for the whole rite. This is standard practice in early Christianity.

 

The belief expressed here that the sacrament has apotropaic power to ward off evil is a clear allusion to Mark 16:18, which says of believers that “if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them”; but quasi-magical properties were often alleged for the consecrated elements by early Christian writers. For example, Ignatius describes the bread of the Eucharist as “the medicine of immortality, the antidote preventing death” (Eph. 20.2), a phrase that may echo the magical papyri; Cyprian speaks of the Eucharist as a kind of talisman that protects the worthy but exposes the guilty (De laps. 26); Cyril of Jerusalem in the fourth century advises communicants to “sanctify” their eyes by touching them with the body of Christ that they have just received (Myts. Cat. 5.21); and Ambrose tells the story of his brother, Satyrus, who when a catechumen found himself in danger of shipwreck asked Christian fellow passengers to give him the sacrament which he wrapped in his scarf and then plunged into the deda (De excessu fratis 1.43). (Ibid., 181)

 

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