Daniel C. Ullucci on Sacrifice, the Eucharist, and the Didache

The following comes from:

 

Daniel C. Ullucci, The Christian Rejection of Animal Sacrifice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 96-97, 187-88

 

The Didache: Christian Sacrifice Without Jesus

 

The text known as the Didache ("teaching," ca. 100) provides a useful comparison to Hebrews. Like Hebrews, the dating of the Didache is uncertain, but the texts are from roughly the same period (end of the first century). [121] Unlike Hebrews, sacrifice is not a major focal point of the Didache. Rather, this text is concerned with proper ethics and ritual practice within an early Christian group. [122] The Didache assumes a nonsacrificial context. Meat offered to idols is explicitly for- bidden in a passage that echoes Paul and Acts: "And concerning food, bear what you can. But especially abstain from food sacrificed to idols [ειδωλοθύτου]; for this is a ministry to dead gods" (Did. 6:3). Just as in the case of Paul, this passage does not directly reject animal sacrifice (the Christian god is certainly not included among the dead idols), but unlike Paul the Didache is written after the Temple destruction, meaning that for these Christians there is now no place to sacrifice. [123] The text discusses sacrifice directly in the context of regulations about ritual practices. The Didache discusses two communal eating practices, the "eucharist" and the "Lord's Day." The precise connection between these two events is not clear from the text; it is very likely these are different terms for the same ritual event, but this is not crucial to my argument. These practices do not involve actual animal sacrifice; however, the text uses sacrificial terminology to describe them.

 

Didache 9 and 10 outline the procedures for the practice the text refers to as the eucharist. The practice is similar to the so-called lord's supper in Paul and the gospels and involves eating bread and drinking from a cup. The Didache does not present a sacrificial interpretation of this practice. No reference is made to Jesus' death; nor are the bread and unspecified drink referred to as body and blood. The picture is complicated, however, by the discussion of the Lord's Day in Didache 14. Here the author describes people coming together to break bread and give thanks. Participants are first to confess their sins "so that your sacrifice [θυσια] may be pure" (Did. 14:1). Anyone who has a conflict must reconcile it: "Lest your sacrifice be defiled. For it was of this sacrifice that the lord said, 'Always and everywhere offer me a pure sacrifice'" (Did. 14:2-3). [124] This passage refers to communal breaking of bread and giving of thanks as a sacrifice. It is, in fact, the first time the term θυσια is used in reference to a Christian ritual. [125] Unfortunately, the author gives no indication of what he means by calling this practice a sacrifice. There is a concern that participants confess their sins and reconcile conflicts before participating, but that is all. There is no reference to Jesus' death as a sacrifice. It is therefore impossible to say here what the author of the Didache meant by this metaphor. [126] Whatever is meant, it is people who are the agents in this sacrifice. They are performing it to the lord ("Always and everywhere offer to me a pure sacrifice"), and it is they who are responsible for keeping it pure.

 

For the author of the Didache, certain communal practices may be referred to as a sacrifice, but these sacrificial metaphors are significantly different from the positions on sacrifice in Hebrews. For the author of Hebrews, Jesus is himself both the perfect sacrifice and the perfect sacrificer. It is Jesus who offers sacrifice in Hebrews, not the Christian community. The Didache, on the other hand, shows no understanding of the death of Jesus as a sacrifice; nor does it argue that the purpose of sacrifice is to forgive sins, the other key element of the Hebrews position. In fact, the whole point of Didache 14:1 is that sins (whatever the author means by this) must be dealt with before the Lord's Day ritual.

 

Comparing the sacrificial metaphors in the Didache with Hebrews yields two important conclusions. First, both texts use the terminology of animal sacrifice for things other than sacrifice, but they do so very differently. These two texts from the late first century suggest that there is no single position on sacrifice among Christians in this period. Rather, individual Christian authors use sacrifice differently for their own purposes. Second, Didache 14 suggests that early Christian groups could refer to some of their practices as a sacrifice without connecting this explicitly to Jesus' death. [127]

 

Notes for the Above:

 

121. The date of 100 CE is little more than a guess. The question is complicated by the observation that the text as we have it is likely a compilation of several texts potentially from different periods. For discussion of the dating of the texts and its parts, see Kurt Niederwimmer, The Didache (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), 19-55; and Bentley Layton, "The Sources, Date, and Transmission of Didache I.3b-2.1," Harvard Theological Review 61 (1968), 343-83.

 

122. The Didache clearly imagines a group of early Christians who see themselves as a collective, recognize an established hierarchy, and come together frequently as a group. The actual relationship between this text and a real group is, unfortunately, unknowable. It is impossible to say whether the Didache served as the guidelines for a real assemblage of persons or whether it represents an idealized vision.

 

123. The text makes a nod to this fact by redirecting the traditional temple tax in the Hebrew Bible. Didache 13 discusses support for people called prophets (προφητης). The author argues that true prophets and teachers have the right to receive support from the community: "Hence take all the first fruits of vintage and harvest, and of cattle and sheep, and give these first fruits to the prophets. For they are your High Priests. If however, you have no prophet, give them to the poor" (Did. 13:3-4). He goes on to argue that the same things should be done with bread, oil, money, clothing and ultimately "all of your possessions" (Did. 13:5-7). I argue that this passage, in actuality, tells us nothing about the author's position on sacrifice. First, the issue here is first fruits; within a Judean context, these are offerings made to the temple. They are not properly sacrifices, since no portion of them (including the animals) is burned on the altar. First fruits are economic support for the temple akin to a tax in kind, and very different from the practice of traditional animal sacrifice. This passage is not evidence that early Christian "prophets" replaced the role of the high priest, since receiving first fruits was only one of the functions of the high priests. The Didache does express the idea that support once directed to the temple should now go to members of the Christian community. However, this is not an either-or situation. The Didache was almost certainly written after 70 CE. Perforce, there are no first fruits going to the Jerusalem temple. The Didache represents the co-opting of a defunct tradition; it does not represent a critique of or opposition to the temple cult-only recognition of its end.

 

124. Ferguson points out that the quote from Malachi 1:11 in this passage occurs frequently in Christian texts referring to pure sacrifice. See his "Spiritual Sacrifice," 1167; and Jean Paul Audet, La Didache (Paris: Librairie Lecoffre, 1958), 462.

 

125. Ferguson, "Spiritual Sacrifice," 1167.

 

126. In commenting on this passage Ferguson makes the opaque statement, "Since the sacrifice is not identified with the material elements, this qualifies as rational or spiritual sacrifice, although the action of breaking bread as well as the words are included" ("Spiritual Sacrifice," 1167-68). I believe Didache 14:1-3 very clearly associates sacrifice with the material offerings of bread and wine. The problem is what is meant by the association. Do the bread and wine fill in for the animal? Do they represent the sacrifice of Jesus? The text is simply not forthcoming.

 

127. The Didache's position on Greek and Roman sacrifices is clear: they are forbidden (Did. 6:1-4).

 

Dale G. Renlund and Ruth Lybert Renlund on how Jesus is our "Friend"

Dale G. Renlund and Ruth Lybert Renlund, in their 2018 book on the Melchizedek Priesthood, have a good discussion of how Jesus is our "friend," and it is based on faithfulness to Him as our Lord, not our modern view of "friendship":

COMMANDMENT 4: Become the Savior’s friend

 

The fourth commandment associated with magnifying one’ calling in the priesthood is an all-encompassing and intimate invitation: “And again I say unto you, my friends, for from henceforth I shall call you friends, it is expedient that I give unto you this commandment, that ye become even as my friends in days when I was with them, traveling to preach the gospel in my power” (Doctrine and Covenants 84:77; emphasis added).

 

The commandment stated imperatively, is: “Be My Friend.” The Savior told His Apostles of old: “Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth; but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you” (John 15:14-15).

 

The way to become His friend today is no different than in days of old. It starts with a commitment to keep HIs commandments. The Savior cannot share all that Heavenly Father has communicated to Him unless the priesthood holder is willing to completely align his will with God’s. Once a priesthood holder is so aligned and willing to consecrate his life to the Savior, his standing with the Savior changes. He is not simply a disciple; he is certainly not a hireling or an evangelical mercenary. He is the Savior’s friend, and the Savior will be his friend—but not an ordinary friend. He is a friend who carries burdens, cares for needs, and sustains a priesthood holder on His errand.

 

The Savior says to the priesthood holder that he will receive help in teaching the gospel: “Neither take ye thought beforehand what ye shall say; but treasure up in your minds continually the words of life, and it shall be given you in the very hour that portion that shall be meted unto every man” (Doctrine and Covenants 84:85).

 

In addition, the priesthood holder is not left to labor alone. The Lord Himself will work with him just as a friend would. In the allegory of the olive tree, the Lord of the vineyard, who represents the Lord, joins the priesthood holders in the vineyard. “And it came to pass that the servants did go and labor with their mights; and the Lord of the vineyard also with them; and they did obey the commandments of the Lord of the vineyard in all things” (Jacob 5:72).

 

Through Joseph Smith, the Lord revealed: “And whoso receiveth you, there I will be also, for I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up” (Doctrine and Covenants 84:88).

 

Our Friend is in the vineyard laboring today, supporting the priesthood holder in his responsibility. He has prepared the way over decades for those priesthood holders who trust the Lord as a friend. Friends trust each other. They work together to build God’s kingdom.

 

God has given man the Melchizedek Priesthood, with an oath and covenant, and instructed him how to magnify this priesthood. He promises great blessing to those who heed the words of eternal life, bear testimony to the world, do not boast of themselves, and become His friends. Armed with such knowledge and promises, it is time for priesthood holders to go to work.

 

God implores: “Therefore, let every man stand in his own office, and labor in his own calling” (Doctrine and Covenants 84:109). (Dale G. Renlund and Ruth Lybert Renlund, The Melchizedek Priesthood: Understanding the Doctrine, Living the Principles [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2018], 82-84)

 

Nahum Sarna on Genesis 30:32-36

  

32–36. In the Near East, sheep are generally white and goats are dark brown or black. A minority of sheep may have dark patches, and goats white markings. It is these uncommon types to be born in the future that Jacob demands as wages for his unpaid services. Laban readily agrees, believing that he is getting a bargain on account of their rarity. He promptly withdraws all the livestock that already possess the specified characteristics and moves them a considerable distance away to avoid contact with the rest of the flocks that remain in Jacob’s care. However, Jacob succeeds in outwitting Laban in the course of the next six years (31:41). How does he do it?

 

One account has it that he first segregates the feebler animals. Then he subjects the sturdier ones to visual impressions at mating time, in this way influencing the character of the progeny. Of course, this interpretation rests on folkloristic beliefs and fallaciously assumes the inheritability of acquired characteristics.

 

Another explanation is given in 31:8–12. Here the preferred characteristics are obtained through controlled propagation and transmitted from parent to progeny. Scientifically, the required results could be achieved by the successive interbreeding of the monochrome heterozygotes, or the singlecolored animals that carried recessive genes for spottedness. Such animals are detectable by the characteristic known as heterosis, or hybrid vigor.

 

It should be noted that Jacob claims to have received the idea in a dream. The entire action is thus attributed to divine intervention, not to Jacob’s ingenuity. This process made it necessary for Jacob to find a way to advance the mating season so that the rare types would be induced to engage in reproductive activity before they were segregated, which they were when the normal mating time approached. If this is the true explanation, then the varied accounts need not be contradictory. The first would describe the elaborate display put on by Jacob in order to mask his secret technique. It is also possible that the three plants placed in the watering troughs, each known to contain toxic substances and used in the ancient world for medicinal purposes, could have had the effect of hastening the onset of the estrous cycle in the animals and so heightened their readiness to copulate. (Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis [The JPS Torah Commentary; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989], 212)

 

 

Victor P. Hamilton on Genesis 11:1

  

1 This chapter opens with the assertion that the entire world had one language and one speech. How are we to square this information with Gen. 10, which tells us, not once but three times, that mankind already possessed multiple languages (vv. 5, 20, 31, “their languages”)? We have suggested an answer to this question in our discussion of ch. 10—we are dealing here with a case of deliberate dischronologization.

 

One can make sense of the biblical material in another way, however. Students of ancient and modern languages are well acquainted with the phenomenon of a lingua franca, a medium of communication among representatives of different speech groups. At various times in antiquity, Sumerian, Babylonian, Aramaic, and Greek each served in this capacity. In our own day the English language is taking on more and more the flavor of an international language. Thus Gen. 10 and 11 would make linguistic sense in their current sequence. In addition to the local languages (l^ešōnôṯ) of each nation (ch. 10), there existed “one language” (śāp̄á ʾeḥāṯ, ch. 11) which made communication possible throughout the world (ch. 10).

 

The phrase one speech is not just a repetition of one language. The two phrases are related but not interchangeable. This age possessed a common language (“one language”) with a conventional vocabulary (“one speech”). The Tower narrative has a symmetry: it begins and ends with a reference to a universal language (śāp̄á), once flourishing but now destroyed (vv. 1, 9). (Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1–17 [The New International Commentary on the Old Testament; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1990], 350-51)

 

Trina Boice on "Remembrance" (זכר; cf. αναμνησις)

 While the book is very flawed (e.g., every single Hebrew word in the book is spelt from left-to-right), I did appreciate the following commentary on זכר (zakar; cf. αναμνησις):

 

Zakar teaches us that remembering is not simply about calling something to mind; it involves actively engaging with the memory and allowing it to shape our actions. Whenever God remembers someone, He takes action. For example, when he remembered Noah, He sent wind to save the inhabitants of the ark (Genesis 8:1). When He remembered Rachel, He enabled her to conceive a child (Genesis 30:22). When Jesus introduced the sacrament during the Last Supper, He admonished us to do it in remembrance of Him. To this say, we act on that command by partaking of the bread and water every Sunday (Luke 22:19). To zakar (remember) is to act.

 

When we remember God, His covenants, and His works, we don’t just acknowledge Him mentally, but we allow that remembrance to guide us, motivate us, and direct our behavior.

 

This deep, meaningful remembrance should influence how we live daily. It is a reminder to act in accordance with our covenants, to offer gratitude, and to be mindful of God’s ongoing role in our lives. (Trina Boice, The Language of Heaven: Hebrew Words Every Latter-day Saint Should Know to Better Understand the Bible, Covenants, and God [Springville, Utah: CFI, 2025], 293)

 

Radak (David Kimhi) on Ezekiel 18:19-20

 Source:

 

Radak on Ezekiel 18:19:1

מדע. חסר וי"ו ולית כוותיה. וטעם ואמרתם כי אתם תאמרו אלי כשאומר לכם מדתי זאת מדוע לא נשא הבן בעון האב כמו שאנו רואים אבותינו חטאו ואינם ואנחנו עונותיהם סבלנו וזה לא יתכן כי הבן משפט וצדקה עשה מדוע ישא עון האב אבל אתם רשעים ואתם נושאים עונותיכם ועון אבותיכם כמו שהיא מדתי פוקד עון אבות על בנים לשונאי: 

 

Radak on Ezekiel 18:19:2

שמר ויעשה אותם. שמר מצות לא תעשה ויעשה מצות עשה:

 

Radak on Ezekiel 18:20:1

הנפש. מבואר הוא: 

 

Radak on Ezekiel 18:20:2

רשע. כתיב וקרי הרשע אין ביניהם אלא ה"א הידיעה:

 

 

Radak on Ezekiel 18:19:1

“מדע. It is defective, lacking the waw, and there is nothing like it. And the sense of ‘and you will say’ is that you will say to me, when I say to you according to this my measure, ‘Why should the son not bear the iniquity of the father, as we see: our fathers have sinned and are no more, and we bear their iniquities?’ But this cannot be, for the son has done justice and righteousness; why should he bear the father’s iniquity? Rather, you are wicked, and you bear your own iniquities and your fathers’ iniquity, as it is my measure: ‘visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, upon those who hate me.’”

 

Radak on Ezekiel 18:19:2

“He keeps and does them. ‘Keeps’ refers to the negative commandments, and ‘does’ refers to the positive commandments.”

 

Radak on Ezekiel 18:20:1

“The soul. It is self-evident.”

 

Radak on Ezekiel 18:20:2

“The wicked. The written text and the reading differ only in the presence of the article he.”

 

Except from Travis Wright, “Prepositions and Perpetual Virginity: Until as a Scalar Item in Matt 1:25" (2025)

  

(12) καὶ οὐκ ἐγίνωσκεν αὐτὴν ἕως οὗ ἔτεκεν υἱόν.
He did not know her until she birthed a son.

 

Like λαμβάνω, the predicate ἐγίνωσκεν αὐτήν must be a bounded event because it is an imperfective achievement. If γινώσκω happens at all, the endpoint was reached because γινώσκω causes an instant change to a non-incremental object. Moreover, because every proper subpart of γινώσκω is identical to the event itself, there is a culmination entailment. In Matt 1:25, the culmination entailment is denied during the topic time, which is the period prior to the culmination of the event ἔτεκεν υἱόν. However, Matthew selects the until-phrase to structure the event sequence so that, once the event ἔτεκεν υἱόν finished culminating, the reader would understand that ἐγίνωσκεν αὐτὴν culminated too: the Until Time Span sets “the boundary at the farthest point at which the sentence can still be true.” (Iatridou and Zeijlstra, “Complex Beauty,” 139) In other words, denial of the culmination entailment only lasts during the topic time. Once the topic time is over (i.e. once Mary finishes giving birth), a polarity reversal occurs, and the culmination entailment of the imperfective achievement ἐγίνωσκεν αὐτήν goes through. The result is an obligatory scalar inference meaning ‘after but not before’: the final boundary of ἔτεκεν υἱόν was the initial boundary of ἐγίνωσκεν αὐτήν. (Travis Wright, “Prepositions and Perpetual Virginity: Until as a Scalar Item in Matt 1:25,” Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics 13 [2025]: 29-30)