PP.....I have already suggested in earlier posts that the Great Commission, attested in Matthew and Pseudo-Mark as given during the post-resurrection appearances, had an original context in (oral) tradition within the Last Supper -- with the wine and bread symbolism originally referring to vineyard that Jesus entrusts to his disciples in Mark 12:1-2, Matthew 21:33-46, and Luke 20:9-19 (a parable placed prior to the Last Supper in the Markan Jerusalem narrative) and the teaching that is distributed (like broken bread) to those who will receive it throughout the known world. This suggestion has the support of the Eucharist formulae in the Didache and the symbolism of bread and grain in the synoptics. This would be the meaning of the Eucharist presumably in Syrian Jewish-Christian communities (such as represented by Q and the Gospel of Thomas) that took little note of Jesus' death and resurrection, as opposed to Mark and Paul where these events themselves represented the gospel to be proclaimed. With this in view, it is interesting that the Gospel of the Hebrews places a parallel of Luke 22:16, 18 (i.e. spoken within the Last Supper) in a post-resurrection appearance. Might this be a fragment of an older "commission" tradition?
It's an interesting idea that the vow was originally placed on the lips of James the Just, and subsequently transferred to Jesus. If this was the case, I would think it would be in a tradition that antedates our extant gospels. The practice of fasting, moreover, was rejected by the Pauline Christians but practiced by Ebionites and other Jewish-Christians (cf. Didache, Matthew's Q Sermon), so the conversion of a fasting vow into something different would also fit the gospels that emerged among Gentile converts. But within the context of Mark and Luke, I can see how the declaration works if the symbolism works in the terms described above. My rough interpretation is that Jesus, in conferring on his disciples a "kingdom" (cf. Luke 22:29), was conferring on them his vineyard, his seed to be sown, and the "bread" to be distributed to those who will make up the new community in the kingdom. This is a similar concept of Jesus transferring his halakic authority to his apostles in Matthew 18:18. In short, he was handing over his "bread and wine" to them, as he was handing his kingdom over to them, so that they would be the ones to pass on the teaching to others. And, indeed, this passage is the very end of Jesus' teaching in the synoptics. The Passion narrative commences at 22:39, and from there onwards Jesus is presented no longer as a wisdom teacher but as the suffering servant from Deutero-Isaiah. So, in a real sense, Jesus "fasts" from his role as rabbi, and will not again share in his disciples' kingdom until he returns and brings them to the table of the Father (Luke 22:30; cf. Matthew 19:28). However, this sense was altered when the Pauline body-consumption motif was incorporated into the gospels (in the case of Luke, verbatim wording from 1 Corinthians).
Yet it also makes little sense to understand wine and bread in a heavenly setting (tho heaven is not implied in this passage).
Well, there is another angle to this that cannot be ignored. The statement in Luke 22:30 (re the apostles eating and drinking "at my table in my kingdom," as they sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel") is strikingly reminiscent of statements in Papias of Hierapolis and Irenaeus of Lyons on the "enjoyment of food" in the earthly millenial kingdom, during which time "the Lord will reign in the flesh with the saints" (cf. Eusebius, HE 3.39.11-13; Jerome, Famous Men 18; Maximus the Confessor, Scholia in Dionysii 7.2). Similarly, Dionysius of Alexandria described Cerinthus' chiliasm as expecting an "earthly" kingdom of Christ with carnal "delights of the belly and of sexual passion, with eating and drinking and marrying" as well as with "festivals and sacrifices and the slaying of victims" (HE 3.28.4-5). There is especially the famous grotesque fragment of Papias (cited in Irenaeus, AH 5.33.3-4), which expands a quotation from 2 Baruch 29:5-6 into an extended discussion between Jesus and his apostles on the renewal of creation in the millenium. Since Papias gave interpretations and illustrative stories to particular oracles of Jesus, the most likely "oracle" at the basis of this fragment in Papias is Matthew 26:27-29/Luke 22:16-18. The main evidence for this is the fact that Irenaeus cited the story in the course of an exegesis of the same oracle:
"For this reason, when about to undergo his sufferings, that He might declare to Abraham and those with him the glad tidings of the inheritance being thrown open, [Christ], after he had given thanks while holding the cup, and had drunk of it, and given it to the disciples, said to them: 'Drink all of it: this is my blood of the new covenant, which shall be shed for many for the remission of sins. But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of the fruit of this vine, until that day when I will drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.' Thus, then, he will himself renew the inheritance of the earth, and will re-organize the mystery of the glory of [his] sons; as David says, 'He who hath renewed the face of the earth.' He promised to drink of the fruit of the vine with his disciples, thus indicating both these points: the inheritance of the earth in which the new fruit of the vine is drunk, and the resurrection of his disciples in the flesh. For the new flesh which rises again is the same which also received the new cup. And he cannot by any means be understood as drinking of the fruit of the vine when settled down with his [disciples] above in a super-celestial place; nor, again, are they who drink it devoid of flesh, for to drink of that which flows from the vine pertains to flesh, and not spirit" (Irenaeus, AH 5.33.1).
The second indication is the quotation from Papias, which concerns the productivity of both wine and wheat flour -- both being the sacraments of the Eucharist, and mentioned in the same order as v. 17-19 of Luke 22. Also, there is a close parallel in Victorinus (Commentary on Revelation 21.6) who likewise alludes to Matthew 26:29. I don't know if the concept in the gospels at all draws on chiliast eschatology, but there appears to have been a more literal interpretation of the vow -- in the sense of waiting until the "fruit of vine" of the new kingdom appears, at which time the "inheritance of the earth" has been renewed.
