Eating Jesus

[SallyF]

Pretending to eat the flesh of a human sacrifice to a god sounds barbaric to me.

What are the possible origins of this Christian practice ?

[Elijah John]

Even the RCC which claims to take the passages literally, do not actually take it literally. But only in symbolic ritual re-enactment. Else they would be ingesting relics of Jesus corpse. Symbolic re-enactment is not literal ingestion.

The doctrine of transubstantiation clearly contradicts this claim.


Tcg

Yes, that's how they get around it. It seems the wafer is the body and the wine the blood of the "risen Christ". Or becomes such.

The interpretation, the doctrine, and the practice works for millions, but not for me.

Whether or not it works for you is irrelevant. The fact remains that the doctrine of transubstantiation contradicts your claim.


Tcg

Contradiction does not invalidate it. Do you think "transubstantiation" is what Jesus had in mind when he uttered his metaphor? If so, what is your evidence for this?

[Tcg]

Even the RCC which claims to take the passages literally, do not actually take it literally. But only in symbolic ritual re-enactment. Else they would be ingesting relics of Jesus corpse. Symbolic re-enactment is not literal ingestion.

The doctrine of transubstantiation clearly contradicts this claim.


Tcg

Yes, that's how they get around it. It seems the wafer is the body and the wine the blood of the "risen Christ". Or becomes such.

The interpretation, the doctrine, and the practice works for millions, but not for me.

Whether or not it works for you is irrelevant. The fact remains that the doctrine of transubstantiation contradicts your claim.


Tcg

Contradiction does not invalidate it. Do you think "transubstantiation" is what Jesus had in mind when he uttered his metaphor? If so, what is your evidence for this?

Contradiction doesn't invalidate a claim? Please explain.

You are the one claiming it was a metaphor, I'll wait for you to support that claim.


Tcg

[JehovahsWitness]

John's Jesus seems to be citing it as a metaphor for partaking Jesus atoning sacrifice.

John? That's interesting .... and what do you think it was a metaphor of in Matthew, Mark and Luke?

MATTHEW 26:26
Jesus took a loaf, and after saying a blessing, he broke it, and giving it to the disciples, he said: Take, eat. This means my body.

MARK 14:22
he took a loaf, said a blessing, broke it, and gave it to them, saying: Take it; this means my body.

LUKE 22:19
Also, he took a loaf, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to them, saying: This means my body, which is to be given in your behalf.

All scriptures NWT

[tam]

Peace to you both,

[Replying to post 2 by Elijah John]

[Replying to post 1 by SallyF]


Well, it is not based on a pagan practice (though pagan practices may have arisen based upon the source of this: eating from the Tree of Life - which is not an actual tree, but which is Christ Himself).


Adam and Eve needed to eat from the Tree of Life in order to have eternal life (in order to live forever). Christ is the Tree of Life. In order to have eternal life, we must eat from Him: the LIFE. He is the daily bread (that we are praying for from the "our Father" prayer), because He is the true manna/bread from heaven. Israel ate the manna daily (also known as the bread of angels Psalm 78:25), but Christ is the true bread from heaven, our daily bread.


The bread and the wine mean His flesh and His blood, and He commanded His disciples to eat (the bread that mean His flesh) and drink (the wine that means His blood), in remembrance of Him, until He returns.



(Just as an fyi, the image in the OP appears to be incorrect in its writing. It should be "Take and eat. This is my body, GIVEN for you.")



Peace again to you,
your servant and a slave of Christ,
tammy

[Wootah]

[Replying to post 1 by SallyF]

The Eucharist or Communion is deep. 1000 page book deep.

We eat food for nutrition in both solid and liquid form. We break down that food into its components that our body can use. In essence, we absorb the food into our being.

A level up from this, we eat each day from the world around us and how we interact with it. For instance, when we watch a movie, we consume it and break down the movie into our being, creating morality tales and points and ideas. This happens for all our interactions with society.

In a sense, the choices are to eat healthy or unhealthy. The world is considered unhealthy. Eating money, family, career, fame, fortune, self, lead us away from the direction God wants.

When we eat the bread and drink the blood of Christ it is like a unhealthy eater eating carrot for the first time. Over time, as we keep eating, integrating Christ into our being, we become more Christ like. We eat Christ when we consume his words.

If you want to live, you have to integrate Christ into your self. If you want to die, you will integrate the world into yourself.

Think about the narcissism of becoming one with the world. This is an attempt to eat everything the world has to offer. Think about the narcissism of not eating, believing oneself already good enough and complete.

Instead by following God, which is eating Christ, which is doing what He said and taking up your cross and following Him, is like taking a little dose of death each day. You put to death the world and your self.

Try it. You might like it said Sam I am.

[Athetotheist]

John's Jesus seems to be citing it as a metaphor for partaking Jesus atoning sacrifice.

Yet in John 6:53-58, after people ask, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?", instead of explaining it as metaphor, Jesus doubles down and asserts again that his body is to be consumed.

Concerning the question in the OP, I think [with a little help from Joseph Campbell] that the concept may go all the way back to ancient times when people gave thanks to the animal for giving its life to the hunt. When more formal religions were developed the gratitude was transferred from the animal to the god, especially gods depicted in animal form.

[SallyF]

John's Jesus seems to be citing it as a metaphor for partaking Jesus atoning sacrifice.

Yet in John 6:53-58, after people ask, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?", instead of explaining it as metaphor, Jesus doubles down and asserts again that his body is to be consumed.

Concerning the question in the OP, I think [with a little help from Joseph Campbell] that the concept may go all the way back to ancient times when people gave thanks to the animal for giving its life to the hunt. When more formal religions were developed the gratitude was transferred from the animal to the god, especially gods depicted in animal form.

I think you are perfectly correct.

The writers of the possibly fictional Jesus character did not invent the idea of pretending to eat the flesh and drink the blood of the human sacrifice to mollify a wrathful, genocidal a god.

Jews were Canaanites, originally.

Canaanites were known for human sacrifice.

The sect that Jesus was born into may have continued the practice symbolically

Just as Christians do today.

It's primitive, superstitious barbarity that has come down to us from a literal ritualistic cannibalism, to a wine and wafers symbolic cannibalism

But the superstition of the forgiveness of sins and the assuaging a murderous deity remains.

[Wootah]

[Replying to post 17 by SallyF]

I observe human sacrifice today, don't you?

Parents sacrifice for children.
Soldiers for state
Babies for convenience.
Poor for rich.

We will either eat from each other or from God.

Eating each other is easy, not eating each other is impossible.

Nom, nom, nom.

[Purple Knight]

....they were clearly meant to be taken metaphorically.

What do you think its a metaphor of?

Cannibalism?

(Look, I get it; it's a metaphor for sacrifice. There is no greater physical sacrifice possible than someone laying down their life so that someone else may eat their flesh and life, and Jesus made the same general sort of sacrifice, albeit spiritually. So it's just a double-layered metaphor. But yes, the first layer is cannibalism.)

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to post 19 by Purple Knight]

People have long used food to symboliz celebration of an event and/or sealing of an agreement:

- a birthday cake with candles to celebrate another year of life of an individual
- the figurines of the bride and groom and the ceremonial mutual first bite of the wedding cake
- drinking alcohol upon the signing of a business agreement
- annual feasts to this or that god along with special foods (often symbolizing the given diety)

... and modern man has no objection whatsoever to continuing the traditions irrespective of whether the origins of the festivities were indeed literal human sacrifice or not. I do believe with a clever a reworking of "strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees" preferably with some bells and a jolly beat, gingerbread men covered in chocolate by Cadbury's and a little rebranding , the KKK could have their own holiday with no objection from a generation so anaesthetised by marketers they are incapable of making a moral objection to anything if it's sugar coated and comes with free drinks.

Any mock moral outtrange at a supposed link between the Christian observation of the "last supper" and literal cannibalism, even if that could be proven, would be just that, mock, coming from people that have no objection to celebrating "christmas". After all what do people think was originally done during ancient Babylonian winter solstice rituals before modern day Wicca reworked paganism as a Disney movie?



JW