From Symposium to Eucharist: The Banquet in the Early Christian World.

From Symposium to Eucharist: The Banquet in the Early Christian World. By Dennis E. Smith. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003. 352 pages. Paper. $25.00.

What did one do at festal meals in antiquity? And what did such meals mean to the participants? That is, what were meals as social institutions in the ancient world? How does that impact our interpretation of meals and the Eucharist in early Christianity? This is the series of questions that Dennis E. Smith, Professor of New Testament at Phillips Theological Seminary, Tulsa, Oklahoma, seeks to answer in this significant study.

Earlier studies that compared agape meals and the Eucharist to Jewish and Graeco-Roman meals concentrated on the differing aspects. These meals included everyday meals, symposia, funerary banquets, sacrificial meals (often in temples), mystery cult meals, everyday Jewish meals, and Jewish festival meals. Smith proposes that all of these meals drew from a common meal tradition (what he calls "banquet traditions") that expressed and communicated social conventions and social codes. He examines these to determine how they are expressed or modified in Christian meals and the Eucharist.

He devotes extensive chapters to the GrecoRoman Banquet (pp. 13-46), the Philosophical Banquet (pp. 47-66), the Sacrificial Banquet (pp. 67-86), and the Club Banquet (pp. 87-131). He then turns to the Jewish Banquet (pp. 132-72), starting with Sirach's discussion of that tradition, then moving to rabbinic literature treating especially the Passover meal and meals in sectarian groups. Finally he discusses the messianic banquet.

Smith then turns to the New Testament. He examines the banquet in the "Churches of Paul" (pp. 173-217) and the "Gospels" (pp. 219-77), then gives his conclusions in "The Banquet and Christian Theology" (pp. 279-87): 1. Early Christian meals fit into the banquet tradition of antiquity. 2. Christian meals created community, as did non-Christian banquets, by confirming Christian ideology through a shared experience. Paul stresses this aspect in 1 Corinthians 11. 3. Symposium literature provided a literary model for describing meals; that tradition also influenced the New Testament and early Christian meals. 4. The philosophical symposium provided the model for teaching/discussion following a meal, as it did in both Luke's and John's accounts of the institution of the Lord's Supper.

Christian meals also developed some unique features as the Eucharist moved from private houses to meeting hall and basilica. It separated from the meal table, while liturgy was not equivalent to symposium discussion, a development that is under way according to Jude 12 and in Ignatius of Antioch. It would also be true of the Didache's description of the Eucharist.

Smith's thesis is that "earliest Christian meals developed out of the model of the GrecoRoman banquet can provide a surer basis for historical reconstruction of Christian origins" (p. 287). He has documented his thesis richly--and persuasively. In the process he also locates Jewish meals in that tradition. His work deserves careful reading by New Testament scholars, church historians, and liturgiologists interested in the history of early Christian cult. It is an outstanding book.

Edgar Krentz

Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago