When the hour came, Jesus took his place at the table with the apostles. He said to them, I have wanted so much to eat theis Passover meal with you before I suffer! For I tell you, I will never eat it until it is given its full meaning in the Kingdom of God.
Then Jesus took a cup, gave thanks to God, and said “Take this and share it among yourselves. I tell you that from now on I will not drink this wine until the Kingdom of God comes.
Then he took a piece of break gave thanks to God, broke it, and gave it to them, saying “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in memory of me. In the same way, he gave them the cup after the supper, saying “This cup is God’s new covenant sealed with my blood, which is poured out for you.
On the Featured Image
Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus. c. 359 CE. Marble, 142.2 x 243.8 cm. Museo Tesoro della Basilica di San Pietro (Treasury of Saint Peter’s Basilica), Vatican City.
Rhetorical device that begins the book was known to both Roman rhetoricians and Jewish scholars.
Doubling
Procession into Jerusalem on a donkey. Carnivalesque of the triumphator?
Primary sources for triumphators
Livy, Ab Urbe Condita (History of Rome), 30.15.12 and 45.35–39
Livy. History of Rome, Volume VIII: Books 28-30. Translated by Frank Gardner Moore. Loeb Classical Library 381. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949.
Livy. History of Rome, Volume XIII: Books 43-45. Translated by Alfred C. Schlesinger. Loeb Classical Library 396. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1951.
Plutarch, Life of Aemilius Paullus, 32–34.
Plutarch. Lives, Volume VI: Dion and Brutus. Timoleon and Aemilius Paullus. Translated by Bernadotte Perrin. Loeb Classical Library 98. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1918.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, 2.34.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Roman Antiquities, Volume I: Books 1-2. Translated by Cary Earnest. Loeb Classical Library 319. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1937.
Appian, The Punic Wars (The Foreign Wars), 8.66.
Appian. Roman History, Volume III: The Punic Wars. The Numidian War. The African War. The Illyrian War. The Syrian War. The Mithridatic War. Translated by Brian McGing. Loeb Classical Library 4. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019.
The Fasti Triumphales (Triumphal Lists).
Degrassi, Attilio. Inscriptiones Italiae, Vol. XIII, fasc. 1: Fasti Consulares et Triumphales. Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1947.
Here in the Gospel of Luke we get the visual of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on a donkey or two.
To be enthroned in Jerusalem, the location accords with Jewish tradition. However, why would a Jewish King arrive in a Roman way, that’s weird.
And what would a Roman think and feel? The triumphator the deification that had been witness stirred feelings related to civic religion. What feelings did this stir? A donkey is not a horse like in the triumphator. Why would a poor criminal be riding in like a consul. Is it a sick joke? The low is being made high.
Fast forward to Mikhail Bakhtin
Entry into Jerusalem. c. 1140–1170. Gold and glass mosaic. Cappella Palatina (Palatine Chapel), Palazzo dei Normanni, Palermo, Sicily, Italy.
Giotto di Bondone. The Entry into Jerusalem. c. 1303–1305. Fresco, 200 x 185 cm. Scrovegni Chapel (Arena Chapel), Padua, Italy.
Botticelli, Sandro. The Virgin Adoring the Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist. c. 1490. Tempera, oil, and gold on wood, diameter: 115.3 cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
The account of the Lord’s Supper starting at verse 14 reminds us of the book of Matthew with the repetition of Kingdom of God.
But perhaps the most important line is when he called this cup the new covenant sealed in his blood.
This is the fulfillment of the prophesy in Jeremiah 31:31 The Lord says, “The time is coming when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the old covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and led them our of Egypt. Although I was like a husband to them, they did not keep that covenant. The new covenant that I will made with the people of Israel will be this: I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will b emy people. None of them will have to teach his fellow countryman to know the Lord, because all will know me, from the least to the greatest. I will forgive their sins and I will no longer remember their wrongs.”
The last supper as the new covenant is so radical in that it is embodied… happens in the individual’s life. The birth of the individual could be traced to this moment, in some spiritual sense, here, not later after the birth of towns.
