The Lost Supper

Matthew Colvin has written an outstanding study of the Lord's Supper. Deploying a vast knowledge of ancient Rabbinic and biblical sources, and of modern scholarly literature, he argues that at the Last Passover Supper Jesus redefines an existing bread rite to identify himself as Israel's long-awaited Messiah. Not content with tracing origins, he explains the theological consequences of seeing the Last Supper through ancient Jewish eyes, rather than through the lenses of Aristotelian metaphysics or ancient semiotics. There is some dynamite hidden in these carefully argued pages, and I hope Colvin's book receives the wide readership and lively discussion it deserves. -- Peter Leithart, Theopolis Institute It has become fashionable to find the roots of the Last Supper in the many other meals of Jesus together with the Roman Symposium. Drawing on more recent studies on the Jewish Passover in the Second Temple period, and the arguments of Maurice Casey on the Aramaic that may well underlie much of St. Mark's Gospel, Matthew Colvin revisits the earlier studies of Eisler, Daube and Jeremias, corrects them in the light of new evidence, and cogently argues for the Passover as the backdrop to the origin and understanding of the Last Supper narratives and the Lord's Supper of the Church. Those concerned with Eucharistic origins will need to engage with Colvin's book. -- Bryan D. Spinks, Yale Divinity School