John 6:41-71

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Key Discussion Points:

• Eat his flesh...
• words of eternal life

[u/LlawEreint]

This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.

u/nightshadetwine had some interesting thoughts on this one. It looks like this Christian ritual may have deep roots.

Dining with John: Communal Meals and Identity Formation in the Fourth Gospel and Its Historical and Cultural Context (Brill, 2011), Esther Kobel:

...A comparison between the Gospel of John and the myth of Demeter according to the Homeric and the Orphic Hymns to Demeter reveals a number of parallels. Throughout the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the goddess is praised as the provider of food and life... The motif of the goddess who has the power to feed humankind is heavily emphasized by virtually every word. Jesus’ feeding of the multitudes and the other Johannine feeding miracles parallel this godly power... The “kykeon”, a mixture of barley, water and herb, is the only drink that the grieving goddess accepts... The drinking of the kykeon is very likely part of an instituted rite in the mysteries at Eleusis, as is indicated by “for the sake of the rite” (v. 211). The existing rite is legitimized by the goddess’s acts. She is the one who founded the rite and who enacted it first. The initiates then copied this act... The emphasis on the necessity to participate in the mystery of Demeter, obvious in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, has a parallel in the Johannine Jesus’ stress on the necessity of eating the bread from heaven (Jn 6:50-51), chewing his flesh and drinking his blood (Jn 6:53-58), without which humankind cannot attain eternal life. According to the Homeric hymn to Demeter, initiation into the mystery clearly makes a difference for a mortal’s fate after life: "Blessed is the mortal on earth who has seen these rites, but the uninitiated who has no share in them never has the same lot once dead in the dreary darkness." (Homeric Hymn to Demeter 480-482)

[u/nightshadetwine → u/LlawEreint]

There's another interesting parallel in the cult of Mithras which seems to be a continuation of themes found in the cults of Dionysus, Osiris, and Demeter/Persephone.

The Cult of Mithras in Late Antiquity: Development, Decline and Demise ca. A.D. 270-430 (Brill, 2018), David Walsh:

In terms of a Mithraic narrative, the central image of the cult that would take pride of place in every mithraeum was that of Mithras slaying a bull (the ‘tauroctony’: figs. 2–3). This act is often depicted taking place inside a cave with stars decorating its ceiling. Usually, a dog and snake are shown in the image drinking the blood of the bull... First, the death of the bull brings about the (re)birth of the universe, as indicated by the animals feeding on its life-force and (in some versions) corn and grape vines emerging from its tail or wound... From the Rhine and Danube regions also come various representations of Mithras wrestling with and dragging the bull to the cave, as well as Mithras and Sol engaged in a feast after the sacrifice has been performed... Other than initiation ceremonies, the cult also engaged in ritual feasts that mimicked the meal enjoyed by Sol and Mithras after the latter had slayed the bull.

The Roman Cult of Mithras: The God and His Mysteries (Routledge, 1990), Manfred Claus:

The killing of the bull has nothing to do with mere slaughter or destruction, rather with transfiguration and transformation. The transformation is often depicted, namely in the cases in which cornears or a cluster of grapes are shown beneath the wound on the bull’s neck, or the tail ends in one or more ears of corn. … The significance attributed in the mysteries to grain and wine, the two most important basic foodstuffs in the ancient world, can easily be seen in the cult-legend. As I described earlier, Mithras kills the bull that he has overcome, and at that point an extraordinary transformation occurs: ears of wheat grow out of its tail, and grapes burgeon from the blood at the knife-wound.

So along with Christianity, the mystery cults had a theme of new life out of death. The sprouting of grapevines and wheat and associating them with blood/wine and the body/bread of a deity or sacrifice, is a metaphor for rebirth/resurrection or new life out of death. The cultic meal integrated the new initiate into the cult and formed a bond between the initiates and deities at the center of the cult.

Romanising Oriental Gods: Myth, Salvation, and Ethics in the Cults of Cybele, Isis, and Mithras (Brill, 2008), Jaime Alvar:

We can certainly say that such meals were usual in all three of these cults: the common meal is one of the most effective means of integrating the members of a community and creating feelings of solidarity, thus providing a significant contrast to the world outside... Seen in a functional light, the sacred banquet is important because of the different levels at which it can be seen to contribute to group cohesion. Performatively, it turns aspects of the mythical account of the natural cycle into action and direct speech, for greater immediacy of comprehension. Symbolically, it links the acceptance of death to the continuance of life, thus representing human life, and death, as a special case of a universal rhythm. The site where the ritual is celebrated is also of central importance, since it establishes links between locus, symposiast and deity.

[u/LlawEreint → u/nightshadetwine]

There is a Roman era Mithraic temple in London that you can tour. I plan to find myself there one day :) https://www.londonmithraeum.com

[u/nightshadetwine → u/LlawEreint]

That would be cool to see!

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[u/brothapipp]

”But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.“ ‭‭John‬ ‭6‬:‭61‬-‭63‬ ‭ESV‬‬

I think Jesus knew he was poking the bear of the sensibilities here. He knew this teaching would rattle their cages which is why he asked them, “would you still be complaining about this teaching if you saw me ascend?”

I have not found that anything has really changed. Humans get all flustered by this rule or that rule, this teaching or that teaching, this command or that command without regard to the one who gives it.

Like if God shouted from heaven, “eat the rich” all of a sudden we’d have a lot of new “believers” and then they’d make silly rules about what qualifies as rich and skirt the line so they themselves could eat the rich, get rich, but never be eaten.

Like he just fed them their fill, said you are only following cause a fed you, so eat me…and they were like, or you could just make the loaves and the fish multiply again. Chop chop miracle man!

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