“Luke represents Jesus as feeding on his own body in order to satisfy his unbelieving disciples that he is really among them. I can easily imagine how very different may have been the feelings of those simple enthusiasts, the early Galilæan disciples, when they used these words—never dreaming that they would be reduced to dry, evidential prose—in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, praising the Lord for allowing them to ‘sit at His table,’ and to ‘eat and drink with Him,’ or for making them ‘sharers in the sacred food of His body’ and ‘partners of His board.’ It was only, after a generation or more had passed away, outside the atmosphere of Galilee—it was only to a compiler laboriously tracing back the truth through documents—that all these phrases would suggest the thought of Jesus proving his reality by partaking of food that his disciples give to him. “It may be said, as though it were to Luke’s discredit, ‘He represents Peter as positively testifying to this eating.’ Of course he does. You know how speeches are written, even in the most accurate histories. No historian, as a rule, professes to record a speech of any length exactly. If Luke first inferred that Christ ate with the apostles after his death, he would also naturally go on to infer that Peter, in attesting Christ’s resurrection, must necessarily have included some mention of this fact. I cannot blame him. I think he was perfectly honest, though in error.” I agreed. But it seemed to me an error much to be regretted. On one point, however, Scaurus seemed to me to be not quite accurate, when he said of Luke, “He represents Peter as positively testifying to this eating.” For Peter’s speech was to this effect, “God raised him up on the third day and granted that he should be manifested—not to all the people but to witnesses previously appointed by God, namely us, who ate with him and drank with him—after he had risen from the dead.” Scaurus regarded this as meaning that “the eating and drinking” of Christ’s disciples took place “after his death.” Even if that had been so, it might be that Jesus was merely present (not eating and drinking) when the disciples ate and drank: and something of this kind I afterwards found in the fourth gospel. But I punctuated the words differently, and interpreted them differently, as meaning that the “_manifestation_” (not the “eating”) _took place after the resurrection_; and that the manifestation was limited to those who had been Christ’s intimate companions, or as the Greeks say, “_sharers of his table_,” _during his life_.