Bible. New Testament -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.; Jesus Christ -- Historicity
Even in the Old Testament we meet with the idea of a sacramental
meal. This is pointed to in Genesis xiv. 18 sqq., when Melchisedek,
the prince of peace ("King of Salem"), the priest of "God Most
High," prepares for Abraham a meal of bread and wine, and at it
imparts to him the blessing of the Lord God. For Melchisedek, the
ruler of Salem, the city of peace, "the King of Justice," as he is
called in the Epistle to the Hebrews, is even in this book plainly
described as an ancient God: "without father, without mother, without
genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made
like unto the Son of God, he abideth a priest continually." [234]
So also the Prophet Jeremiah speaks of holy feasts, consisting of
cake and wine, of nightly sacrifices of burnt-offerings and liquids,
which were offered to the Queen of Heaven (i.e., the Moon) and other
Divinities. [235] Isaiah, too, is indignant against those who prepare
a drinking-feast for God and make liquid offerings to Meni. [236]
Now Meni is none other than Men, the Moon-God of Asia Minor, and
as such is identical with Selene-Mene, the Goddess of the Moon in
the Orphic hymns. Like her he is a being of a dual sex, at once
Queen and King of Heaven. Consequently a liquid sacrifice appears
to have been offered by all the people of Nearer Asia in honour of
the Moon. As Moon-God (Deus Lunus) and as related to Meni, in whose
worship a sacramental meal also plays the chief part, Agni appears in
the Vedas under the name of Manu, Manus, or Soma. He too is a being
of dual sex. Of this we are again reminded when Philo, the Rabbinic
speculation of the Kabbala, as well as the Gnostics ascribe to the
first man (Adam Kadmon) two faces and the form of a man and woman,
until God separated the two sexes from one another. [237] According
to this we should probably look upon the fire-worship in Asia Minor
also as the foundation of the sacramental meal.
Obviously we have to do with a meal of this kind in the bringing in
of the so-called shew-bread. Every Sabbath twelve cakes were laid by
the priests "upon the pure table before the Lord," "and it shall be
for Aaron and his sons, and they shall eat it in a holy place, for
it is most holy unto him of the offerings of the Lord, by a perpetual
statute." [238]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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