The Last Supper: Helped Or Unleavened?

The elements used in the supper are crucial to its observance. Witherington suggests “it would be better if we used the same elements as were used originally,” but this does not go far enough (136). Jesus specified the use of bread and fruit of the vine (Luke 22:18-19). Any other element would be an addition to these specifications. However, there are many debates concerning exactly what elements Jesus used in the supper. Most of them depend on whether the Last Supper was a Passover feast or not. Suffice it to say that even if the Last Supper was not a Passover meal, the themes of the festival would have prevailed in the disciples’ minds (Ferguson 258). That still leaves the issue of identifying the bread and the fruit of the vine as Jesus would have known them. The bread used in the supper was unleavened. In Luke, the Greek term for “bread” is a baked product made from cereal grain (Arndt 136). The technical Greek word for “unleavened” is not used in any account of the Last Supper, but when

Some suggest it is grape juice, while others claim it is diluted wine. Though different from today, grape juice could be preserved in ancient times (Jackson, Was the Fruit of the Vine Fermented?). Others boldly state the ancients did not know anything about unfermented wine (Elwell 2: 2146). It is also claimed that Passover tradition allowed the consumption of diluted wine, and that this was a binding prescription (Jeremias 50-51, 53). Even if this is true, the wine would be much different from the modern definition of it (Jackson, Was the Fruit of the Vine Fermented?). Regardless of whether it was grape juice or wine, the focus is on what it represents: the blood of Jesus (Luke 22:20). In recent times, there has also been contention over the amount of cups Christians may use in observing the supper. Jesus did not intend for the number of cups to matter; rather, He used a metonymy to describe the contents (Howard